The Collapse of America

                                                                                 
                                                                                  Stephen Morrissey

                                                                   

Canto One

The empires of the past have fallen, collapsed

into dust, great behemoths of fools and folly,

banks of black clouds on the horizon, places of darkness

and abandon, waves crashing on the stormy ocean shores;

people have gone soft, lazy, and vain, their vision is narrowed,

concentrating on ephemeral material stuff, jibber jabber,

Yankee Doodle Dandy, Citizen Kane, monopolies,

day traders, and Las Vegas gambling, a landscape of sky scrapers

for worshipers at the Church of Mammon, that's the real religion;

opiods and meth labs, elder abuse, anything if there's a buck in it;

a place where successful business men are sociopaths,

including Donald Trump, and factor in narcissism,

how great Trump says he is, but we hear this from Americans

everyday; as a student told me, "Of course I can be

anything I want, my teachers told me so";

Gatsby:  "‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously.

‘Why of course you can!’"; Americans held hostage

by their own myth, the American Dream, rich careless people

worshiping Mammon; Lou Reed: "Give me your hungry,

your tired your poor, I'll piss on 'em that's what

the Statue of Bigotry says"; the "peanut crunching crowd",

angry and betrayed, outside a cinema in The Day of the Locust,

the American Dream is not for them; it's not

for the fly-over states, "Who'd want to live down there

in the middle of nowhere", asked Jason Aldean,

down there's where the "basket of deplorables" live;

black clouds of locust on the horizon, twilight and the silenced

morning chorus. And remember George W. Bush?  

He's a war criminal I was told at a Christmas party

by the adult children of rich white people living in Harlem,

professors and psycho-analysts, you know, exposed brick walls

lined with books, abstract paintings, the whole place contemporary,

do-gooders busy grabbing up (I mean "gentrifying"...) working class

neighbourhoods, oblivious to the long-term residents

who have to move or be homeless / the dollar is mightier

than anything ... anyhow, they said W., including his cohort,

Rumsfeld and Cheney, are war criminals, deserving

prosecution and time served in a federal prison;

in eight years half a million dead by these terrifying caricatures

of human beings; their god is money, they'd water board you

in heaven if it meant a profit. And remember Mr. Obama in 2008:

elevated to sainthood and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize,

what was that all about? "You go into these small towns, the jobs

have been gone now for 25 years, each successive administration

has said these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not,

they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people

who aren't like them ..." This is how he saw hard-working Americans,

patriotic to a fault, generous and hopeful of the future,

betrayed by their leaders who supported the global economy

over their own people. What about small towns in Libya?

How did Libyans feel when invaded by Obama and Hillary's orders?

Bombed to hell for oil, Ghadafi beaten and shot, a failed state

of war lords, an armed camp, and some guy driving a white

Toyota pick-up truck with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back.

Canto Two

America, where the weekends are reserved for mass killings,

it's just one symptom of decline and collapse;

the imagination is barren, soul sickness infecting the world;

when society is corrupt, bring out the clowns: "Don't you love farce?

My fault, I fear, I thought that you'd want what I want Sorry, my dear!";

be an entertainer or an actor, "Just around the corner,

There's a rainbow in the sky. So let's have another cup of coffee,

And let's have another piece o' pie!" There's a future in dancing

and singing, it's the old desperation rag; where are the world's

great leaders? it's all get rich quick, Mammon is god;

"Money for nothing and the sex is free".

When did the Great Decline begin?

                        The Viet Nam War? Reagan? 9/11? 

                        Or when beliefs and values

                        were abandoned by well-meaning

                        people, convinced that

                        what they believed was wrong

                        and always had been wrong,

                        that they must accommodate

                        the future order of things, and only later

                        did some of these same people realize

                        the consequence of surrendering

                        their traditions and values,

                        discarding what had once been

                        the basis of their lives, what had been

                        true and good about life;

                        they hadn't yet experienced

                        the Mammon god, avarice and greed,

                        the loss of meaning and belief

                        in something greater than themselves;

                        they ended soul dead, living

                        an inauthentic life, and treading

                        water in oblivion.

Canto Three

                        America, be careful,

                        if your soul is sick

                        you may as well

                        have no soul,

                        you may not recover,

                        you may end up soul dead;

                        the age called for great leaders,

                        for men and women of depth

                        and intelligence, soul

                        and compassion,

                        and who came forward?

                        Politicians out for power

                        and a lucrative book deal

                        leading to the lecture circuit.

Canto Four

The old ways are finished,

there is no return to traditions

and values, the familiarity

of friends dropping in on each other,

hospitality and family;

now it's a roof collapsing

on people sitting in the kitchen,

the radio in the background

some right wing phone-in show;

termites in the support beams,

dry rot in the timbers and the hard wood

floor sagging by the dining room window;

the foundation is built on sand,

it cannot hold up these walls

these stone walls that have heard

talk of wars, revolutions, governments elected

and defeated, anger and a fist banging

on the kitchen table; but others found wealth

in America and transformed wealth into greed,

paradise into hell: think of Bezos and Musk,

Zukerberg and Uber's Kalanick,

Page and Brin; "Bezos sees corporations

like his own as being way more efficient

at structuring and organizing society

as compared to governments." It's an

unholy alliance, business and politics.

What do politicians want? Power

and control of government;

every election is a coup d'état,

the whole stinking edifice

of deceit and lies, betrayal

and avarice; they're the walking dead

looking in the window at you, surveilling

emails, recording phone calls, CCTV,

government watching you; there's nothing

like a war to keep the public motivated,

not just world wars lasting five years

but several simultaneous wars

lasting decades, it's perpetual war,

fireworks and the red white and blue.

There is no repentance or forgiveness

on America's green and lonely shores,

the scales of greed have slipped too far;

one man on HGTV has a 20K square foot house,

an infinity pool in the back yard overlooking

the Pacific Ocean, and in the garage

his collection of antique automobiles

built in an age when few would have

understood this wealth, this greed.

Canto Five

The spiritual border is porous

but the physical border can't be breached,

on the American side, sharp shooters lying

on the custom building's roof

checking out cars for tourist-terrorists;

America is under quarantine, they're

sick with the American disease,

a virus in the blood, headaches,

addiction, stage four insanity.

Canadians rejected union

with the United States in 1867

and we'd reject it again today,

saying back then Americans are too violent,

they aren't religious, and all they care about

is making money; but not to worry,

we still eat your chocolate bars,

watch your violent and sentimental

television shows, are shocked

at your news on NBC ABC CBS

PBS CNN and FOX;

                        the American Dream

destroyed by what the American Dream

has become; so giddy on up El Paso way,

bodies bouncing off the aisles of shampoo,

TVs, and children's clothes in Walmart;

oh jeezus, fuck Walmart, bodies lying

where they fell; did the shooter

buy his ammo at Walmart? And, thus,

Walmart enters history as a crime scene,

a place of commerce and death.

Canto Six

The world has been Americanized, movies, music,

food and fashion! Subway and McDonald's

in a remote town somewhere in northern China,

a province in the future United States of the World,

a division of One World, One Corporation, Inc.,

serving fat Chinese boys on skateboards;

everything old must be destroyed / that's

where we're headed / that's the message,

intelligence is out of style, social media

has people screaming at each other;

buy your way into USC / lies taught

as historical fact,  the anti-fascists are fascists,

statues pulled down by angry mobs,

I am more afraid of the mobs

than of the statues; it's a Cultural Revolution,

re. China 1966 to 1976—The American

Little Red Book of the Dead, filled with epigrams

and angry poems of malice and hate—

and see where that left the Chinese, the whole society

caught in violent upheaval; you can't make up

what politicians will do to stay in office: start a war?

regime change? invade a neighbour? deny millions

of people the vote? gerrymander electoral districts?

fix an election? divide up the spoils, who gets what now

and who gets what next time? Keep people in perpetual

debt, poverty, fighting in perpetual wars;

the higher the office the greater the corruption.

Beelzebub old buddy, let us kiss your hairy ass:

Trump ripped the scab off of American life

exposing more than he intended, the whole edifice

is corrupt; Ronald Reagan at the service of Mammon,

     closing mental hospitals to cut costs, cut taxes

     for the rich, now every city has the homeless,

     hoards of them, a new social class for the 21st Century:

     call them American Dhalits.  

    Canto Seven

Ezra Pound was right about usury, "Corpses are set to banquet

at behest of usura"; lending money at exorbitant interest rates

is evil, and who benefits? Banks and credit card companies benefit,

both are financial pedophiles grooming the public with advertising,

point awards, vacation packages to exotic places, but only

if you accrue debt on credit, only if you live beyond your means;

half the population is in debt, seduced by VISA, Master Card,

American Express, pay-day lenders, even social media have plans

for their own currency, for a piece of this lucrative deal.

The wealthy, people like Jeffrey Epstein and friends,

slobber down roast beef and Yorkshire pudding,

gravy running down the corners of their mouths,

bottles of wine consumed, while families need

three salaries to survive, one salary no longer enough:

whoever indebts another is evil; credit at 22% and more

is not a service or convenience, it is usury for banks' profit;

dressed in Friday casual wear, blue jeans and a T-shirt,

bankers are the same thugs as loan sharks who break your legs

if you don't pay their compounded interest; their aim is to replace

currency with credit cards and to profit twice from every

financial transaction: 2% or more paid by the stores

and 22% or more paid by consumers on unpaid debt.

This is the evil of our age: bank pimps, money launderers,

and pyramid schemers, all of them whoring for money;

over half the country is in debt and believe they'll always

be in debt; the banks' formula for success: the interest

they are owed must always be increasing and greater

than the amount borrowed; and get the suckers to pay up,

and better yet, get them to borrow from one credit card

to pay a second credit card; pay interest on the interest;

corporate profit not one billion but 10 billion

per quarter. The banks are angry when you can't pay,

they meet you in the manager's office

for the ritual of cutting up your credit cards,

the disapproving branch manager and the failed

financial adviser are present with their twisted

moral turpitude, they are angry because they've lost

collecting the usurious interest that you once paid;

the old morality, save for the future, self-denial,

live within your means, now impossible;

only deadbeats pay their monthly balance;

average people driving to work in second hand cars,

their children at state run schools, parents

who don't want their children deprived of the stuff

advertised on TV; people bankrupt and made homeless;

not even a poor house or debtors prison for refuge,

now it's a back lane, a bus shelter, a park bench,

the back seat of a car, a tent in a city park;

and always more consumer goods, more stuff to buy,

all of it made on the cheap in foreign countries,

seducing average people into perpetual debt

and keeping them there.


Canto Eight

            What people want

            is freedom, not hands

            bound behind their backs,

            eyes blindfolded, mouths taped

            shut, the police at the front door;

            people want freedom of speech,

            freedom from religion or to be religious,

            freedom to think one's own thoughts,

            freedom of expression,

            freedom to own property /

            or to get up and move far away,

            to live in peace /

            freedom to make money

            or / best of all /

            freedom to be left alone.

Canto Nine

I've been watching American news too long,

since the war in Viet Nam, Watergate, and Nixon's

departure on a helicopter from the White House lawn;

it begins to repeat, mass shootings, perpetual war,

fighting in the streets / and now we're driving home,

listening to The Fugs singing "Kill, kill, kill for peace ";

education and the news media keep people pacified

and contained, ignorant of their ignorance:

ask someone "what happened 100 years ago?"

or just yesterday? No idea. Who cares?

What does it matter? If The Donald didn't exist

he'd have to be invented; it's the end of satire

when it's all satire; Paul Robeson: "The words

of old Abe Lincoln, of Jefferson and Paine,

of Washington and Douglas, and the task

that still remains." Instead, we hear a creaking

sound, the sound of collapse; voices in the night,

from the next room, from just outside

your window, first the roof collapses

and then the basement fills with water;

where is John Brown? where are the heroes?

where is the heart and soul? not the God damned

phony heart and soul on TV or the latest degenerate

popular movie with its corrupt moral values,

not some movie actor telling us what we should believe;

interviewed or giving speeches at the Golden Globe Awards,

every Hollywood actor is an authority on politics and morality;

they're actors for God's sake, trained to convince others

that they know what they're talking about; in appearance

many actors have "very little back or top to their head.

It is almost all face, like a mask" (Nathaniel West);

the camera loves their big smiling faces,

and on Sunday mornings they're on the golf course

with their politician friends, or screwing

whoever they can get hold of.

What about our own voice, telling the great

empty cosmos that we are here? Speak up

and celebrate life, always the cosmic "yes"

despite the politicians and actors,

the blue sky overhead and the sun warm on one's face;

            it's the Great Decline, the end of history,

            the end of time, the river polluted,

            the old abandoned; a country gone soft

            in the service of its own enslavement.

Canto Ten

John Brown,

an old man

with integrity

and a belief

in freedom

and truth,

as opposed to

            the new American vision,

            diminished, crude, and violent;  

            the Yew tree in the graveyard,

            that's where this greed and excess leads;

            too much of everything followed by

            not enough of anything  

            and expected to last into perpetuity;

            ignorance placed above intelligence;

John Brown's "last written message" before execution,

a month after the Harpers Ferry defeat,

            "I, John Brown, am now quite certain

            that the crimes of this guilty land will

            never be purged away but with blood.

            I had as I now think vainly flattered

            myself that without very much bloodshed

            it might be done."

A country of entertainers, children hamming it up for the camera,

pulling faces and contorted limbs, and middle-aged parents

indulging them in a sing-song voice. A divided country that believes

fame is more important than moral depth; they were sold an illusion;

films and TV shows cranked out to convert people

to the Corporate Dream; the Slave State is back, chains and a whip

are in style: destroy the old, embrace what is popular, buy more stuff,

if it's new it's gotta be better: Hollywood's pimps

gonna lead you to the promised land ...

            Walt Whitman: "I would sing how an old man, tall,

           

            with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia,

            I watch'd you old man cool and indifferent,

                 but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted".

Canto Eleven

Forget nothing: we've become a society of amnesiacs;

was it this morning, last week, last month, a century ago,

what was it we were talking about? It's disappeared

behind a black curtain of forgetfulness.

We are displaced persons lost in a cloud, or on a dark plain;

Q: What do you remember? A. Not much, maybe nothing.

It's easier to forget than to remember, and as for the news media,

articles to scroll through on a tablet before they're deleted

or revised, it's all forgotten as its read to be replaced in seconds

by new lies, new biases, new interpretations, the publics'

attention span is down to seconds; because you have already

been drugged or lobotomized, you accept what is reported

as normal: perpetual war, perpetual debt, a million homeless people

living on the streets, someone lying on a hot air vent or on a piece

of cardboard across the sidewalk on a downtown street,

in winter, in 0º F; all the bullshit poetry, novels, movies streaming

into your home, meaningless and vapid, at the service of this evil,

a part of the new world culture, forget high culture / no one's

even heard of it, who remembers what that was all about?

"Believe nothing", that's my motto. What's left in the

collective forgetfulness, what was refuted, rewritten,

it's all lies, including Facebook memes, network news,

newspapers, people are intolerant of anyone disagreeing

with them: "How can you say that?" "You are a POS!"

"Go fuck yourself you fascist!" "When they go low,

we go even lower" is how the world works.

A mob of walking dead, old people sharing a room

with someone's corpse; it's a holocaust at the end

of a collapsing civilization; thank God we'll all be dead

by morning, it's the only escape; nobody gets out of here

alive; and the future is a place of corporations,

if you think politicians were bad just wait—CEOs,

CFOs—their god is Mammon and they're true believers,

converts at birth, and the public are lining up to pray with them.

Canto Twelve


Spirit is destroyed, people shuffling

through the streets staring at iPhones;

two evils: perpetual war and perpetual debt;

constant propaganda to keep people

ignorant, the power of television and movies,

popular entertainment seducing people

to buy what they don't need, to believe

what few believed in the past, to accept values

that their parents, grandparents,

even their ancestors just off the boat

would find horrifying; the edifice of state

is collapsing, a circus tent with elephants

standing upright on their hind legs;

here come the clowns, make-up always

a metaphor for death, white face and a red

downturned mouth, a single tear painted

under the left eye, and the tent collapsing

trapping everyone inside—it's Grand Guignol,

Punch and Judy, the testimony of generals,

Judas Iscariot, and newly hired concentration

camp workers, cameras on everyone, the guy

at the next urinal is a state spy, workers

for the government's Public Scrutiny Department

observe with interest what's happening

at Hell Incorporated; a danse macabre,

the collapsing tent, manipulation of people

for the enrichment of the few, politicians fellating

each other in public toilets; Professor so and so

says these are brilliant poems you've written,

deconstructions of telepathically received

gibberish; history rewritten by government hacks;

the informer is your father hiding behind a curtain

in your living room, he's eager to turn you in;

CCTV cameras on every block recording

who does what, who goes where, algorithms

to detect dissent and control behaviour;

everything you say will be used against you;

I hear the anthem of the New American Republic,

sung by a hundred thousand upright members of society,

sedated and compliant; meanwhile, whatever

defined our society in the past has been downgraded

from mediocre to obsolete; someone is planning

a future where everyone looks the same, blonde hair

mannequins with blank stares and always smiling

with the whitest teeth possible; they think

this is just great, folks, it's never been better!


Canto Thirteen

To articulate the collapse of America:

darkness in the dead of night,

a dying man's final breath,

a tent collapsing, an envelope of darkness.

Lying on a deserted beach, a dead fish with a belly full

of maggots; politicians are smooth talkers

but as for truth, they have none;

a stinking corpse dumped on the side

of the road. Divide people into two groups:

one made up of workers, average people;

the other are the politicians, out for power,

spending other people's money, taxed at source,

legislating for perpetual debt, no altruism

or benevolence but for self-gain.

It was no different in the past, in the old days

when a circus tent was set up in a farmer's field,

near the cattle pens at the railroad station,

with the sun setting on the other side of the field,

and entering this tent the locals were sold

fake remedies for arthritis, bad nerves,

or impotence by hucksters and liars;

and during elections, politicians gave speeches

at the rear of passenger trains crossing the country

and crowds eager to hear these speeches;

even the towns were divided in two,

on one side of the tracks those with money

and on the other side is where the poor lived;

but still the yokels cheered hearing of reform and a society

in which promises would be fulfilled for the betterment

of the people, but it rarely happened that way:

the circus tent collapsed during the second

performance of the evening, clowns and animal trainers

spitting up bile and blood, then the apocalyptic fire,

everything up in flames; the next morning

as the sun appeared on the horizon,

a pile of smoking ashes

and embers floating into the sky;

                 Oh, ye poets, your obsolescence

                 is guaranteed, so speak the truth

                 or be forever excluded from public

                 discourse and solitary union with eternity.

                                         Stephen Morrissey

                                         August 2019 - January 2020

Note: The photograph of John Brown's grave,

located at his homestead just outside of Lake

Placid, New York, was taken by Stephen Morrissey

in the mid-1990s.

The Collapse of America, Preface

John Brown homestead, 1995

Preface

"The Collapse of America" is a long poem that I began in August 2019 and completed in January 2020.  •  What impressed me about America in the past no longer impresses. Instead of American confidence I now see empty bravado; instead of greatness I see a country that is a caricature of its former self; instead of democracy I see excessive wealth and power in the hands of a small minority; in other words, I see a country on the edge of moral collapse. That's what I'm talking about, a country on the edge of moral collapse.  •  Many of us were very fond of the United States, we used to travel back and forth across the border on business, as tourists, visiting family members, or just on day-outings to buy a few groceries or see a movie. But our porous Canada-America border, "the longest undefended border in the world", has lost its once friendly nature. A few years ago I saw sharp-shooters lying on the roof of an American border crossing building, their guns aimed at us, tourists who wanted to spend money in the United States; at LaGuardia Airport in New York City I was questioned by a woman customs agent after I said that my wife had packed my carry-on bag, "isn't that suspicious?" she asked; well, no, I saw nothing suspicious in it at all. •  I never wanted to write on politics, just talking about politicians makes me feel contaminated by them. Politicians are shapeshifters instantly assuming whatever disguise they feel will convince you of their integrity and the correctness of what they say. In his essay, "Up to Easter", Matthew Arnold writes, "Nothing I should like better than to feel assured that I should never have occasion to write on politics again. I write on other subjects with much more pleasure."  Stephen Morrissey April 2020

"The Improved Binoculars" by Irving Layton

Fire at the port of Montreal

The Improved Binoculars
by Irving Layton

Below me the city was in flames:
the firemen were the first to save
themselves. I saw steeples fall on their knees.

I saw an agent kick the charred bodies
from an orphanage to one side, marking
the site carefully for a future speculation.

Lovers stopped short of the final spasm
and went off angrily in opposite directions,
their elbows held by giant escorts of fire.

Then the dignitaries rode across the bridges
under an auricle of light which delighted them,
noting for later punishment those that went before.

And the rest of the population, their mouths
distorted by an unusual gladness, bawled thanks
to this comely and ravaging ally, asking

Only for more light with which to see
their neighbour's destruction.

All this I saw through my improved binoculars.

[1955]