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, 

squirted from the White syringe,

this child endured a delirium tremens of lonely withdrawal

while consumers caffeinated on narcotic prestige

in lanes of shopping pablum zoomed on.

this child lived in such a wealthy country 

where all the awful drugs came from other countries,

bad places where filthy gangs beat their doglike citizens

and forced them to make the drugs.

 

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

who bore the mark of the aorta-injected

sting of the poisonous orgasmic vogue, over and over

and over and over and over and over

until he convulsed from its grip

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

this child endured,

while in the next room his mother

baptized her fluorescent babe in a pool of Bugs Bunny;

and it was some time around then that he,

with a lonely quick sob,

realized that honesty died weak,

vicious to slaughter and similarly slain,

no more invincible than this culture would be,

sown with such bloody showy shallow allure.

 

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3/29/25 mods mania

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