The billionaires tend to their garden
at the expense of the forest,
whilst landlocked towns
invest in pine trees and surfboards
to sell a notion of escape
against the cell of a poorer tomorrow.

Religion lost its claim to G-d
once the churches locked their doors.
The homeless started a choir
on the park bench by the chapel
once they grew tired of food;
fame now the nutrition of the masses.

The baby boomers are a dying breed
set for containment and greed
and rapacious war;
the dreadful threat of a next door neighbour-
their extinction amongst
a millennial wantonness.

Heiresses brush their hair in vanity,
as does the poet to his white-noise
crowd of lunatics and alcoholics.
He crushes diazepam into his whiskey sour,
then lifts a shaking hand

to find the power he is preaching against.