BORN INTO THIS By CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the ele­va­tors break
As polit­i­cal land­scapes dis­solve
As the super­mar­ket bag boy holds a col­lege degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these care­fully mad wars
Into the sight of bro­ken fac­tory win­dows of empti­ness
Into bars where peo­ple no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shoot­ings and knif­ings
Born into this
Into hos­pi­tals which are so expen­sive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a coun­try where the jails are full and the mad­houses closed
Into a place where the masses ele­vate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walk­ing and liv­ing through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Cas­trated
Debauched
Dis­in­her­ited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made vio­lent
Made inhu­man
By this
The heart is black­ened
The fin­gers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fin­gers reach toward an unre­spon­sive god
The fin­gers reach for the bot­tle
The pill
The pow­der
We are born into this sor­row­ful dead­li­ness
We are born into a gov­ern­ment 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the inter­est on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be use­less
There will be open and unpun­ished mur­der in the streets
It will be guns and rov­ing mobs
Land will be use­less
Food will become a dimin­ish­ing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explo­sions will con­tin­u­ally shake the earth
Radi­ated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the cho­sen will watch from space plat­forms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s play­ground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All veg­e­ta­tion will die
Radi­ated men will eat the flesh of radi­ated men
The sea will be poi­soned
The lakes and rivers will van­ish
Rain will be the new gold
The rot­ting bod­ies of men and ani­mals will stink in the dark wind
The last few sur­vivors will be over­taken by new and hideous dis­eases
And the space plat­forms will be destroyed by attri­tion
The peter­ing out of sup­plies
The nat­ural effect of gen­eral decay
And there will be the most beau­ti­ful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hid­den there
Await­ing the next chapter.