Disaster Valentine

Here in the last few days before the disaster
when the whole world gets to play its
non-speaking part in our national reenactment
of how a titanic economy hits the iceberg
of reality and sinks with all the poor onboard
and a few of the rich onboard some country
music playing here in the last dim days before
the disaster I stand in my own backyard
while I still have a backyard its own private
quadrant of stars and debris and compost
which is which to have taken the world
like rotten apples thrown against a wall
to have driven it all into the ground
or to have eaten our own children?