I've been very depressed about the flooding, loss of life, governmental indifference, etc. My coworkers and I started crying today when we discussed in the office. So I wrote a poem. You don't have to comment. I'm just feeling apocalyptic.

Looting

Just give it up, everyone tells me:
But why should I, why does any thing matter still
with everything gone already, everything covered
by this great dark river full of floating things
I don't want to see.
.
You have a gun?
I have a gun.
.
Some things are still there
in the Walmart on the hill;
Ipods, plasma TV's and more
guns.
.
The bread in its plastic
bag is sodden and black.
All of my kitchen and half
the living room have disappeared
as if a teacher's great hand
came down and erased them.
.
The woman in the apartment next door
left three days ago. She taped a sheet
of notebook paper to her door
with a message, now blurred
into splotches shaped into children's handprints.
.
I live alone here
or I do since my husband left
to buy toothpaste on Wednesday.
.
I have always wanted
a ring with a diamond, large,
round and flat, shaped like an eye. I have always
wanted a yellow car, and now that
.
the time has come, now that the river is on fire
and the houses are gone,
why shouldn't I have it?
.
Why can't I have just one thing?

_____________

Here is the blog of someone in the middle of it:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/