The Future

Disease is spreading rapidly, through cities and streets

Through hotels and hostels

Through schools and small towns

A plague like no one has ever seen

Hatred, greed, lust, fear

They smile their huge white teeth at the dirty workers

Diamonds fall from their pockets

Orders fall from their tongues … while others are cut out

Dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions of cheap homes stand empty

The street is littered with fliers talking of revolution

Birds fall from the sky, their feathers like rain

Rivers run with the scum from the houses on the hills plated with gold

They pick their teeth with picks of silver

Beggars trample one another for a dime or a penny

A dollar to them would be like a million

A million to the others would be like one

Bullets in heads of those who slept soundly in their shared beds

Fire in the houses of those who want no one else to have them

Lone children waiting from parents to come home. But will they.

Long legs, matted hair, red lips

It’s all they know. It’s all their daughters will know.

The men never stay and the women don’t live long

There are no longer junkies. Just the people who don’t live in the houses on the hill.

The sky is dusty, full of plastic in the wind that never stops gusting

They told us it wasn’t real

It would never happen

Now they say it will never stop

Unless we do something now.

We can.

There is still time.