Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

The Great Divide

While the rich are having their five dollar coffees at Starbucks,
a car full of “lost boys” are sitting in the heat,
with their car engine running filling out an application
to work at a nearby grocery store.
They smile at me as I go in to complain about the two gray avocados I bought on Tuesday.
That about sums it up,
this dichotomy in the world.
While Bush is “on vacation” with his dad in the Hamptons,
a woman in New Orleans is still waiting for a home,
still waiting for someone to come and say, “I’m sorry.”
While most Americans are planning their weekends, and their barbeques,
and their back-to-school shopping sprees,
a woman in the Sudan is lying on the ground
left to die
after being raped by four soldiers.
While four businessmen eat a five hundred dollar lunch at The Palm,
another forty line up outside the mission
hoping for a warm meal and a bed.
I ask myself what’s wrong with this picture?
I ask myself what should I be doing?
What can I do?
I dream of standing on a corner with a poster saying Impeach Bush,
but all I would get for my time is either arrested, egged, or given a few honks
of agreement.
The tide would still keep coming.
There would still be Cheney.
I think about going to volunteer.
Join the Peace Corps.
Go down to New Orleans and build houses
but I don’t know how to build anything.
I think about what John Lennon might have said,
if he were still alive to see the world now.
I hear him in his English accent,
“It’s the government. They’re the ones telling lies. ”
Our world is collapsing before our very eyes
and we’re too spaced out on Double Mocha Lattes
to even know it.
Hell, you’ve got to be in denial
just to get out of bed in the morning.
If you thought about the reality of what’s happening
in this world,
we’d all be on Prozac.
(Oh, yeah, most of us are.)
We’re being screened at airports like felons,
while ninety percent of the cargo going on to the plane
isn’t even being x-rayed.
We’re being told we’re fighting terrorists,
when all we’re doing is killing innocent children
and creating a world in which America is more hated
than ever before.
We’re allowing our rivers and oceans to be polluted by Bush
and his oil cronies
and told it’s in our best interest
while they keep stuffing their pockets.
The FDA is in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies.
People are popping pills and eating in their sleep.
Suicides are up.
Global warming is real,
and Iraq is in the middle of a civil war.
Meanwhile the biggest headlines in this country
are about who killed JonBenet Ramsey,
what does Tom Cruise’s baby look like,
and whether or not Oprah is having an affair with Gayle.
“Reality” t.v. is huge,
which I finally understand,
because real reality is unthinkable,
unimaginable,
impossible to contemplate.
So why not watch George Hamilton ice skate?
Better to have a latte,
and see what Pottery Barn has on sale
this week.
One day,
even the birds will refuse to land.