This World Started Ending Long Ago [poem]

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The world started ending a long a time ago. I should know. I’ve never left my house, but I’ve been to Birkenau.
Where the world was crystal sugars pushed into a castle’s doors,
And the gate of Babylon hung her tongue out at history,
And the great rivers of Europe swallowed the wealth of the world,
Splitting wide like huge wounded purses.
It has happened before, my friends, I who wrap my thoughts and mind in silk should know.
For I have lunged at the breakfast of time with sinking hate and missed
Falling for the ashtrays of the rich and their soft and subtle lips,
When space was just a laugh away and anything could be turned into a quick and happy song,
And the gods of guys lived in the bright breasts of children girls,
All yellow and grand like vespers and scents.
Oh our fathers got their half-acre; oh our dads smoked a gross of ham and dust,
Oh our mothers shriveled into their nadir and the holy promise,
And their wombs where stuffed like Hong Kong with off-the-rack bargains by the tin pan twos and tens,
Still they baked crusts soft and hard for pies, such were we blessed.
How awful a dram of word. How mistook to a penny pretended.
But we took, and told, and some office presented its mint conditioned
Cherry-throated throne,
Was took,
And all along I
I knew it all along.

I love the visual imagery and the pace of the poem.Can I tell you what I "read into it" and you tell me what you were really talking about.(I always wanted to do this with other poems I have read but didnt have an author to ask)

When I read this it makes me think.....


America and many wealthier European countries got wealthy and had good "life styles" by using the rest of the worlds resources and their own....they have used them up or the world no longer allows the same form of exploitation and therefor our generation and future ones in these countries can not return to that kind of "Pampered" life style.


That may have nothing to do with what you were talking about,but it was fun to guess.

you pretty much got it, actually, though i stuff as much as i can in this poems. see if you can find more.

p.s. i really do believe that the world started ending when WWI started. i'm not a jehova's witness, though. how much more bloodshed do people need before they recognize that a huge change is coming over our world?