Sliding to Tomorrow
Gay Beck
I walk down rubbled streets,
Beirut, Bombay, and Baghdad,
hated by young and old,
Black, White, Hispanic, poor,
alike in resentment
for my brief visit
to the museum of squalor,
a display of suffering,
an exhibition of shame,
a show that will continue
until spectation ends.
But then I suddenly realize
this is not a third world nightmare,
we’re in America,
declining to decay,
since no one knows enough
to stop the fall.
