Cultural Differences
by George Searles
It’s easy to find fault with how we live
in this country, killing half our time glued,
as the saying goes, to the television,
watching a bizarre array of extreme sports
and equally pointless conventional ones,
and wasting the other half scanning our phones
in garish shopping malls as big as baronies —
faux villages with junk food franchises,
private security squads, and valet parking
for the luxury sedans, racy coupes, and SUVs.
Elsewhere in the world, life’s song is played
in a simpler, less self–indulgent key.
People go about their business
in a more purposeful, down–to–earth sort of way,
undistracted by excess, alertly scurrying
from place to ruined place in a wary semi–crouch
while trucks explode at curbside and bullets ricochet
off buildings and splash on pavement stones.