Paradise Beach

The last tourist left just a few weeks ago.

Five thousand hotel rooms-

as empty as a busted flush

pay tribute to the legacy of greed

inflating every landowner, lawyer

and land broker’s blue-sky dream

of making millions leasing land.

Dealing land in the boom times

was as sure a bet as holding a royal flush

until the yen for waterfront land

collapsed as the MAGA redux ruled

with tax cuts for billionaires, minimum wage for workers,

 in a race to the bottom driven by

the twin dragons of inflation and recession.

The last guest worker left a month ago.

Without indentured help

no more streets were paved,

in hotels, no more beds were made,

in massage parlors, no more johns were laid,

in churches, no more lost souls were saved,

All along the silent streets

not even the shadow of the last customer is seen.

Abandoned storefronts exhibit bare shelves-

As empty as the pockets of gamblers,

Stripped clean by bad hands, by sour deals,

By called bluffs. Only the cockroaches prosper

having attained title to the land

by exhibiting Darwinian stewardship-

an imperialism of the insect world.

The last high rollers left just days ago.

The rest reside in an overgrown parcel of land

shadowed by the Cathedral at sunset

and shaded by tombstone tributes

that cannot revive the raises and calls

of the ghosts of gamblers ready to cut deals

for hotels, casinos and homes they no longer own.