Late Stage Empire Poem by Raj Dronamraju

Your heroes are sex and mountainside
That's how it works
Deep devotion to the walking indulgence
And what comes ill equipped to handle the change

Your pastimes are doubt and overeating
This mission is radioactive and it hollows you out - bones first
Caught up in your gross realism, I thought I was alone

Your high trust economy of standards is fagged out
Memorized responses, oblivious to responses, blind to the collapse
The participants have changed and so has their recognition of this
The future will miss running water and indoor plumbing

Those without hardness of experience and the sense it provides
Murder the baby by ignorance of its care
That's how it stops working
The worth of your culture is spent everywhere but here