Dave Bonta's poem works like a series of fragments, and it never explains how they connect. It opens with a startling admission: the speaker has cut themselves "much" from the "bluntness of the razor." A blunt razor is an odd detail, since it suggests the damage comes from a dull tool, not a sharp one. It feels clumsy, painful, and self-inflicted.
From there the poem moves to a place where "a boat / must not drink the water," an image that reverses what we expect of boats and water. Then the speaker turns to the past tense: "here was the flagmaker," "here was the discourse of the corn." These lines read like someone pointing at empty ground where something used to be. The final image, a "lost bad government / playing at cards," is darkly comic. Leaders appear idle and unserious while everything else falls away.
The mood is uneasy and bleak, with a dry irony. Judging by the title, the poem seems to describe a crisis that is both personal and public.