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

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

Waving Goodbye To Their Future

Every day they seem to slip just a little bit further out of our grasp

Their color isn’t good and it’s almost like they no longer care

They’re even less aware than our dear children - whom they cannot recognize

But at some point they gotta realize we got lives of our own to live

Lots of us are saying they’ll just have to be able to take care of themselves

Life must go on for we the living, so we’ll just have to let them go

It’s not like we don’t got our own futures covered, what with christ and all

So we’ll just take a moment to wave goodbye from amidst our noisy fortunes

After all, we are, one and all, in this competition called the pursuit of happiness

Their far-off signals are pretty much indecipherable along our hurried way

So we’ll see them off and wish them well on whatever road that they may find

We cannot sacrifice our very lives providing for all their needs forever

They do not seem to grasp the vitally important nature of our feverish pursuits

They cannot share the passions which consume us to the exclusion of all else

Their silent presence can become oppressive when we have so much to do

We all must learn we just have to let them go - even if they might not go away

They cannot realize the immense burden their simple presence generates

In any case, how can they expect their milk without fighting for a teat

Their passive and unwavering silence cannot fail to hurt their cause

Because the earth’s sweet goods get divvied up to whomever grabs the most

But every day our own needs seem greater and their voices grow even fainter

So we leave them on an ice floe or cast them into the river in tiny fragile boats

We borrow a moment to wave goodbye and then hurry back upon our noisy way

We grant them their freedom and independence, out of sight and out of mind

We absolve ourselves of knowledge, responsibility and any guilt on their behalf

We wish them well and wave goodbye and promise we’ll meet again, somewhere up in heaven

So we set the children of the future free that we might get on with our own pressing lives

We forever turn our backs on them for we have determined to have it all today

The Moocher’s Tale

Fancy shades ripped closed to block out our slow and awkward passing

We heard their car doors electrically locking when we drew limpingly too near

Pulling in their children they dropped their eyes and moved away

We felt the wind of their vehicles passing far too closely as we slunk along

Their hands grasped to assure their valuables as they left us in their hurried wake

Lights came on as we shuffled by, we were part of the cold and dark they kept outside

Infants stared blankly back as they were carried quickly away from us

Their elder’s eyes focused at points somewhere below and beside our dirty faces

We walked where they only drove and tasted their palpable distrust as well as their exhaust

They had us removed from public places when we made them feel ill at ease

They laughed and talked louder just to utterly crush our too-silent presence

We tried to act like we did not notice that they pretended not to see us

We walked in their hand-me-downs but we were not their children or their brothers

They swept their dust out upon us as we fumbled through their leftovers

We could not avoid their blank stares even though dark glasses hid their eyes

They brushed themselves with vigor after our chance and accidental contact

They learned to just step over us as we learned to sit sleeping where they walked

They grew impatient with our simple nagging presence every day in their busy lives

We stood in long lines waiting outside their pale in anticipation of rumored handouts

We let go our privacy and re-evaluated our dignity under dingy yellow city lights

We were the bogeyman but our own kids fled the onrushing vans of faceless soccer mommies

They tried to trap us in a net of ordinances but we slipped thru like spineless jellyfish

The papers ran short paragraphs when their misfits beat one of us to death at night

They shook their heads when we froze to death outside the over-filled homeless shelters

We crowded dirtily into the libraries and city parks, much to their disgust

Possessed of neither cell phones nor addresses, no good jobs awaited us

Our children crawled the floors of downsized welfare offices in growing grimy numbers

They covered their faces as we coughed and hacked and spit as they passed nearby

Social workers never approached us without medical gloves and often they wore masks

The garbage men and street sweepers looked down with great disdain upon us

They charged us with vagrancy and public nuisance since we had nowhere else to go

Too many offered us their help, but only on Christmas and Thanksgiving day

We shuffled by honest citizens from understaffed shelters to overcrowded rescue missions

We spent days waiting at the ER trying to drive up their health insurance premiums

We ate day-old bread in cast-off clothes as our kids noses ran and we choked upon despair

We finally realized our lives were better left unseen and our needs best left unspoken

MayDay

Anybody out there, mayday, mayday, smoke and dust is filling up the cockpit

It keeps on getting hotter and we’re running out of drinking water

Everybody’s shoutin and our power’s gettin really low

Be advised there’s heavy smoke showing and we’re surrounded by perps with guns

We’re flying on one engine and our rudder’s been sheared off

Everybody’s fightin on the decks below and we got no lookouts aloft

We’re taking on dark liquids and choking on our own exhaust

Chain of command is broken and the loud and greedy think that they’re in charge

Lost track of our position a while ago in unfamiliar, storm-filled waters

If you can hear my voice, please send some help to this location real soon

Some team members aren’t responding but we don’t have any time to search

The officer in charge has been shouting but command has not been making any sense

A bunch of us are trapped with no supplies in a shaft with this acidic liquid oozing in

It’s really dark but even if our lights weren’t out there’s still too much smoke to see

There’s a lot of guys with injuries, but all we got are some aspirins and a coupla tiny band-aids

Sent out a recon mission that accidentally stumbled back, finding nothing and nobody else

Things around here sure don’t seem right, there’s dead stuff laying all around

Plants are looking sickly and we haven’t been hearing a single bird

Found a couple kids but even when we fed them they wouldn’t hardly talk

Our Dear Leader keeps saying we’re alright and he and his buddies even look OK

It’s like a massive spill from infinite freight trains, all mixing their unknown contents

The rain has turned all black and we’re choking on the chemicals in the dust

Looks like the food here has been poisoned by some unknown contamination

Residents are advised to take shelter until we can determine the nature of the spill

Feels like we’re goin down on fire into some slimy cesspool, without any parachutes

The tower’s not responding and the runway lights aren’t working

I’m running low on air and I’m trapped alone here in this confining darkness

We copy that we are now assured that no relief crews will ever be forthcoming

Can’t carry out our wounded but Cap says it’s time to get out now

The chaplain started laughing and crying and then heaved up his guts

The tones keep going off but we are learning to ignore them

Been hearing only laughing foreign voices on our own emergency frequencies

I'm Higher Than Mommie

I’m sipping right along now with Mommie thru my little navel straw

Getting a real taste for her cool menthol cigarettes and that cheap lite beer

My tiny ears are pricking up hearing country music from underwater

I’d be really lightheaded if I wasn’t already floating so very freely

It’s warm and dark in here so I cant see the dirty modular where I’ll soon be living

Those piled up dirty dishes and filthy carpet do not bother me at all

Don’t know why I get all scared and nervous when my daddy gets to yelling

I’m higher than my Mommie is, cause she’s sharing everything equally with me

I can taste all the smells of the shrink-wrapped stuff down to our local Wal*Mart

The diesel exhaust from Daddy’s big old truck goes right into my fetal bloodstream

I like my coffee in the morning but it makes me weewee just like Mommie

I get my nutrients from white bread, hamburg and adulterated chinese vitamin pills

I’ll tell you what, my growing brain just loves that Crank as much as my scratchy Mommie

I knew that she was real upset when that last tooth fell out, but, hey, I aint got none, neither

Coming out real soon to crawl the welfare office floors just the same as she did

I would have cried when Daddy punched her but no one could have heard

Sometimes she feels me kicking for a little quiet, as they cackle on the couch at 4:00 AM

She takes me to work sometimes cleaning houses and I can taste the cleansers

When daddy and his friends get to shouting at the TV sports it scares me half to death

I try to roll over and hide my head, but I just have to depend totally on my Mommie

I’ve got pretty blue eyes and cute little fingers and I take in everything she does

I listen as my big sister wipes her dirty nose as it’s buried over me on Mommie’s lap

She don’t talk too well and no one knows why but she’s also short and overweight

But I’m still warm and safe and totally helpless here inside my beloved Mommie

It wasn’t much different for my Mommie or her Mommie going back a few generations

The drugs and environmental contaminants are different but our attitudes are still the same

We all started out just as perfect and as pink and as innocent as I remain right now

And I don’t know no better so my inescapable life will still be all like wondrous to me

The dingy walls that close in on her aren’t as nice as my safe place here in her tummy

She shelters me from the scabies, impetigo, bedbugs, roaches and nasty head lice

I’m picking up on TV though, cause it’s blaring through to me all the time

Sometimes when she lays wrong I don’t know it, but her obesity is squeezing me

I hear my grandma’s laughter morphing into a nicotine coughing fit just above my head

But by then my little world is spinning gently cause it’s finally time for bed

And my love is already smilingly unconditional for I am totally helpless and dependent

So, I’m higher than my Mommie is cause I’m younger, innocent and totally at her mercy

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

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

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