Poem: Reagan Era

 

Reagan Era

 

amid the race to build seventy thousand atomic bombs,

during the reign of the izod alligator polo logo,

when feelings

expressed in silicon babbled from the retinas of video store screens,

a child roamed.

 

a gnat in galumphs of hydrocarbonal rhinos, this child,

squirted from the White culture syringe,

endured a delirium tremens of lonely withdrawal

while consumers caffeinated on narcotic prestige

in lanes of shopping pablum zoomed.

 

such a wealthy country this child lived in,

where all the awful drugs came from other countries,

bad places where filthy gangs beat the doglike citizens

and forced them to make the drugs.

 

this child, this casualty of twig-thin, fashion-starved hornets,

who bore the parting aorta-injected

sting of the poisonous orgasmic vogue, over and over

and over and over and over and over

until convulsing from the grip

dissolved into video games that found only a bouncing dot to admire.

this child.

 

in the next room

a mother baptized her fluorescent babe in a pool of Bugs Bunny;

and this child, with a lonely quick sob,

realized that honesty died weak,

viciously slaughtering and similarly slain,

no more invincible than this kingdom would be,

sown with its bloody showy shallow coins.

 

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4/12 ... some mods hours after posting ... e.g. "in lanes of" replaces "in a land of"