Held up to the light of the levee.

When the forces of nature recall
the primordial fury of ruin,
And the law doesn’t care anymore
or is unable to halt its undoing,
Then the soul of the city is lost
to the jungle’s first rule of the fittest,
And the whole of the world counts the cost
and must humble itself to bare witness.

When the seat of an empire’s vacant
or its occupant less than unwise,
And defeat in the desert adjacent
to demands for a low income rise,
Then the worries of all the impassioned
are employed to prop up the sea front,
As the monies that should have been rationed
have been void under Middle East suns.

When the stars of the south are in shards
or bound up in the stripes of disease,
And America stands in its back yard
surrounded by its own refugees,
Then the heart of a nation is broken,
like the carnage left floating behind,
And that part of damnation awoken
that can damage much more than shore lines.