Junkyard Tripping

Took a trip out to our dump when a hot dry wind was blowing hard

Could see that funny yellow dust in the air well before we got there

Bulldozers and giant aerators stirred up a foul, freshly amalgamated scent

Brown and lumpy liquids leaked from below where we tossed away our stuff

Sun baked junkyard men smoked cigarettes and joked about their health

The county dump is on a hillside above a Western river on its way to California

There’s a posted list of prohibited items but no one checks your stuff

There’s laws about sanitary disposal but the county’s out of money

So we got a concentrated plume of an evil witch’s brew not too far from home

A small price the earth that god so loved must pay for our ordained presence here

Well, that smell gave me a headache so I guess that I’m still not a real man

In fact it was slightly lingering in my nose til late into the morning after

But I wasn’t all like tongue-clucking, finger-pointing and exposing some great sin

It was just the stuff that you and me don’t want sitting around our family homes

All tossed into a toxic grimy blot not suited for the pregnant or might become so

An accepted, respected and budgeted part of this small and rustic community

But I saw things there I could not be part of as my eyes filled with its bitter dust

I could not merge this place into my vision of our happy family way of life

There were no picnic tables or benches beneath the trees that could never grow here

Children would not be romping among the twisted metal coated with corrosives

There was however no escaping that this place is an integral part of our home

A place where our multi-chemical legacy returns to the surrounding ecosystem

Out-of-sight, downwind and downstream is just the best that we can do for temporary

This is the spot where all the other cleanups go, never meant to be cleaned up

It’s just a giant compost heap for toxic waste, garden varieties of trash & all manner of recyclables

A place where plastic is smashed into tiny pieces without ever breaking down

Where dirty oil, old paint and mild insecticides all mix and blend and start to flow

Yeah, food remains and old clothes get stirred with brake fluid and shrink wrap

There are rich veins of jumbled aluminum and glass we chose not to reuse

But all that tossed out paper soaks up a lot of the nasty liquids and stays in place

The tree limbs and grass clippings and rotting food produce flammable methane underneath

Hope our kids don’t have to mine this before it dries out and the smell goes away

Reinventing Ourselves For The Good New Jobs

You Could Be...

Programmers are bending themselves into grocery clerks going forward

So-called financial engineers should be snatching at secure jobs driving school buses

Web designers are strutting in their natty fast food uniforms

Physics graduates optimize sweeping patterns in their work as custodians

Shy mathematicians are re-inventing themselves as stockers down to Wal*Mart

Unneeded chemists are scheming to open up their own new brew pubs

Moping, unemployed newspaper writers futilely send their signal into the blogospheric void

Graying, downsized middle managers pass out identical resumes on every corner

Washed up autoworkers line up for full-time positions driving garbage trucks

Former roofers and framers look to re-invent themselves installing solar panels

Downcast Teamster container ship unloaders will become produce clerks, someday

With straight faces, liberal arts grads try to get hired on to redneck road-building crews

Quality assurance experts audit their own work cleaning toilets in convenience stores

Unemployed statisticians calculate their odds for success at professional blackjack

Burnt out, washed up teachers with no alternate careers shut down, but stay on

All those 45 and older are quickly cast aside and wordlessly encouraged just to die

Financial planners are now without the income streams needed to smother their own debt

Database administrators finally try to use their hands while studying to be paramedics

Laid off PR goddesses become consultants to other useless baggage trying to reinvent itself

Overextended real estate profiteers look for big scores in pyramid fat-burning scams

Unread resumes clog vast networks of pathetically over-eager former executives

Hapless retail attempts by entrepreneurial laid-off accountants die in record time

Ex-project leaders learn to live with being laughed at by fellow Home Depot stockers

Run down car salesmen start peddling reverse equity home scams to seniors

Cast off nannies make the long trek back to Guatemala without a dime of severance pay

Mestizo vaqueros in dusty baseball caps find no more labor and shuffle back towards home

Merged and downsized bankers cynically scheme to make it as credit counselors

Environmental activists try to get on with coal companies as public spokesmen

Moving firms reinvent themselves emptying abandoned, foreclosed McMansions

300 pencil-necked ex-loan originators apply for a single firefighting position

100000 returning war vets are laid off just as soon as permitted by federal law

Cute former cosmetic sales girls learn to turn a few tricks for rent and food

Stock brokers feverishly search the internet for another golden egg of greed

Soccer moms are forced to morph into gas clerks in oversized checkered shirts

Off-shored Customer Support personnel enjoy painting houses and mowing lawns

But, at last, those bottom-feeding military and priesthood recruiters gin up a few new bodies

The Baby Boomer Legacy

Prodigiously wasted precious, non-renewable energy without the slightest consideration

Cloned endless farmland, coastline and forest into identical suburbs and cheap strip malls

Sent engineering jobs to Japan, production to China and customer support to India

Passed laws to protect the environment but cut backroom deals so as not to fund them

Unquestioningly threw away more money on defense than all other developed countries combined

Sent mom and dad off to the mercy of low-wage, franchised, contract, foreign attendants

Never saved a nickel but demanded free health insurance and a fat retirement pension

Expected safe food even as I flooded my own lawn with pesticides and fertilizers

Smirkingly spun and marginalized as wackos those who dared to question our agenda

Stepped safely away from the mortgage on that thrice Re-Fied, shoddily-built McMansion

Shook my head in disbelief at the environmental mess the Chinese made producing our cheap goods

Gave my kids every opportunity to become obese and diabetic - Even younger than I did

Sustained multi-generational poverty by simply managing to always look the other way

Unconsciously belched out tons of climate-warming CO2 on countless, very pointless little trips

Turned sleepy backwaters into artificially-overpriced, family adventure resort communities

Left my inflated healthcare bills in the laps of my spoiled and ignorant children

Burnt up all the easy-to-grab fossil fuels and left the roads and bridges in ruins

Stayed utterly silent and permitted human population to increase to the crashing point

Institutionalized snowmobiles, jetskis, ATVs and 50’ RVs as valid forms of wreckreation

Deftly ignored the holocaust from which our meat emerged, so safe and very shrink-wrapped

Stored billions of tons of recyclables under toxic landfill goo - to be mined by those yet to come

Wasted irreplaceable fossil aquifer water growing indigestible grain to tenderize our meat

Disinterestedly stood by as big energy devastated anywhere it pleased, in the name of cheap energy

Convinced our clueless kids that they were special and that they would surely rule the world

Brought god into the government but vowed to keep its nose out of our commerce

Replaced climax old-growth forests with a corporately-managed, monoculture investments

Re-introduced the wolf but extinguished the songbirds, reptiles, fish and amphibians

Flushed a giant dead zone down the chanellized Mississippi into our once-fruitful Gulf

Sacrificed my ideals to media hypnosis after each long day of pointless toil, under nitwits

Schemed to preserve the beings we wiped out in the wild in sterile zoos and laboratories

Replaced home cooking with fast-food, take out and frozen microwave dinners

Drove up the price of each toney new seafood item until it was harvested into extinction

Used credit cards as an income source and then squalled loudly for relief from the unfairness

Alienated the entire world and caused the teeming global poor to attack us everywhere

Always stopped to smell the roses and lived for today and wished our kids good luck

Rode on, convinced that my insular, fundamentalist, creationist faith would protect me, forevermore

Just One More Filthy Pond

A filthy pond, exposed to the merciless sun with weeds and stickers surrounding it

Litter and household castoffs line its entire shore and fill its slimy green water

Too close to the smog-belching, constantly-roaring traffic jam called a freeway

Too easy for those criminal disposal trucks to visit late at night

A sad little pond, but well-suited to hold many empty beer cans

Sometimes a pair of dirty dish water ducks somehow still bob upon it

Too small and unimportant for us passing daily by, upon our hurried ways

Nonetheless, a good place for lost youth to go and get really blown away

Algae-filled home to a couple of mutant and air-gulping carp

Washed into by every manner of foul runoff with each and every dirty rain

Not even on our social radar given our much more pressing economic issues

As easily overlooked as the homeless misfits we gingerly step over every day

It’s care falls permanently between the cracks, just like the multi-generational poor

A lost shopping cart leans green and now only half-submerged, close onto the shore

A deformed frog with a disfiguring skin disease croaks in vain for a mate

This festering leper holding up a tiny dirty mirror to our progressive and bustling city

Not even in a bad part of town, but, nonetheless, entirely without a social safety net

Protected by a falling down fence, Poison Warnings, No Fishing and No Swimming signs

That is, not suitable for our kids or puppies, but yet, not worthwhile enough to be cared for

A filthy pond that exposes a small flaw in this whole living outside of nature campaign of ours

Building Millions Of Identical Dream Homes

Doors slamming and horns blowing, echoed in hoarsely shouted, cursing repetition

Harsh laughing over un-muffled engines roaring, punctuated by metal beating

Brakes screeching and alarms beeping, dirty men gunning belchingly-inefficient motors

Nailers pounding after saws shriek as the lumber is falling with painful groaning

Dirt drying and worms dying under the trash dumped into slimy excavations

Trees not cut but simply bulldozed and bushes driven over, time and again

Men toughened by the sun and from the unsightly destruction they call construction

Weeds and litter springing up in a muddy tribute to the wonders of their good work

Crazily, the wastes of their noble creation are so great as to require giant dumpsters

Horrible music spiced with cheap fast food is stuffed into the dirty faces of unkempt heads

Compressors beat themselves to death as their old-time gasoline motors clatter

Men driven by simple thoughts of cold beer, lounge chairs and big-screen sports TV

Expensive but crooked knot-hole ridden lumber laying about awaiting resurrection

Artificially-honorable livings earned, to feed simple but crude workingman illusions

Timelines missed, mistakes ignored, costs illegally cut but prices raised in any case

On this site a memoriam to waste and filth and greed: This is all patriotic and blessed by god

Their trash and urine built into the foundations of some good mommie’s dream home

The same oft-made mistakes covered up, but still unsafe, on this latest job as well

Materials pilfered by the crew are quietly replaced with castoff scraps of lesser quality

Cabinets scratched or plumbing broken by the ham-handed are reported as freight losses

Men surly and late-arriving to not-even-showing, hung over, missing sleep and way in debt

They belch acidly like dyspeptic frogs croaking for that good old cheap caffeine

Their smoking butts tossed thoughtlessly into their deeply senseless drying mud truck tracks

Tobacco-blackened lungs hacking green morning wads onto the shattered ground

Swelled with horny pride by the smelly but inert gas of twangy TV spin doctors

Getting into fights and quitting, breaking shit on purpose and muttering obscenities

Conquering the work site wasteland in their pathetically-juvenile, loud pickup trucks

Farting in each other’s faces and laughing as more of their filthy, yellow teeth fall out

Crushing coke cans into the dead earth with manly boots made by tiny Chinese women

Reflexively swelling with warlike pride pumped from cagey 30 second neo-con sound bites

From this site they laugh at the wrecks they erected across the street just 10 years ago

Shouts straining to overcome their groaning machinery as it dispatches their new prey

Creating jobs to fund mindless recreation, overeating, beer and cheap plastic imports

Earning their keep, maintaining their pride and playing their role in our great progress

And the earth lays gouged, gashed and ignored somewhere under their new rubble

Our dull but brute strength screamingly pounds out another good family’s happily ever after

Impotently Green

Waste good water washing out tin cans as you watch us proudly throw theirs away

Buy that cute little hybrid which you could pull up inside our 9 passenger behemoths

Carry out your groceries in eco-evil cotton bags as 5 billion new plastic ones are tossed away

Pay extra for wind power as the Chinese open 2 dirty-tech coal-fired plants every week

Combine your trips to save gas and pass by the obese idling blankly in fast food drive-thru lines

Call for climate change action as neighbors fight it by simply adjusting their thermostats

Reduce your eco-footprints even as hordes of new middle class Asians join in over-consumption

Walk quietly in the woods listening as drunk, gas-powered wreckreationists roar by shouting

Screw in funny bulbs as their unblinking, high-watt nightlights obscure the entire night sky

Invest in a solar panel quickly blocked out by our new 5000 square ft McMansion

Cook meals from scratch at home as millions of us find it cheaper to graze at McDonalds

Pay more for grass-raised, antibiotic & feedlot-free meat that should cost less to produce

Forgo children while the impoverished uneducated drop more than their share upon you

Try helping to do more with less funding while our arms producers secure no-bid, cost-plus handouts

Pick up a bit of road litter as entire ocean basins fill with tons of our plastic trash

Fret over packaging as Chinese factories pay bribes to dump toxins into rivers every night

Worry over a sustainable future while our financial wizards achieve total market meltdown

Xeriscape your lawn to a scraggly brown even as 3^rd world squatters turn vast tracts into desert

Save precious water as we waste billions of gallons from non-renewable fossil aquifers for free

Contribute to environmental watchdog groups as conglomerates efficiently strip-mine the seas

Watch as your careful recycling gets dumped or shipped back to Asia just to wrap more imports

Whine pointlessly for solar power as Big Coal revs up subsidized mountain top strip mining

Contribute to wildlife societies as 3 billion others suffer an abject, subhuman poverty

Listen to us pit the earth against family values to avoid so-called intrusive over-regulation

Demand sustainable economics even as we bail out the very financiers who ruined you

Just try asking us to consider the next thousand years when we only plan for the next quarter

Hear the under-employed snicker over climate worries in the wake of the Great Recession

Watch us laugh in incredulity at your proposals to CO2 tax gas up to $4 a gallon

Go about in heavy sweaters as we romp in shorts in their uninsulated trophy homes

Eat wilted veggies and healthy oils as we swill down and throw away factory fast food

Forgo new clothes for thrift stores which then have no donations to send overseas

Give so that stray dogs may live yet ignore the saved from abortion but unwanted, bastard children

Give that stray dogs may live as we ignore the unwanted, bastard children we saved from abortion

Take to heart our scornful braying against expensive mandated environmental restoration

Make those 20 steps to greener living that we undo daily before even getting to work

Carefully check the ingredients but remain unaware of their adulterated Asian sources

Take the long view of a spaceship earth in a dying world ADD’d on our get-rich-quick delusions

Hey, We Got This, Right?

Pretty much got my punishment of having to start a little retirement savings figured out

Wasting the absolute minimum amount of time doing some lame health club exercising

Probably already cut back on donuts, fries, sodas and double bacon cheese stuff enough for now

Don’t think I’m drinking much compared to my old self or to others that I still know

Figure that our family’s finally driving safely what with the belts and all those air bags

Finally got the kids on the right meds after all the problems at their awful schools

Not even considering rolling our maxed credit cards over into the house for the 4th time

But seriously close to walking away from that totally unfair and underwater mortgage contract

No lead in our paint, asbestos in our walls, oil in our driveway or RoundUp on our lawn

Got smoke detectors that might work and a fire extinguisher stuck somewhere back there

Mom’s nursing home looks pretty nice and we always go visit her at least once a month

Regained my control thanks to political correctness, anger management and layoff fears

Keeping up with important current events courtesy of corporate-sponsored talking heads

Paying enough indulgences at the mega-church to ensure our whole family’s place in heaven

Think I’m really done using credit cards to buy stuff I really don’t need and for sure can’t afford

We’ll just keep our old SUV another couple of years even though the lease is a loser

Decided we can actually get by OK without going out to eat those 3 nights every week

Doing the things that mass-circulation magazines tell us smart money families need to do

Put a little recycling stuff out pretty much every week next to our large dumpster full of trash

Rebalancing our portfolio by buying stock since they keep saying it’s the best long-term investment

Carefully ingratiating myself to the bosses to try and avoid the next upcoming downsizing

Invested in some tools and gonna start that do-it-yourself thing real soon now

Bought a couple hi-tech light bulbs they say are greener and cheaper in the long run

Sitting down with the kids and their school work whenever I get home in time

Foiling my bad boy attitude with a rose a little bit now that my boss is a working mommie

Even spent some of my own lunch hour time last week reading a work-related article

Guess we wont be taking the family down to DisneyWorld at $500 per day this year

Turning up the intensity and duration of my prayers during this time of trouble

Got a fair amount of righteous indignation going over that whole meltdown bailout mess

Not forgetting that we simply must keep on investing even more in our National Defense

Even thinking of maybe a smaller house once this real estate panic settles down

Got my priorities on straight regarding the economy and this wacko environmental brouhaha

Unsubscribed most of the premium channels and cut off a few pay-per-view events

Let the finance company go ahead and take back the ATVs, jet skis and the snowmobiles

Looking real closely at this $200 a month cellphone bill and asking the tough questions

Yup, figure we pretty much got life under control by all the conventional media wisdom

That Anti-Merican Evil Weed

    That’s why they call it dope…’D.O.dubya.P.’                 

They’ll be smoking dope on every doorstep and then goin out and bustin crimes

Brain-damaged and chromosome-scrambled by that there pungent demon herb

Stealing guns and robbing mothers and startin yer children off on the stuff fer free

Gettin lost in all like sexual preversion fer days at a time and not doin any real work

Fergettin about pertectin our country and babblin on about peace and love and hope and shit

Losin they jobs after getting all unperductive and way too lazy to even work anymore

Spendin too much time just settin there smoking pot and heading straight on to heroin

Blinded by the dope from horrible incurable cancers coming not too far down their road

Givin up good old Budweiser fer some damn organic BC Bud and sissy-ass fruit smoothies

Just turning off honest country music as them terrorists surround our virtuous homeland

Joinin up with them damn vegans in a wack crusade to treat cows like they was humans

Buyin funny hybrid cars and rancid organic vegies like it was some decent way of life

Afraid to grasp the nice smooth blue steel guns that are our patriotic heritage

Tryin to outlaw our loud diesel mufflers cause the noise bothers they doped up ears

Laying in the flowers by the river, just lisenin to the crazy shit in their heads

All caught up and taken over by this devilish weed, that very flower of the anti-christ

Turnin our sweet young daughters into filthy mindless stealing crack whores – Overnight!

Causin our own sons to question their duty to blindly go off and die overseas for god and country

Sweet jesus we got ta draw the line at last against this terrible liberal social decay

Why they’re even wantin certified organic reefer that’s all like taxed and regelated

Shit, they get so stoned they almost nod off and then they just sleep away the night

Get all like chickenshit and don’t want to go out to the bars, looking forward to a fight

Set there drawin, writin, playin sissy music and readin stead of ridin noisy dirtbikes

Why theyre like hiking and skiin insteada flailin ATVs, jetskis and snowmobiles

Fuckin jerkoffs are totally addicted but theyre just full of all kina fairytale denial

That hobbit hole Pipe and Bud Tea House is a real threat to our beloved filthy taverns

Yup, their brains are rottin and their teeth are fallin out, but they just will not see

It’s another sinful plague aimed straight at Jesus’ Word and our sacred Traditional Family ValuesÔ

These dope fiends have lost the angry energy they need in our dog-eat-dog society

They spend they time in drugged out dreams about gettin somethin fer doin nethin

Always takin off they shoes and shit, kinda smiling and talking way too slow

Caint even see how far they strayed from the paved path of righteousness that we walk

So damn out there they won’t stop to watch pro football or even NASCAR with the family

Content just to let the abortionists, gays and women libbers chip away at all our rights

Pretty soon they'll be wantin to advertise this heathen poison in magazines and on TV

Gotta rear up and stop this evil dope plague for the good of the country, in the name of god

Gettin ‘Merica Great Again

Gotta bring back cheap and really smoky diesel fuel for our honest, thrifty working men

Then they’ll be tradin up again to even further upside-down leases on even bigger pickups

Get em back to belchin smoke from good loud mufflers with that same patriotic pride

Stead of sneakin around like tree huggers with eggs beneath their gas pedals

We’ll refinance their houses for them and flush away those negative savings

Gonna give traditional families a place to draw out more unearned cash from china

All them re-financing deals should kick start our most innovative credit finance industry

And the realtors can start runnin up house prices for fat commissions once again

We’ll ditch this cockamamie greenhouse crap to protect our fragile economic recovery

No more bullshit about saving the planet because, look, people’s jobs are on the line here

Forget this sustainablility scam if it involves even the slightest expense or inconvenience

Get the asians ta slap them peasants in line cause we need more cheap imported junk

We’ll get these whatever Ārabs straightened out even if it takes a coupla lifetimes

A few hundred billion dollars each and every year ought to do the trick - Someday

Pretty soon a few of those like free elections will bring them heathens all like McDonalds and stuff

Our boys aren’t dyin in vain even if it has just been all wrong from start to finish

Bringing back the days when we just shoved it all into the trash and straight out the door

No more stupid packin and sorting through the garbage for them numbnut greenies

If they want it, they can pay me for it and come here and dive thru our dumpster to get it

Cause once it’s paid for, it’s mine to simply toss away and get on with traditional family life

Nowadays they aint no need to spend money on clean water since we all drink ours outta bottles

The kids can just go down to the pool if they want to go swimming in the summer

I never have time to go fishin anymore and the wife likes it better down to Red Lobster

Anyway, we can still get out on the boats and jetskis as long as we don’t get wet

Them good new jobs atomorra created after we all got outsourced are comin in real soon now, too

We’ll all be contributin to the consumer economy in our new service sector positions

Everybody’ll have good health benefits and a free retirement fund to draw from - Early

Yup, we’ll all be working on computer doin some kinda hi-tech financial services and shit

Coal is gonna give us a smoky, grimy-devastated, but energy-independent homeland

Honest patriot lobbyists will sacrifice sos we can crank up the uninsulated heat all winter long

We can point to the slag heaps and the dirty air and really be able to see our progress

Settin a lonely brave example for the developin world against that vast socialist CO2 conspiracy

We’ll cut taxes but hike defense spending and keep ignoring the whatever deterioratin infrastructure

Strappin on them fiscal cables for another jumpstart and bendin over for the next kickstart

Cause we really cant solve any other problems if the blessed economy has gone south

We’re gonna get back on track real soon now using creative, god-fearing entrepreneurism

Creation Care Debunked

“Our ministry is grounded in the Bible’s teaching on the responsibility of God’s people to “tend the garden” through a faithful walk with our Lord Jesus Christ”  -  creationcare.org

Really, your bible is not some divine revelation demanding you gently steward his creation

You’ll score no points towards some fuzzy salvation by recycling all your crumpled diet soda cans

Your filth and waste is not being tallied to be balanced at some Victorian-style pearly gates

No Christ smiles down upon your efforts to re-create some fantasy Garden you never lost

Saving a little energy wont absolve you of a single one of what you dogmatically call sins

Creation Care cant help earn fuzzy eternal salvation points towards saving your fictional souls

Cleaning up the mess we’ve made isn’t part of your blurry, imaginary Master’s plan

The beckoning void will, however, still blindly accept you despite any of your niggling efforts

Restoring the ocean’s life earns as much redemption as tiredly fingering some rosary

Creation Care must recognize over-population, but He also commands that you be fruitful

No angels smile upon your efforts to preserve the gilded fantasy of His Christian creation

Talks with your personal savior will not have the slightest effect on climate change

There is, my brother, no god commanding that you rise up to smite back acid rain

Protecting rain forest won’t get you to your fairytale mega-church evangelical heaven

Planting a couple of trees wont absolve even one of your imaginary sins of omission

Saving charismatic species wont help grease your way to that hazily-imagined paradise

Preserving intact ecosystems wont justify your childlike faith in worn-out myths

Look, restoring salmon runs, saving rivers and cleaning the air is actually not the Will of God

You were not charged by Him with some vain exceptionist stewardship of His earth

Your Creationist illusions do not pertain to the life force you place yourself outside of

You have no divinely authorized responsibility to anally houseclean this blue-green planet

You are not called by old testament prophets to rise up against global warming

It’s not your sacred duty to save the ecosphere from heathen foreign polluters

Creation Care would better entail nurturing those saved-from-abortion children of unwed mothers

Saving the species which you find pleasing isn’t the road to your everlasting glory

For, does not God who is love also demand the extreme ecological devastation we worship as war?

This green role you grant yourself as part of your old hoax is simply a new advertising jingle

Your hubris-ridden efforts will be swept away without a trace in a single geologic epoch

Preserving critical habitat cannot curry favor with a stale God invented to control your ancestors

Creation Care, like its sibling Creationism, cannot be heard in the unified silence

Even the extreme sacrifice of your pickup for a tiny hybrid wont put you on the road to heaven

And what of the holocaust of the domestic animals that you had Him deem to lack so-called souls?

The power of your prayer will not bring back or save a single species from extinction

Your tiredly dogmatic religious brand cannot be re-packaged to co-opt ecological sustainability

You are not some warped image of your musty God, chosen to shepherd this random world

Your vain and literalist Creation Care is, at once, tearful, humorous and nauseating

But, Best of Luck!

Dirty Twilight Of A Faux Empire

Dancing in the fleeting twilight of an immature but decaying empire

Struggling in vain to catch a glint of the weak light in a dreary winter

Sighing as yet another slow-moving gray rainstorm settles in upon us

Ignored in the company of local strangers at their drinking and talking

Praying before a solitary place, set with unknown food

Mumbling, with no one around, after another long, hot, dirty day of work

Shuffling in another quiet line of disappointing hand-outs

Laying in a darkened room in yet another empty town

Singing unknown songs amidst a most unnaturally-quiet twilight

Drifting silently on through those many deserted settlements

Hiding among weedy croplands which will not see a harvest once again this year

Floating away above the frenzied dancers moving to the beat of the plague

Borne straight to ecstasy by their most fatal of attractions

Repelled by the sight of the old ones forced to toil in vain

Tearful as I watch all their dirty children, still at play

Grubbing in the littered twilight of a quick and dirty empire

Foraging in strange lands after being driven on once again

Awakening to early darkness not knowing where we’ve been

Held up once more by another broken wheel somewhere up ahead

Hardened by adversity yet hollowed out by our suffering

Nursed back once again merely to return to another’s battle

Scuffling over discards even before we know that they are broken

Eating lost, emaciated domestic animals because we have no food

Trying to sleep cold beneath a damaged and leaking roof

Holding on to some things only because, at one time, they held great value

Crouching in the aftermath of a shallow empire, without a plan

Hiding out for far too long in these dark places, so not fit to live

Staring at the broken glass kicked out during our crumbling downward spiral

Doubling down once again for the hungry kids still back at home

Skipping with those dirty fairies thru blockaded streets, past burned out buildings

Shuffling on with nagging, untreated injuries and worn-out, duct-taped shoes

Praying to a silent god for mercy from this mystery he keeps forcing us to see

Footsteps fading thru the emptying shadows of our once-imagined empire

It Aint Gonna Happen

We aint gonna reduce no emissions cept when all the fuel’s done been burnt up

Them heroes in Detroit wont ever build no successful alternative energy cars

We’ll always treat them cows, chickens and pigs like they was mining resources

Haf-neked africans are always gonna be starving, fightin and dyin from awful diseases

Nobodys ever gonna make you sort out them greasy recycles from your useless garbage

Listen, all them charismatic mega-fauna are gonna have ta jest make way fer progress

We’ll never have the resources ta clean up the lakes and rivers, much less them oceans

But we’ll always have more money we can spend on finding new ways to kill each other better

We just caint implement no socialist solutions to these here pressing healthcare issues

Might as well get used ta climate change cause we got more important economic needs

We’ll never admit that our sheer fool numbers are at the very roota everonea our biggest problems

Look, yer kids jest don’t have a brighter future than your senile damn grampaw did

You aint gonna start savin and you’ll always have to work – but look - there wont be no jobs fer ya

The salmon ain’t comin back and the grizzlies don’t got no place among us

They ain’t no heaven and jesus word aint worth even one of the wars that it’s caused

You aint cuttin down on eatin and yer blood pressure and sugar will stay way too high

All them phony sports aint gonna help when yer lying there covered with tubes and bedsores

Yer pointy little breast implants will look real stupid when yer 80 and all like shriveled up

Those lame tattoos will fade on topa age spots, ugly wrinkles and layers of fat

You’ll be snoring thru yer damn nose ring, wondering why they still cant see you’re special

You wont ever take the time, even if you could understand above their 3^rd grade level spin

They aint gonna re-open that free ATM you thought your house would always be

You wont ever pay off the negative savings you got stored up on your damn credit cards

They ain’t no better jobs coming to replace them onesa yers they sent off ta china

Actually, your kids don’t have exceptional potential and they caint be bothered to work hard either

It ain’t gonna make any more sense when you’re being nursed by low waged immigrants

Yer so-called personal savior is just another nutritionally-empty but high-calorie concoction

Actually, ya see, they won’t have found a cure for that yet, when you do finally get it

Obese pickups and giant SUVs aren’t goin away any more than you are, fat boy, LOL

Never gonna stop their sacred public access on snowmobiles, ATVs and fatass jet skis

Aint no way we’ll save one tree if it costs us any jobs, money or cunvenience

They wont start exercising and eating sensibly, why thats fer frickin bird watchers

You fekin liberal environmental wackos ain’t never gonna ruieen this great landa the free

Jobs and cash will always win til nature slaps us down inta some dark and polluted stone age

Them bankers and financiers caint lead us out of the mess they got rich getting us into

It aint never gonna happen and you aint waltzin off fer free ta some cockamamie heaven

We Just Caint Ruin It All

We aint gonna be able to kill off all the different songbirds before we’re all done here

A few frogs and such will find a way to barely scrape by until we’re dead and gone

There’ll still be a couple small hardwoods left to repopulate the once-great hardwood forests

Try as we might we wont be able to strip the oceans bare of every single bit of life

Might even be 1 or 2 other primates left when we’re done slaughtering each other

Won’t kill off all the cats everywhere, and buddy, you can bet they’ll radiate once again

Why, there could be several little whales or dolphins left to evolve one more time

Won’t get the chance to slash and burn every bit of that complex rain forest canopy

Betcha that not all those million northern lakes will lie poisoned and dead from our actions

Not every single river will be nothing more than a canalized open sewer, but we’ll try

There’ll still be a couple un-bulldozed meadows when we are caught, surprised, in our acts

Our random gratuitous high-decibel noise will even end, though we will not hear the following quiet

No amount of our poisons will eradicate all the insects before our time has passed

Why there’ll even be a few oil deposits we’ll still be working when we’re interrupted

We’ll all be gone long before we can slash and settle that entire vast boreal belt

Won’t be around long enough to wipe out all major life forms with our global warming

Can’t even make scars on the earth that last more than one short geological epoch

Won’t have time to turn the entire atmosphere the dingy brown of our so-called great cities

Will not need to recycle before it’s way too late to make even the slightest difference

There’ll still be any number of heathen non-believers among the last ones of us to die off

It’ll be impossible for us to kill each other all off before the earth stops supporting the rest of us

Not any of that silent wisdom will have disappeared before we are gone, once and for all time

These death throes cannot even hope to perturb the vast life force of the universe

This desecration of ours cannot ever rival the catastrophe of a good-sized meteor impact

We’ll never get Antarctica warmed up enough to settle before moving on for good

We cannot notice that the undefined cannot be affected by our senseless fiddling

All our pointless piddling cannot disturb the inescapable event horizon of the void

Even our unthinkable all-out nuclear war would not put an end to all life on this earth

Won’t have a chance to even give a proper burial to the last of our own corpses

There’s no possibility of our dirty seed spreading beyond this once-blessed blue planet

We cannot poison all the soil with the strip mines we blithely turn and walk away from

Can’t quite get the branch that still supports us sawed completely off before we take a fatal fall

There’ll still be good new military hardware rusting for a while when we’re gone

They’ll have unpaid loans and credit cards and shopping to do even as the bills stop coming

Future generations wont get to see this generous world which we could not quite destroy

Caint ruin everything before our good work comes at last to it’s well-deserved fruition

Feeling Good, Doing Badly

You’ll be laid off when you’re about 50 and your services won’t ever be needed again

On the other hand they’ve pushed back your full retirement age until at least the age of 70

We’ve developed nearly magical cures for all the illnesses that will soon plague you

Unfortunately, they’ll be far beyond all your government benefits and meager savings put together

You’re grounded by the wondrous set of private dialogs you’ve shared with your personal savior

But you pack with 3000 other prairie dogs in a Wal*Mart style mega-church to worship him

She walks dogs at the Humane Society and donates to groups with cute puppy calendars

You’ll find her serving guests tender veal that can never even stand up inside their tiny pens

Under great duress they righteously accorded several species their so-called protection

Meanwhile, the seas were strip-mined of all life and filled with microscopic plastic

I reflect upon my efforts at recycling with a certain greenish sense of satisfaction

My used paper heads off to China to be used to package all the imports we don’t make here anymore

We provided temporary jobs for honest loggers harvesting the last of those valuable big trees

But now there’s no more logs to ship and tourists don’t visit to gawk at trees and spend their money

You borrowed millions and started carving a remote area into a toney second home resort

Your little friends pulled the plug on your leveraged scheme, so you just walked away

I am searching for the miraculous and straining with every fiber for cosmic understanding

I’ve got juicy soft porn sites bookmarked that I visit with a monk-like regularity

They demanded our personal responsibility regarding health care as well as pensions

On the other hand they were bailed out by crooked cronies with no strings attached at all

We could step in and lower your interest rate and we could even guarantee your loan

But with your no-down and equity re-financing you’re still way too far underwater for you to bother

Things are looking so much better for us now than earlier in this bloody financial quagmire

Yet, no one will ever be held responsible for the crimes and sins that got us there to start with

You rage against the fact that you only earn 80% of your male colleagues takings

But they’re working 10% overtime & holding the door as you leave early again, for your lame kids

At last you’re free to enjoy all the wondrous things that you’ve always dreamed of

Your eyes are bad, your back is sore, your wind is gone and you never hatched a nestegg

Smart consumers have at last stopped credit spending and some have even begun to try and save

Alas, such wise household spending attitudes cause stocks to fall and even more jobs to disappear

Honest citizens have been freed from oppressively high fuel prices once again

Just in time to fuel another surge in purchases of gas-guzzling SUVs & obese, road-hogging pickups

The car dealers, real estate agents, cruise lines, and hip restauranteurs were mired in recession

And they say consumer spending always solves our economic crises and certainly never causes them

The vacuous, self-serving geniuses of Wall Street are getting flak over giant bonuses again this year

On the other hand they’re not going to jail cause they’ve convinced us we still can’t do without them

I'm Special

I’m quite gifted and my parents knew all about that well before I was even born

I have special needs which I am permitted to express with a loud and grating clarity

I require unique treatment simply since my obvious potential is so very great

I’m exceptional as you should quickly note, so I will need extraordinary latitude

I just won’t apply myself if I am not motivated but I could be a great success

I have skills and talents that their boring normal tests simply cannot measure

I need not exert myself or finish any task just to demonstrate to you my wondrous gifts

I call on others to politely recognize what my parents have always seen in me

I don’t have to prove myself because my great potential has already set me apart

I’m quite special you see and my mommy and my daddy have always told me so

I demand what I think is the best and cannot be concerned with any mess that I might make

I quickly and scornfully ignore those fools who do not honor my wondrous gifts

I swill down expensive meals and walk off without a care for their cost or their cleanup

I abandon my dirty clothes where I drop them and my bed as I leave it, late in the afternoon

I need not concern myself with housework, homework, jobs or money

I’m so very special that their lame rules and regulations simply do not apply to me

I’m a video game wizard who keeps on skillfully playing for hours and hours upon end

But I’ve got a touch of ADD when it comes to stupid wasted shit such as school work

I find it suits me well to play loud music until 3 AM and then to sleep at least til noon

Mom says I have this fine aesthetic sense and such great potential as an artist

I trash the expensive clothes I didn’t have to pay for and wear them beyond filthy

I know adults can’t understand me because I’m very special and so unlike them

I broke my arm in some forgotten extreme sport where I might have been a pro

I smashed my car and lost their credit card but they know I had a lot on my gifted mind

I don’t know what’s up with their computer all I did was click on a link or two

I’m a texting wizard and I loaded my 3 guitar chords up onto the Web

I can’t take the time to think about the future cause I’m busy creating it today

Spent hundreds on tattoos and piercings and I have really set myself apart

I eat when I’m hungry and then, without the slightest thought, I simply walk away

I kiss my mom when she cries about me on my way out the door, late at night

Pizza delivery was beneath me and the construction guys just laughed

Went to college a couple semesters, partied hard and just skipped those boring classes

I usually take my meds after I stay up all night and wake up all like really groggy

I always seem to leave food bags laying on the floor with a little stale shit left inside

My bright hair dyes and clippings remain in the bathroom but they don’t bother me

I’m special and all I really need to do is to enjoy the good life until the world takes notice

Going Green...In My Dreams

Not going to waste any more precious fossil fuel on those many unnecessary daily trips

Finishing up with dumping my tons of thoughtless but nearly permanent CO2 emissions

No more dirty coal will over-warm my over-sized, un-insulated, leveraged dream home ever again

Won’t be polluting 200 gallons of good clean drinking water each and every day anymore

Won’t rip up any more productive farmland for shoddy, cloned, convenience strip malls

The oil on my driveway will stop leaking into that little stream every time it rains

The plastic bags I only used once will no longer choke our overburdened and leaching landfills

Won’t be so quickly casting all that devilish chinese shrink wrap into the closest dumpster

Wont be eating any more grains and vegetables impregnated with toxic runoff chemicals

No longer buying food that’s over-stimulated by oil-based pesticides and fertilizers

Done gumming pasty white bread which was watered by draining irreplaceable fossil aquifers

Stopped consuming proprietary, sterile, genetically-modified, corporate cereal crops

Wont be smashing glass bottles on rocks just to hear the noise they make while breaking

No more thoughtlessly tossing aluminum cans into the gaping mouths of garbage pails

Done casually flipping plastic containers aside the very moment they are emptied

Stopped thoughtlessly dumping out all that so-called waste paper I don’t want or need

Won’t be discarding much more cheap broken plastic shit from Asia without a second thought

Had my last freshly poisoned fruits shipped in from the far-off southern hemisphere

Wont be buying gas to fill my ATV that helps support terrorists in lands 10,000 miles away

Not paying any more taxes to have them outsource the war on terror there instead of here

Done kicking back and watching as we kill off the noble wandering albatross and dolphins

Not going to totally ignore the vanity poaching of the elephants and the tigers anymore

No longer going to let the salmon and the orcas be driven to extinction on my watch

Stopped driving up the price of sushi that is finishing off the magnificent bluefin tuna

Done sitting mutely as illiterate fools hoarsely destroy the living desert surface

Will no longer remain quiet as our wasteful recreation despoils the inland waters

Not continuing to wave politely to fat tourists shouting from atop noisy ATVs

Finished making excuses for loud smoking snowmobiles chasing game and littering

Wont be calling greedy shortsighted developers patriotic entrepreneurs anymore

No longer think energy policy is in my interest despite their smirking political assurances

Stopped believing that social progress emerges from politically polarized paralysis

Quit swallowing the repeated diatribes of artificial media conglomerate puppets

Hopping off the treadmill that I always ran as I looked forward to vacations I can’t even remember

Coming clean deep inside without the help of their evil-smelling embalming chemicals

Going completely green at last, without any overpriced and wasteful coffin: Yeah right!

Finally stopped making any carbon footprint at all. For I shall move no more forever

A Snowflake’s Fictional Revenge

I just feel so terrible that these awful thoughts actually came out of me, a peaceful vegan socialist!

Casually ripped out the stakes they had carefully set to guide their yellow bulldozers

Slapped a ‘Supporting Terrorists With Every Tankful’ decal on the fat man’s morbidly obese pickup

Slashed their ATV tires as they were shitting and leaving their trash in the woods close to the road

Dragged corporate leaders from gated mansions and burned them at the stake for their outsourcing

Put some sharp rocks just under the surface where they took off drunk and shouting on their jetskis

Knocked over a faux-badboy’s financed Harley into the path of a vegan hybrid backing out

Replaced the cheese on their burgers with thick and slimy slices of pusy organic tofu

Played really loud country music when she brought clients for a showing in her leased BMW

Rolled up their well-tended lawns and dumped all their slimy home toxics back into their yards

Smashed out her tinted windows so I could clearly see her too-tight, heavily made-up, botoxed face

Ruthlessly forced them to speak clearly, read high-school level books and write complete sentences

Took a big dump on the seat of their powerful excavator and smeared it all over the steering wheel

Sent all their cosmetic surgeons off to Africa to work for Doctors Without Borders for a tiny stipend

Taxed the shit out of the gas they wasted and created energy independence with the money

Blocked all the drive thru take outs with a mountain of cast-off plastic fast food containers

Sterilized them and rescued their fatherless children if they hadn’t passed a minimal parenting class

Piped power plant emissions straight into the homes of the Clean Coal Initiative leaders & legislators

Charged them more by the gallon and the pound for their carelessly wasted water and unsorted trash

Smothered entire families far beneath their way-too-casually discarded plastic bags

Smashed up all the chips and the cookies in the fat women’s grocery cart and dared her to chase me

Made the board meet in their own fields as their dusters spread fertilizer and pesticides upon them

Grounded all their private planes until they had sense enough to get good mufflers put on them

Taxed ranchers on federal lands by letting the bears eat some of their cattle, without reimbursement

Brought our troops home and thanked them for all their brave but vanity-driven sacrifices

Dumped tons of their wasted advertising materials on property they were dishonestly pimping

Herded the lobbyists thru the streets as the poor children laughed and stoned them as schoolwork

Put up solar panels on every roof of the country right next to new wind turbines just to piss them off

Piped the exhaust from his remote-start, idling to warm up, pickup straight into his silly man cave

Sent the finance people to Somalia to innovate while living in mud huts and building new schools

Sentenced the investment bankers to chain gangs in the rural South without any possibility of parole

Shot out their nightlights whenever and wherever to set the stars free to shine once again

Punched the car salesman in the moth and bought what I wanted without paying any commission

Filled their clean and empty giant pickup beds with the oily runoff from their own driveways

Taxed the churches heavily, just like any other grasping, lying, fictional corporate pyramid scheme

Forced them to pay off their credit cards before they could finance another new big screen

Fined the politicians every single time they so lamely intoned ‘God Bless America’ in their speeches

Dirty Fire

When we arrived on scene the dump still burned, but there were not too many flames

Beneath its thin layer of sanitary dirt, methane was formed and had ignited

Gashed mattresses, horribly soaked couches, sunken birdcages and rancid fish smoldered

I knew I had been finally proved a sinner, finding myself in this disgusting hell

Bleach and paint thinner, used oil and sour milk, sullied rain and breaded cat poop

Beheaded dolls, twisted pink T-shirts, broken chicken bones and rotting garden hoses

Rancid vegetables and jagged metal and all kinds of rejected plastic, everywhere

Wet brown advertising material in every orientation crushed by broken bike wheels

The bronzish smoke of hell itself filled eyes and lungs as mice and bugs scuttled off

Of course the roar of crushers and bulldozers drowns out all normal communication

Skeletal swingset frames groan terribly as they are painfully twisted aside

Brake fluid coated propane cylinders bob ominously to the slimy brown surface

Avalanche and landslide dangers keep us on toes layered deep in pungent slime

Our water leaches out a myriad of chemicals as it begins to flow downhill

Old-timers laugh and inhale the smoke and doubt a liquid plume can reach the river

Half-eaten waffles coated in dirty tissue paper cover a crumpled dress raped by a toothy 2x4

The unknown liquids of our innocent household trash leach into a vile HazMat stew

Blowed-out tires and old chimney bricks, concrete rocks and dirty washing machines

Sharp metal shelving shards contaminated with that muddy paste spear at the unwary

Spattered business printouts anchored by soupcans unfold under shady, torn-up car seats

Here and there twisted metal smokes and burns even at the cool ground level

Heat and CO2 rise from the mattress-like surface we walk upon to do our good work

Rotten rope from a hammock lies twisted into the undoable knots by the hand of God

Discarded carpet partially unrolled leads one to somewhere, off beneath the rubble

Over there an infirm pet has been committed without undue ceremony

Box springs at odd angles trap feet and toss us face first toward the sludge

Tarred fast food wrappers decorate discarded furniture like they ate and ran

However, we all remain quite complacent cause this landfill fire’s been burning for many years

Reusing, Refurbishing, Repurposing, Recycling

Not to be confused with Demean, Diminish, Disgrace, Dishonor

 Reusing grandfathers thrifty habits to set us back on their sane track again

Refurbishing our tarnished moral values to put them in play once more

Repurposing the wasted energy they used in their vanity thought control campaigns

Recycling their greedy, vain and shortsighted philosophies into the infinite void

If I don’t need it anymore I guess I won’t just toss it out

Maybe somebody else can use it

Perhaps a little tune-up means,

It will serve well for a few more years to come

I’m not using this stuff anymore

Wow, that would work just fine for this

At last a worn out piece of consumer history

Experiences rebirth once again

I got this extra part now since she gave me a new one

Do you need this other one, like I did before?

This part has broken several times

Can we maybe fix it better than it was ever made?

I’ll save these nuts and bolts from the old one,

For some other unknown project

Looks like this stuff is going back once again

To the big recycling factory in the sky

I’ll go and see if I can find one

Down to the bright and clean thrift emporium

All this old one really needs

Is a little tender loving care

I’m making a thoughtful war memorial

Out of this old high volume toilet

At last it’s time to recycle at least a bit of the wasted energy,

That was locked inside their failed neocon agenda

I’ll put a different attachment on the old one

And then we can use it on the road

All’s I did was put on a new cover, spray a little paint

And it looks as good as new

These worn out tee shirts will work real well

For messy projects out in the old garage

I’ll just rinse out this glass and metal for the green box,

Instead of tossing them in the trash without a thought

For Real Heartland Consumer Sacrifice

Well, I’ll give up my drive-thru lunch a coupla days each week

Just sos that I can take the OHV out with the boys on Saturday afternoon

I can get the old lady to cook shit out of cans or maybe even from like raw stuff

Instead of nuking up them pricey microwave dinners that we really like

Turning off the diesel sometimes instead of idling in air-conditioned comfort

Just to save a teeny bit of that there artificially expensive fuel

Adjusted my thermostat even though the kids just set there whining

Had to make some changes cause the bill’s gone through the roof

Gonna turn off the big screen when we’re not at home and maybe unplug it at night

Damn electric keeps on going up every single month

Ta hell with that fancypants overpriced organic shit

My kids’ll do just fine on white bread and them plastic-coated, factory-extruded hamburg logs

Look, I’m even walking all the way back out to the stinkin mailbox

Drivin to grammaws instead of flyin - Which I hated anyway

Cant afford to trade in my 2 year old SUV even if it does only get 10 MPG

So, but now I’m tryin to drive less than 20 thousand miles a year

Cutting back to generic cookies and not watching so many pay-per-views

That liberal climate conspiracy is costing us all a whole lot of money every day

The old lady’s not getting botoxed and her toenails got the colora yella baby shit

Gotta start savin somewhere, so first I cut out that stupid fitness center I never go to

It’s for sure we won’t be attendin that awesome church ski vacation this year

But we’ll still be able to ride our jet skis a few weekends out to the lake

Wonderin about this family plan that costs $200 a month for a coupla phones

After all I just spent 600 bucks on school sneakers the kids tore up in a week

Have to share less quality time with my boys now that bullets are $4 each

I’ll make it up to them though, at home playing them shooter video games together

Switching credit cards to get a lower rate for at least the next six months

Oughta free up some extry cash for when our mortgage rate resets again

Cuttin back on pert near everything just like they slashed my job and downsized my life

But still got enough time to catch NASCAR and the good old NFL on the bigscreen with a cold one

However, not gonna enjoy them growlin snow machines as often since they was repossessed

Waitin for the real belt-tightenin ta begin since them tax and spenders are in control

Cut out the produce and the fruits too - sos we could still have chips, cokes and Budweiser

Only seein the frickin ripoff dentist again when I cant stand the pain no more

Gotdamm dogs’ll have to get by cause they ain’t going to the vet again this year, either

Look - We’re makin some real sacrifices up in the heartland for the good of family, god and country

The Most Unthinkable Ultimate Weapon

Some crackpot wacko researcher has gone and done the unthinkable deed at last

And now it’s up to us to make sure this thing doesn’t fall into terrorist hands

Turns out it’s really quite simple to make and way too easy to secretly transport

We got to retain tight control of this invention or our precious liberty is surely at risk

The mad scientists have gone and let an evil genie out of the bottle once again

Proliferation cannot be an option for the freedom loving peoples of the world

If our enemies get hold of this, it will threaten our traditional family values

We alone must retain control of this awful power - for the benefit of all mankind

Our strategic analysts warn of its terrible consequences for our military establishment

It’s just the kind of thing that the one-worlders have been wanting for use against us

This weapon could upset our carefully crafted, fear-based global power balance

It will put the people of our sacred fatherland at the mercy of the godless heathen

There’s no denying its potential to do good if we were to use it in the proper manner

But, in the hands of radicals, it would represent a clear and present danger

Its proliferation would pose the gravest threat of any doomsday scenario yet

Mr. President, we must act at once to halt the spread of this terrible innovation

Already, there is intelligence that our enemies seek it on the world’s black markets

We have detected some French testing out on one of their remote Pacific atolls

Unconfirmed reports say an outlaw state is trying to acquire its raw materials in Africa

Some kind of loony religious cult wants to loose it on the entire world in aerosol form

We got to keep a closer eye on our so-called allies in the light of this new threat

We are ramping up our domestic intelligence gathering a bit more in secret, just in case

They say it might even be introduced covertly into our food and water supply

What we need is another world treaty which we can ignore but force others to obey

Already, reckless young people are experimenting upon each other with this stuff

The generals and politicians are demanding that the policy wonks craft a solution

This thing could spiral way beyond our control and end all our cozy partnerships

We must quickly ramp up coordinated media, military and diplomatic campaigns

Congress must quietly funnel millions for secret research and covert operations

Believe it or not they’ve found a vaccination for that sacred pox known as war

If I Was Some Artist

If I was some artist instead of some socially-waterboarded misfit fogged by chronic dull panic

I’d turn you a clay pot with designs recalling the animistic musings of your ancient ancestors

If I had the gifts and the tools and the time, well, maybe then things would be different

And I might not be so dizzy from being wrapped up and blindly rolled towards the abyss

If I could pick up a guitar and get your minds to fill in the gaps between the chords

Maybe you could look past the bent and rusty groans of my tired and wornout frame

If I were not so pathologically hurried I think I might spend time raking that Zen garden

Arranging my randomly littered inner self at last into harmonious parallel curves

If I was some artist bringing order to chaos and distilling an aching beauty from tragedy,

These other selfish emotions might just stop choking and blinding and tripping me up

If I was even a bit gifted and not so damn tone deaf, ham-handed and ignorant to color and form

I would make images exactly as I release those perfect bubbles when I swim underwater

If I were not still so lamely hung up, off in some irrelevant, wasted and trivial past,

I might be granted a mature vision uniting all this vast and random, unsortable rubble

If I was a soothsayer resplendent in mystic robes, I’d hold a cosmic mirror up to our faces

But as it is, I cannot knead my trivial past into the required consistency to spin any tales

If I had the voice in any one of its forms, I’d lay it upon you with humility and grace

So now you can see why I appear to look through you, staring blankly, off into space

If I could just pop my head back up, out of my ass, maybe I would even open my eyes once again

Still…it’s simply not right to have to bet on a miracle just to ensure one’s simple daily survival

If I was some artist coming through from a trance like a musing psychic medium,

I would also know how to go about it being quiet, gentle, self-effacing and kind

If I could free my arms and legs, stand up and just catch my breath for an instant

Just maybe I might titrate small scenes of order from out this roiling and implacable chaos

If I were a pilgrim all like grimy from long and deprived wandering in faraway foreign lands,

The truth that might heal us could have accidentally lodged somewhere upon me

If I was not simply a lesser among all the equals, shambling along right behind you

I would split this blinding glare prismatically into separate rays of the rainbow of truth

If I were a prophet, maybe with a long beard and those terribly piercing black eyes,

Rational followers would weave my ramblings together into pithy and valuable insights

If I was some leader with a unifyingly-clear vision, perhaps I too could stay upon message

But sadly I just add more static to this wack, cacophonious conundrum of confusion

If I was some Buddha, all like serene and composed, meditating beneath the sacred Bodhi tree

Gestures would be simplified, words would be superfluous and writing unnecessary

All my lessons would be imparted from the beatific smile playing across my unlined face

But as it is there is little truth in the tracks the dirty tears have smeared down my hollow cheeks