of Fading Stars and Crumbling Cathedrals

Oh gone those days when the Third World
  was but a secret of malicious neglect,
  gone is the deceitful omnipotence
  of the angels on Wall Street,
  because now the whole planet can be heard
  on the airwaves —
  and the anger, frustration and utter starvation
  of millions is as close as a waterless tree
  in our neighbour’s backyard.
We can no longer deny that the Earth’s populace
  is rampant with cruelty
  and inadequate living conditions —
  the infidels of the past have risen up
  and will not be satisfied to be stoned to death
  with weapons of mass destruction.
No, they will be heard, they will appease their suffering,   
  they will fulfill the aching promise
  of their tragic history.
And as I sit here in the sorrowful glow of Hiroshima,
  in the murderous lies that perpetuated
  the rape of Afghanistan and Iraq,
  in the disaster that is Palestine,
  in the genocide of New Orleans
  in this continual onslaught of border states
  and propagandic pablum,
  I realize that we as a species have LEARNED
  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
The poets, philosophers and psychologists
  have tried to ease our suffering,
  but they have spoken to deaf ears,
  to monkeys whose consciousness is still stuck
  in Darwin’s textbook.
Must the destructive machine,
  the cancerous growth of unfeeling,
  metallic, never ending nightfall
  be devoid of dewdrop or the sound of birds
  greeting the dawn?
Must all cradles, happy children and purposeful wombs
  of insight be erased from a landscape
  where we were once young and hungry
  to satiate ourselves at the feet of the wise?
Has all that we have gained become nothing
  but redundant words scribbled
  upon the pages of a godless book
  that has become an excuse for further debauchery?
Oh I wipe the sweat from my contemplative brow,
  I hear the distant teardrop of a woman’s voice
  weeping beside the entrance of a crypt devoid of
  even the simplest of miracles.
The rubble gathers around the slowly crumbling                 
  cathedrals that bear very little that is truly holy,
  just man made temples of power and greed,
  while non-believers starve outside their rusty gates.
Photographs of rage and lust
  blow down cracked sidewalks,
  the gods who were once loved are now ignored
  or mocked by plastic covered forms
  at the edge of the city
  while a wind howls inside our bodies.
And as the prophets lie dying on beds of confusion,
  as  the veil quivers but is not ripped apart,
  the apocalyptic poet weeps in the snow
  beside his shivering lover.