Silent Slide - Life Magazine - 1940's-1960's

Children sit playing bongo drums
scraggly hair couples
in loving circles
signes of infinity
scraped on each dirty neck
a tribe of the present
anti-
government, taxes, rules, 
hey but that was my parking spot.
What have you done, America?
He's out on parole after three months
for rape?
Flowers gently rest in the barrel of the
 soldiers rifle
and gentle fingers 
sign the go-ahead
to let Fat Man and Little Boy 
fly.
The mind's eye sees that day
and some guy on the hill has
a never greasy formula to fix all these
blemishes on the six-o-clock news.
There's East Coast
where breakfast is served all night
to pierced platinum haired people
seeing the speed of life and
running with it, car by car.
Where a diamond is a rock
and gold chains are as common as roasted chestnuts on a streetcorner.
West coast has
tans,
who's washing my car today?
Skipping on bleached streets
views from a mountaintop of the
forest hills
with huge cuts and
chunks missing from the wooded hills
eaten by the man-parasite.
Who's got time for dinner together?
Lunch together?
Nope.
What have you done, America?