Perfection's Past Poem by Lonnie Hicks

This one feels ill-equipped to deal with it all

that one cannot not deal with anything large or small

some just love to dance

piano play, music sing
spectacle watch
video game dream

driven

not understanding sometimes
who is hammer and who is nail;

giant hands looming

reaching into your mail box
jobs lacking
families cracking
souls squeezing

society gone
mafia
banks gangster
asset grabbing
vulture institutions
citizen blood-sucking

the free, isolated individual
reeling;
some sighing
comforted by
false comforts:

"I am prettier than most
I am richer than most
I am smarter than most
I am more moral than most
Here I am guaranteed my tattered ego
always better than the down-trodden and the last
guaranteed at least
that my crushed ego survives
among the least regarded
all life is comparative no?

This is life as the acceptable illusion
we have of being better than some others.

We coddle our illusions
our watered-down freedoms

taken back
by shadowy hands
drifting
in secret hovels

some quiver
seeking only to save their sanity
ignoring our neighbors cringing humanity
feeling powerless
ours to only complain
but not too loudly
our bedrock
voices stilled
or our voices sing too loudly
trying to hold back the dark

soothing ourselves
mouthing
"while we are not perfect

we are are better off than most

"we should be thankful"
we heard said

too many us

don't appreciate

what's been built

what‘s been achieved;

too many seek to squander

unaware of the golden past

when men were men
and women were women
and made marriages last;

if the future is without these

without the things I love" he said

"then bring to me the End Times
a future still born
for the present is pasty bleak

I condemn it to hard times and jail
debt jail will make things safe
for the things I love.

Perfection has died in my world
murdered by rancid change

the once perfect

exiled;

shield me and mine

from the grinding present

the taint of future coming

never mind

the polluted water

never mind the mindless profits

never mind souls wandering

make them not notice my passing

never mind a planet dying

clearly now my faults will not save us.

Sequester me
as I coddle my cash
cling to my notions
of a golden past
condemning that
which deserves
not
their own present
even as they are blind
to my perfect notions
of my perfect past.