The Fall of Rome
America can feel like a terrible place,
all of us as selfish as babies, entitled
and blind to our wealth, expecting
too much from our paychecks and
feeling like just because we have
neither the time nor the resources to
fix the attic stairs or to replace the
damaged doorframe where the burglars
broke in, that we are trapped and
everything is broken and Walmart is
too crowded and filled with plastic
crap that we, in turn, use to fill our
houses, and wouldn't it be nice to grow
our own tomatoes and peppers, but
of course, we won't because time
is full and it passes like a dirty river,
and some asshat keyed my car just
before the lease was up, and nothing
is easy, nothing is ever easy except
complaining and giving up and letting
wine and the media fill our cups with
diversions, and isn't that all of us,
rolling our eyes back into our heads
at the latest mess the political class
has scraped up from the bottom of
the pot-- all of us fed from a boiling
pot-- a big, steaming sense of injustice
and dissatisfaction and dust that
collects like ashes and is never swept
up, and we're fighting over virtues and
clutching on to power, constantly
positioning ourselves against the other
and we never hear the barbarians
or imagine the reasons that they gather
at our gates, sharpening their axes,
and all I really want to say is let them
come in. I don't like feeling helpless
or envious or given to waste. I want
to grow a garden with tomatoes and
I want to become wise in my old age.
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