The Nation Keeps Borrowing, Burrowing, And Burying Itself Deeper and Deeper

 

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.