Dismayed in Manhattan

My friends won’t take the subway, and the strong,
young maintenance man in my building finds
himself among those whom the law, well, it binds
but does not protect—he wakes and worries on the wrong
side of the wall the watchman waits upon,
eyeing the watcher through the parted blinds,
imagining richer men and greater minds
are planning more than this panopticon,
its tower crumbling as the land subsides
into the empty aquifers that cooled
the language engines that concatenated
dull prose that duller dimwits used as guides
out of perplexity, and bought and ruled
a country full of people that they hated.