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

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

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

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

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