Why We’re Doomed

Take a moment to think
of all the sad sick children of our parents
who should not have been parents.

Think of all the children whose parents
never learned a thing about how to do it right
because no one gave a second thought

to how the world was failing, to how
they had failed it themselves and how
they were passing it all down to their kids.

You see them every day walking in parks
and seeing nothing, sitting in bars, lying together
on joyless, broken beds.

A nation of slipped discs —
a full measure of people with
untenable spines for the battle ahead,

nearly bent double from the pain
of trying to just survive. They aren’t going
to revolt or even protest. They can’t see

what’s right in front of them,
for the pain of standing upright
keeps them blind. If it takes

a village to raise a child,
where is theirs? You are a fool
to believe in any revolution

rising from people whose only model
for society is what they can see
when the only society they can see is an anthill.