the hollow-men in poetry

the things that used to be
integral to the fabric of a community
whose absence would once be unimaginable
got hollowed out by Wal-Mart
and now they must be desperately begged for
tackily crowd-sourced
with the threat of disappearance
looming every single year

we are left to plead
for what was once presumed
we are left to grovel
and the elephant in the room
is where it all went
into the pockets of parasitic profiteers
who've since given up on even pretending
that the blood speculations they squeeze
out of our potential futures
would somehow trickle down upon us
out of the comfort of their limousine
or their Google bus
they don't even pretend anymore
and something is lost