Ignorance Rules the Hour

A Poem

Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

you hail from a kingdom
of riches long past —
so far from this needy generation
made up of your sons and daughters

you tell us all the time
that it’s all our fault
for not working more,
for sleeping too much,
for buying cheap wine,
for crying out at the injustice
of what it means to pay for
just the right to exist

you sang glories of your brothers,
all those men who bled out millions
into the hands of cronies and thugs
who weren’t called out at all
just because they had the nice suits
and the top-shelf cologne to mask
the scents of greed and power
that made us die another day

you don’t see the fires outside
your little retirement community
where the grass is always manicured
behind gates of white and gold

you tell us the world was better
in those long-ago days, wartime hours,
where a…