My Country

Somehow with all the crap going down in Washington, D.C. I felt I would post this little ditty.

And I say to the country,
Where are the factories?
Where are the mills,
Where is the great muscled American worker?
And I visit Detroit,
and Cleveland
and Pittsburgh,
and Erie
And all I find are skeletons,
abandoned rights of way still lined with blackberry bushes,
rusted metal shells with broken out windows,
service roads long heaved and potholed
Industry is a derelict
we’ve exported our guts
and we are left with the ulcer;
the patient is dead
and the cancer remains
This great machine is so far beyond dormant
irretrievably
shamelessly
vacated without hope
of restoration
Our great industrial homeless embarrassment
that sleeps in our many doorways
we wish to look away
we move to avoid
the sight and stench of our failure
And the human slag are left discarded,
pasty and bloated
huffing about on fast food and vicodin
desperate for solace
video entertainment, disability, conjured afflictions
Who suffers most and what price to pay?
the worker
the family
the country
the soul?
Is it enough to lament or better to blame
or shall we, somehow,
evolve
live on
and find a new image of success and industry?