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

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

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