Bhopal is Right Down The Street

Those of us who remember believe Bhopal is a long way from here
a long way from Ann Arbor East Williams Street Tommy and Janey Boy hanging
out at the Diag puffing up brave and bad while all the time
you can hear their empty stomach growling.  "America ain't no Bhopal"
Janey Boy whines as his thick calloused fingers fumble for a handrolled.
"They blew them off in Bhopal," I tell the two barely whisps of ragged
straggly sidewalk sultans. "They gassed them and killed
a lot of them and got away with it," I try to say. I try
To say but the kids aren't hearing any of it.

Those of us who remember Bhopal, can still see Peter Jennings describe
how the creeping gas crept out, let out like a snake, like
a rabid slithering pet. The boys on the corner don't care, even though
they wheeze and whine and wrinkle in the hot street sun bleached
bonfire of drugged out vanities and songs of  substance slaves bouncing
back and forth, up and down the streets of Ann Arbor when  HVA
has grown too tired to rescue painted pony damsels dying
dreaming of Halidol and Stelazine and self-medicated realities. I try
to tell the boys on the corner how  they gassed them and
killed them and got a away with it. I try to say, I try, but
the kids aren't hearing any of it.

Those of us who remember Bhopal and the pictures
of the lifeless limp ragdoll people thrown away as if
refuse and poverty and sin were all the same thing, also
remember the pictures of orphanages where children
have no faces, of gutters and empty tanks sitting silently
like drunken sailors pissing in the pool,
on the people and the lives of those who can't fight back, and
the bums, swigging Jack and Johnny and Smirinoff Blue
waiting at the bus station, invisible, just like the ragdoll refuse
living and dying and living in a hell called
Bhopal.