Words on a train - Bruce Levitan

On the commuter train home
    listening to two young people
        slagging off their friends:
They talked in consonant free jargon,
    not an H or a T to be heard --
        but the invective was clear and rough.

Would it be the same in Rome?
    Do youths descend from Dante's steeple
        to incoherently speak? The same trends
across our world -- really so far gone
    that we might as well be a herd
        that speaks only in acidic guff?

Would Nietzsche include in his tome
    of humanity's idiocy and evil,
        thoughts on how to cleanse
or how to kill the dragon?
    How far must the spoken word
        be destroyed before we've had enough?

---

Bruce Levitan (born 1955) England (born: Kenya)