The Great Depression

Drunken blackguards stumbled out of seedy, dimly-lit pubs at all hours of the night; all manner of men jostled and bumped one another in their passing. Streetlights flickered, shivered, and swayed against the piercing chill of the breeze. Like ice, the air stung at the men's bare faces and catalysed premature departures of air that met the world in clouds of vapor, ripped asunder before your very eyes.

The street was lined with grimy little dens of drunks no different than any other building; in fact, most weren’t even operating legally. The owners sat situated behind their bars, filling mug after mug with diluted dreck fit only for penny-wise drunks.

Inside of each of the pubs, the scenes are cold and desolate; nobody smiles; furthermore, everyone’s drinking their life away. But, whatever life they live by night, in pursuit of cheap sedation, is better than the life they live by day. Although, most were simply taking shelter from the horrid, bristling gusts of wind that blew back the mangy hair of the average street-walking men, effectively blinding them as they stumbled their way into each and every tavern, and when in Rome...

The world that had once roared with prosperous boasts of American stability had now been engulfed in an unearthly gloom that threatened to sink American economy like a cheap merchant ship; and so, America sunk deeper and deeper into turmoil. Many made strenuous attempts at the preservation of our once great reality, but all were in vain.

Now so were men, living in the midst of economic recession, so willing to drown their broken, adulterated spirits in a flood of liquor - in a flood of spirits, if you will. The pale moonlight shone upon the grime that riddled and stained the decrepit street. The wind screeched and howled in a sorrowful tone as it stirred up dust and various littler and sent it cascading through the streets. The wind did nothing to mask the sounds of silent suffering that resonated well beyond the seedy, dimly-lit pubs, well beyond the grimy little dens of drunks, well beyond the desolate drunken figures within, and well beyond the streetwalkers, and the stained, decrepit streets they walk.

This poem is about: 
My country
Our world
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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