It's OK To Leave

It’d be alright to leave those hoarse shouts and their whorish screams far behind

Don’t need to see every bit of the open land turned into monocrops for the surging poor

I can sadly hand the skinny babies back to their undernourished and dirty mothers

No real need to stick around to watch every last large animal simply be wiped out

It’s OK to leave and let their sad, greedy and pointless drama play on out without me

No reason to watch the poison, litter, dust and destruction just keep on spreading

It’ll be nice not hearing the constant roar of jackass traffic filling them with road rage

Wont bother me to not have to get all my information from corporate advertising media

I can just remove their vivid implanted dreams of that credit card faux-luxury without any fear

It might actually be safe and good not to see the latest in sports championship hyperbole

I won’t need to be sad to miss either foolish talk shows or trivial project schedules

You just don’t have to stick around for the intellectual poverty of the onrushing Modern Dark Ages

I can safely move on without jeopardizing even a bit of our blindly venal self-destruction

I don’t have to watch economic needs savagely destroy the only environment that supports them

It’ll be alright not to unwillingly help as we poison the very family nests we so carefully build

I really wont miss the unending statistics of habitat dicing, degradation and destruction

It’ll be good not helping reduce all rivers to stagnant green canals filled with our toxic sludge

I’ll be glad not wasting fossil water feeding indigestible grain to tortured factory cattle

Wont learn how the entire world ocean filled with microscopic plastic litter particulates

What a relief not hearing about no-bid, cost-plus, auto-renewing military contracts again

Not required to debt finance any more of the institutionalized ongoing insanity called war

Cant be forced to witness more witless and unsmiling cruelty in the name of any of our 1 true gods

Its OK to leave even before the blindly self-destructive climax occurs in its own good time

You don’t have to be there as the earth shrugs us off without even a geologic trace

It’s alright to miss the great human die-off that’s shortly to slap us all back into darkness

It’ll be easier than trying to survive without either our technology or ancestral wisdom

Don’t worry that you’d ever be missed in the self-trampling consumerist stampede

If you will just relax and step away from that blatting big screen for a moment, sir

No one will notice you walking off into a polluted sunset during their nightly commute

It’s not necessary that you see this foolish waste and destruction to its bitter end

It’s OK to end your mandatory participation in this vast de-construction that we call progress

You need not worry they might turn the filthy tide from selfish greed to steady state

Fear not that your presence is required as we descend into poverty, ignorance and filth

Lo, the increasing heat, mass extinction and habitat destruction are now self-sustaining

Their stale & fictional gods wont be poised to punish you for setting off upon your own

It’s OK to leave at any time for it’s all the same to the beckoning void that silently awaits

It's So Over Now

A proudly-ignorant dystopia

 There’s still smoke everywhere but most of the really big fires are almost out

We’re seeing isolated pockets of resistance but nothing that is organized

The major roads are all empty and impassible due to all the abandoned cars

Semi trailers stand jack-knifed and gutted oozing discarded packaging materials

Groups of vigilantes search out the minorities they have always deemed evil and guilty

Dirty children play happily, unaware of their ragged dress and skin diseases

The once-fat all share the same final diet and, dear friends, it always works

None of the women seem quite so beautiful, stripped of makeup, jewelry & clean clothes

There’s plenty of paper but nobody bothers writing much but simple messages

Luckily, we’ve still got a lot of ammunition left, what with all the enemies that surround us

Nothing’s growing since the farmers fled in front of us and we ate up all their seed

Those Black Helicopters do still fly by real low right over us every once in a while

It’s over now and we all know the Good Old Days are not even coming back

We camp each night in a different abandoned SUV that will never run again

I killed a man over an unopened can of beans that some child had dug up

We shoot every off-color on sight, take their stuff and leave them strung up as examples

Grandpaw got drunk and left behind and the feral dogs just tore him apart

We keep moving south with the fall but it’s getting darker and colder even faster

Found a Witness Group dead in their circle all cleaned up and dressed real nice

It’s much better now that all the corpses have decayed about enough to stop their stinking

Now the rain is dirty and it coats everything in a somber, itchy gray

We killed a skinny, lost cow last month so we stopped and feasted for a week

I’m on the lookout for some new shoes and Jimmy needs a sweater

Took quite a while to get used to things being so damn quiet all the time

We surrounded a locked compound and smoked out some corporate pretenders

Heard all the starving survivalists just sniping at each other out there in the woods

Showed the kids some books but knew they would never learn to read

It’s over now and pretty soon won’t none of us care to even know no better

No Time For Frogs

Cant help the cattle, wont save the redwoods, dont need them sissy robins

No money for clean air, cant aid cooped-up chickens, dont care about sick bees

Not fooling with emissions, no loans for poisoned orcas, dont want them boreal toads

Aint against clearcutting, wont fight over-population, not paying for junk science

Stopped cleaning up the rivers, not paying for proper disposal, dont care if it’s quiet

No time for wack orangs, wont buy carbon credits, dont believe in universal healthcare

Cant listen right now anyway, not adoptin no new lifestyles, done financing fixin highways

Pushing back against socialism, too busy to study history, not talking about any pig farms

Letting that Amazon go, dont ask for starry darkness, wont miss a few polar bears

No earmarks for amphibians, not a cent for snakes, no point to them monarch butterflies

Cant sponsor fat gorillas, Not lobbying for the thrifty, no time for earthworms

Not aiming for the sustainable, done listening to liberals, aint campaignin for safe food

No microloans for poor villagers, not striving for perfection, gave up freedom marching

Aint removing all the lead paint, wont stop that coral bleaching, passing on them yogas

Forgot about good soil, dont fret over ocean plastic, cant care for them chimp chumps

Not concerned by clearcut redwoods, passing on the pygmies, letting go of the lakes

Cant feed the poor, not subsidizing renewables, wont vote for arms reduction

Not restoring rivers for salmon, not makin room for grizzlies, no sympathy for wolves

No time for meditatin, dont pickup no litter, really just dont like books a bit

Dont care about good bridges, wont pay extra for clean coal, not looking at lazy wildflowers

No need of wilderness, too late for the albatross, too hurried to go take a walk

Get out with those bike trails, stop boring me with history, no bailout for the whales

No budget for flyways, wont pay for migration routes, not giving for rain forests

Too busy to preserve habitat, wont prevent overpopulation, no time for haggard refugees

Not backing orphan bonobos, just let the damn tuna go, no welfare for shiftless tigers

Not investing in lasting peace, just saying no to research, aint gonna go do the math

Wont embrace retreaded socialism, too tired to exercise, not giving up on fast food

Not guaranteeing privacy, no monies for prevention, not afraid of a little illiteracy

No funds for birth control, no time to sit and think, not afraid to just say ferget it

Not responsible for the future, wont underwrite recycling, no taxes for new sewers

no sympathy for green energy, don’t care about efficiency, not voting for good schools

not supporting teeny electric cars, pullin the plug on solar, no way we’re saving water

wont boycott tasty veal, dont sweat Chinese pollution, aint afraid of fake climate change

no stimulus for snow leopards, no place for sissies, not buying liberal pipe dreams

had enough of “Save the Trees”, don’t want to go in-depth, go away with going green

not flip-flopping on defense, wont embrace un-aborted children, ain’t got no time for frogs

My Test Results Revealed

They quickly just sewed me back up after seeing I was lousy with inoperable bitterness

My tests all came back with an astonishingly high level of aggressively vapid pettiness

They removed a bloody tumor of hatred the size of a lemon from the inside of my skull

My symptoms all pointed towards full blown infection with a virulent & selfish greed

They told me at first that the operation probably had gotten all of my foolish pride

Lab results indicated a black void of willful ignorance growing steadily within me

The specialist confirmed that although I could hear well, I was totally unable to listen

Cutting into my consciousness the surgeons were sprayed with advertising images

An MRI revealed there was indeed a large deposit of lead lodged deep within my posterior

Further tests revealed I saw only a narrow tunnel and was unable to turn my head

My blood work indicated that I was profoundly low on morals, faith and scruples

A noted surgeon recommended silicon to augment the emptiness I had always felt within

My imbalance of understanding led to a toxic overproduction of hatred that then built up inside

They found a ruptured valve that continuously leaked burning apprehension deep into my gut

A moral blockage prevented me from ever feeling the effect of my actions upon any others

Their expensive drugs enhanced my will to live which had atrophied with age

Indeed, that greenish tint derived from my body’s inability to eliminate its envy

A biopsy of my spleen showed it full of the bitterest form of unvented self-rejection

They had to go in and relieve the great pressure that anger was putting on my brain

The blood flow to my heart was nearly stopped by an accumulation of ill will

The phantom pains I suffered near my colon were due to my job and my wife

They removed the thick deposits of resentment that were causing my feet to drag

A malignantly enlarged ego had impaired my ability to observe my own foolishness

My overproduction of sarcasm was related to the large quantity of faith that I had lost

They determined I could not differentiate my own vent from random excavations

Their analysis concluded that I did, indeed, suffer from chronic cranial rectosis

Genetic sampling revealed a self-entitled tendency towards amoral sales behavior

My blood sample came back positive for a real belief in the lies that they had me read

Scans revealed a potentially catastrophic buildup of frustration about my tongue

They extracted a writhing mass of unrelated marketing images from deep inside my trachea

He recommended avarice thinners to alleviate my potentially fatal grasping

They determined removing my morals would likely curb this crippling idealism

Operating on a cyst of stubbornness they discovered my large fistula of frustration

Surgeons said they could correct my congenitally permanent sarcastically-knowing smirk

They said their latest drug could reduce my potentially fatal artery-clogging sloth

Yet their ultrasonic images showed a very small boy still laughing deep within me

Creeping Out

There creeping out and squeakin ther timid, whinin I told ya so’s

Sneakin by in them teeny used jap econo cars, they paid off so long ago

Bein real quiet fixin up they undersized fixed-rate homes all by theyselves

They’re cookin they own meals and stayin thin but seemin really nervous

Not drinkin pricey lattes or drivin out for lunch with they posse every day

Washin they own clothes and even hangin they towels outside on clotheslines

Walkin and ridin bicycles like the sissy girls they want us real men ta act just like

Cutting they emissions and savin on they energy costs, over there behint our backs

Beating our smoking snowmobiles into lamely quiet little green motor scooters

Askin us to tax and legalize them deviated buds theys always smokin

Payin off they credit cards each month without any finance chargis

Not even on their way towards high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes or diabetes

Creeping out after decades of what they call our scary wasteful foolishness

Trying to lead openly now by queer example instead of scuttling off to the side

Still stayin real quiet inside they downsized cribs and not even celebratin

Coming out among us in old clothes to buy parts to fix up they broken, repurposed, used shit

Even taking out their silly recycling mess right during the light of day

Filling up for a fourth of what we are pumping into our good ole giant diesel pickups

Carpoolin all like openly progressive together just to save a little CO2 and money

Not even callin on our ads for them big used Harleys with the payments so long overdue

Tiptoein right on by the exurban mega-church on they way to science classes

Havin fun conservin junk and enjoyin cutting down on what they think we waste

But still throwin lots of money away on organic vegies and grass-fed meats

Plannin on guttin out our great military to leave us open to foreign dEvE8s

Carryin they lame tofu and shit home in them filthy little cotton sacks

Squintin at the labels, checking out the calories, fat and additives and shit

Strappin wack expensive wind and solar junk up on toppa they well-insulated roovetops

Cutting off they lectrick crap at night to save a coupla pennies and some coal smoke

Startin to walk beside the roads even where we drive our SUVs and pickup trucks

Ain’t even bellyin up to the drive-thru line for shakes and fries and double bacon cheeseburgs

Whisperin something about health care starting with self-responsible pervention

Quietly lettin they nice lawns turn brown just to stop waterin and fertilizing and weed killin

Creeping out to the thrift stores stead of savin Chinese Big down ta the Wal*Mart

Tryin to like steal the motivation from the rich by redistributin they hard-earned wealth

Turning down they thermostats and wearin sweaters right in they squirrelly homes

Bitin at our heels on TV and shit then hightailin they green asses back to they tiny dens

My Safe Places

dancing with the Incas in their ancient worship of the holy snow-capped Andes

floating off towards untouchable blue Tibetan peaks with chanting Buddhist monks

surfing with the seals in the rich smelling foamy waves there in a far-off NorCal paradise

pollinating lovely infrared flower patterns with the other bees on my honey-making job

spending time in the New Stone Age, crafting tools and fighting cave bears

orbiting our earth at the very limit of the exosphere, taking in all her colors

roiling with a strong clean river, smelling the big migrating salmon flashing all around me

getting covered with red desert sandstone dust in all its finely-ground Anasazi grace

peeping out with tiny montane tundra flowers after 8 months beneath deep snow

speeding with the suns reflection across the cup of a huge, cleanly breaking swell

pausing beneath the midnight sun to watch the rivers running to the north

taking in the winter light from a panoramic southern exposure, far from any road

pushing across the bluest sky with the puffy clouds on that perfect day in May

Hunting with the dolphins, co-operating with the bluefins, feeding on the life force

Losing my pre-conceptions as I drop their illusions and tear up my prescriptions

Circulating with the oceanic currents, from the surface to the bottom, all around the globe

Slaloming the methane powder mountains all alone, on the active moons of Saturn

Savoring fresh Indian ocean sushi with the great whites off the coast of South Africa

crossing the Bering Strait with mammoths, admiring vast herds of ice age mega-fauna

fattening with the giant brown bears as my coat grows thick and glossy

watching the first spring sunrise with the emperors on Antarctica’s frozen coast

dining on tons of krill strained through my baleen right alongside the great blue whales

gleaming in the dancing rainbows off the shimmering green cliffs of the Hawaiian coast

sighing with the ponderosa pines as we hear another gust of autumn wind approaching

waiting on the tide for dinner as the rain tinkles above us on the Inside Passage

riding on the chords of good music to a place so far above, where I can only try to stay

watching the sled dogs pull our family away from my final place, alone upon an ice floe

raking that impeccable garden for an eternal moment in a quiet Zen sanctuary

searching blue canyonland shadows with the eyes of a Navajo medicine man

painting spirit creatures on the walls of our ceremonial cave in ancient Spain

meditating with the Buddha beneath the great tree of life, pondering the river’s gentle whispers

gazing up from sunlit coral gardens through the warm waters of our mother ocean

searching for more reassuring sign of the totem that guides me all the days of my life

crying out with the hawks far above by the cliffs where the sunset still radiates

howling with the wolfpack at 30 below beneath the aurora borealis, feeling our mortality

seeking that ancient understanding pulsing so close beneath the thin skin of things

A Dead Bird

A dead bird with stuck-together feathers

Dusty claws on scaly black legs clutching at the air

This dead bird weighing almost nothing

Rotted on the side where she’d been laying

A dead bird with her broken beak askew

Oddly not easily fleeing at a dog’s snuffling approach

Her eye open but glazed and empty of all its living luster

This dead bird in a grocery bag gliding toward a dumpster

A dead bird that children still cannot ever touch

Feathers no longer iridescent when pressed into the earth

The crows came quickly and spoke over top her broken body

This dead bird whose calls no one could remember

A dead bird lying down in the grass unlike any others

Surrounded by a loss of feathers amidst her snow-like down

This dead bird with a silent mate perched in some nearby tree

Lets the cold fall rain drench right through her tiny bones

A dead bird smudged and dirty like she never was before

Wing cocked up, down there in that little ditch

Floating with the runoff draining from the road

This dead bird that I see again as I lay close to sleeping