Goodbye, Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Goodbye, Las Vegas
By Tim Shey

“Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”

“He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying”

“Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal”

—T.S. Eliot
“The Waste Land”

_____

Desert jackals
Run to their destruction
Hollow eyes see nothing
Behind shades of glass
Painted Jezebel faces
Unrecognized by man
Mourning becomes electric
As piercing city lights
Rape the virgin night

This place never sleeps
And never awakes from death
Black Jack table bait
Roll-the-dice breath
Throw your money down
This is casino heaven
Idolatry never felt so good

This harlot language doesn’t speak
Straw fires always burn fast
I see the Prophet Jeremiah weeping
Over a people brought down to bankruptcy
By a Queen, a King and three Aces

A hitchhiker wanders hardened streets
With his burden on his back
This is the heart of darkness
Lifeless buildings built with foolish gold

I see Sodom burning
And bodies turned to ash
They were very fluent
In arrogance, pride, adultery
And enviro-paganspeak

You have sold your soul to Satan
Do you remember Noah’s Flood?
The City of David was sacked by Romans
And America by Marxist-Darwin thugs

The Stranger leaves the graveyard
And the stench of Vegas Past
And hitches a ride to Barstow
Across the relentless Mohave
On Interstate Fifteen

Apocalypse Now
Las Vegas Earthquake
This is Sodom! This is Sodom!
The Death of Voltaire
‘London’ by William Blake
California:  The Great American Wasteland
The Nakedness of Noah
apocalypse santa rosa
A Sign in Paris