The therapist wrote of the couple 
whose elder son 
killed himself with a shotgun, 
and they gave that very gun 
as a gift to their younger son. 
The creepiness still crawls; 
the evil still stalks. 
Depravity 
is the universal cavity 
and we beg for Huxley’s Soma/Novocaine 
to end the pain 
while we experience
more of the same,
that which is more and more insane —
    more domestic violence-ism,
          hedonism, 
               narcissism,
                    egotism,
                         ethnic racism,
                              ecological destruction-ism,
                                   and the beat 
                                        goes on, 
                                             and on 
                                                 and 
                                                      on -- ism.

*idea from a reminder from of friend of Scott Peck’s
“People of the Lie,” published in 1981

.