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

Our Live Eco-Death Watch

Silently we document our progress in destroying the earth, even as it still sustains us

Uncomprehendingly we chart the unplanned spread of our vast and poisoned cities

We note that our microscopic plastic particulates crowd out the ocean’s protozoa

Tallying the number of extinctions like sheep, squishy Greenies fall again into a restless sleep

Jotting down the count of poisoned rivers and ruined lakes helps occupy our hands

The amount of cropland gone to desert every year is one vital sign that folks are tracking

The coal-fired consumer progress of India and China fills our patients lungs

We note with compassion that our numbers grow even as the count of species drops

We observe animals struggling to adjust their ranges apace with climate change

Dispassionately we sum forests slashed for firewood, temporary cropland and cheap construction

Spreadsheets correlate rising ocean acidification with parts per million of CO2

Our budgets unemotionally reflect increases in defense and corresponding cuts to child care

With a detached accuracy, lab tests reveal annual increases in river contaminants

Mourning elders recount the joy and wonder of the prematurely old and dying world they knew

Studies show marine life riddled with our mutagens and metals, but offer no solutions

Unable to assist we do, however, await the continuing stream of expert reports

We self-anoint ourselves with the title of the first life form to produce a mega-extinction

Seated on vinyl chairs in a dark hospital, we watch as our population metastasizes

We observe weakened circulation as another great river fails to reach the sea

The loss of the arctic icecaps is a mere side effect, like the balding of a chemo patient

We measure the growing number of those depending on shrinking fossil water wells

Experts point to the strictly increasing number of life forms which must disappear to sustain us

Holding back our emotions, we duly note our command to our god that he bless us

We write of the annually-increasing record temperatures to distant loved ones

We note briefly that economic conditions force us away from environmental concerns

We are able to disassociate ourselves from the victim’s plight, at least in our minds

Many among us still reject the truth and refuse to discuss funeral arrangements

Rodents and insects scurry about in greedy preparation for our inescapable demise

We stand wrinkled and disheveled in gray hallways overfilled with strange echoes

And experts offer little life support for any of the many systems failing, all at once

Young scientists rush to catalog new species from the first and only individuals ever to be found

We document changes to fishes in waters filled with fire retardants and hormones

Government leaders can only assure us they are doing everything the best that they can

We still await an experimental breakthrough yielding a quick fix and a happy ending

But there are those who just want this horrible suffering to simply finally be over

And at last the bells are ringing, ringing, calling us home thru an odd false twilight

Makes Sense When You're Dreaming

It just all seems so logical and sensible inside this flawed dream we collectively weave

that’s why we need cluster bombs, land mines, new nukes and more chemical weapons

It’s all here before us in living breathing color every month of our maxed-out credit card lives

There are drugs for those who imagine that all this is crazy and can’t really last much longer

We waste and pollute, overcrowd and degrade, extract, poison and extinguish

For this we have rock solid reasoning layered on seamless and unassailable assumptions

From one bit of faith flows our vast river of well-constructed and inescapable dogma

Thusly can we ignore ancient wisdom and our starving brothers in an angry, righteous blindness

Bathed in a warm sea of religion, patriotism and family values we move about with ease

We readily expect third world sacrifice on behalf of our dreamy convenience

Groping sleepily with the blind hand of the free market in pursuit of individual happiness

We gladly pay more for disappearing resources which guarantees their final exploitation

The lights work and the water runs and the garbage gets hauled off somewhere every week

Verily do we perceive the unending natural cycle of our inalienable consumer lifestyle

There’s nothing out of context and the wackos are sensibly and seamlessly ignored

Our own professionals in neat suits have organized agendas tracking everything important

We readily explain away anything which disturbs the consistency of the revered central images

Thus, the multi-generational poverty and suffering of others is thoughtlessly tolerated

Just a couple of small basic distortions have increasingly warped our derived beliefs

And fat people drive oversize cars way too fast, wasting and emitting and calling it good

With but a subtle bending to enlightened self-interest and the pursuit of our happiness

We appoint the greediest, most amoral and self-serving as the masters of our universe

It just makes common sense in the dream which immerses everyone, all of the time

Together we direct all our efforts towards the foolish pipedream of eternal compound growth

It seems normal to live beyond our means, never save a penny, and still expect pensions

Nobody even questions shoving all the other life forms aside to abet our so-called progress

Our only true issues arise when we cannot obtain all the rich rewards of the collective fantasy

But even then, the shared dream in which we pursue these shiny baubles cannot be distorted

Yet, it takes a moment to ignore the rolled back, widened eyes seen often in the departing

It is as if, too late, they are roused from our dream to some nightmare that we will never see

Our Most Sacred Core Beliefs

Out of which arise our Traditional Family Values©

War is a basic and unchangeable part of human nature that will always be with us

You cant’ stop progress and that includes its unforeseen and destructive side effects

We must remain ready to preemptively defend ourselves or we will be attacked from all sides

Population growth is divinely ordained and no one may limit a family’s number of children

Human survival on the family scale trumps human survivability on the global level

Food and jobs must supercede preservation of the earth that supports them both

Trillions of selfish short-term, greed-optimized decisions blindly ensure our best future

Our god, no matter his name, is the one true god whom we must follow and defend to the death

The soulless animals may be tended, exterminated or ignored simply as we see fit

God works on his vaster projects in mysterious ways which we simply cannot grasp

This earthly life is but a short and illusory prelude to a far better and eternal paradise

His servants on this earth are here to help guide us along the path that He created

Merging mega-sized competitors produces many long-term benefits, not just fat bonuses

Hostility and aggression need our financial support but peace and harmony do not

We will always have to be preparing to fight to the death for a bit of simple peace

We hold as a matter of faith that our children will always have a rosier future than we

The poor are either lazy or suffering divine punishment and therefore, can be righteously ignored

Monomaniacal control freaks will use the power they grab only to help build a better society

Once safely out of our sight, our wastes need no longer be any of our concern, ever again

Air and water are free goods and trying to preserve them involves taxes not investments

Simply reacting to problems after they become serious is more effective than failed social planning

Living in wait for quickly-forgotten holidays leaves one with a rich set of remembrances

Corporations really do care about employees, customers, society and the environment

Focusing on next quarter’s results leads us all inevitably towards the happily ever after

Climate change is unproven but would be far too expensive and difficult to try and remedy

Overseas outsourcing clears the way for those new and better jobs for our displaced workers

Hindbrain reactionary muddling remains the best option for global problem solving

Stocks are safe investments which always outperform other instruments in the long run

Personal Responsibility is a viable strategy to deal with pensions and medical costs

The free market will address poverty, education, environmental and healthcare issues

Road, bridge, dam, sewer, power and water infrastructure outlays can be indefinitely postponed

An officially multi-lingual government provides egalitarian services and unites its people

God belongs in our government but the government does not belong in our businesses

Living life to its fullest means saving nothing as one consumes and discards freely, without saving

Mom is really quite happy at that place and the people all like her and really care about her

God’s will is quite naturally done here on earth just as it is in His eternal heaven

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

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

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 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