They traded wisdom for cleverness.
Certainly, no angels have been coming down
to do ‘wild things’ and have hanky-spanky fun,
to use the lingo of the place, with local women
in the Land of the Free and Brave, angering
the Old Nick who is always looking out
for his virgin and way-too-young wife
of some Joseph so that he could bring
this world closer to its ghastly end,
and no Romantics will match someone
like a Trump who vends Solomon’s pens.
But, anyway, the land is already flooded.
Flooded and choked in cocaine and junk,
and suicide became a new national pastime
and game and the new self-evident truth
of how ‘the right to happiness’ flipped
into depression and the demonic urge.
Either to kill others or to kill oneself.
And, following the grisly part of Poe,
black depression and anger and angst
pen these people’s poems and songs
as they wised up to scoff at ‘silly’ love
chants as they wonder: “What else
is there to do?—Good deeds, good
thoughts, and good words?” As if
depression, strangely by its very name,
wasn’t already putting on view to all
the descent—the going-down to Hell
among the hosts for whom ‘good words’
have been ad nauseam—merely frauds.
