The Eve of Destruction 2025: 2 poems

POEM ONE: 

Perhaps
removing The United States’ money from the world
will stop major funding of wars and destruction,
though it won’t remove plastics and petroleum
from the world’s eco systems.
 
How do we want to die?
Slowly of poison, or
quickly of rockets and bombs?
Shot at the border, or
Rotting in a concentration camp?
 
There is no humane way to speed up death.
The United States toys with a futurism
That should have died with Italian fascism.
Let’s go to a promised land on this side of hell,
One we don’t have to go through hell to get to.
 
How do we want to live?
On the bodies of the disenfranchised, or
In partnership with our neighbors?
On profits stolen from the poor
Or on our fair share of gain?
 
My eyes and ears tell me
This is the eve of destruction,
But something in the earth tells me
Not to count on it, that we have time to change.

 

POEM TWO:

The United States, it is exploding
In 2025: the year that’s loading.
Violence’s high, and compassion’s missing
We had good neighbors that we are dissing.
Our president wants money to stay at home,
So, he’s given a trillionaire license to roam
Though all the secure files he needs to find
Where we can be screwed—as if we are blind.
And he tells us over and over and over again
We shouldn’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction.
 
The United States’ government is bending
Away from democracy, that’s what’s ending.
Congress seems unable to put through an agenda
It is letting go of authority although it was elected.
It’s waived our laws of non-discrimination—
Once again, white supremacists rule our nation.
We thought we had teams to slow climate change,
But our president quit the cause to his shame.
And he tells us over and over and over again
We shouldn’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
 
The United States, it is exploding
In 2025: the year that’s loading.
We’re told it was a free and fair election
That votes went for money, that was the selection
So, we watch government programs fall apart
Which was the plan right from the start.
Democracy, they say, was slow and inefficient
Heaven help us survive what they find expedient
Yet people tell us over and over again
Not to be certain
We’re on the eve of destruction.

 

For Mary's prompt "Eve of Destruction" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast