Happiness Was

Enjoying all the good times spent driving too far back home after working way too late once again

Financing all manner of gadgets, gaudy renovations and re-decorating with unearned home equity

Sitting mesmerized year after year before the empty spectacle of the corporate sports altar

Awaking over and over again in the dark night to relive some imagined office slight

Looking forward so long to all those wondrous vacations we can’t even remember now

Being freed from our grandfather’s thrifty guilt by modern finance go-go negative savings rates

Scarfing down donuts to quell that anxiety which gnawed just as if it were real hunger

Steadily increasing our disposable income thru the miracle of multiple maxed out credit cards

Gunning a loudly-modified diesel exhaust while passing an old Japanese economy car

Dreaming, just like your little friends, that things would never really change that much

Leaving the kids to cellophane-wrapped snacks and their latest video games

Getting paid for doing nothing and saving big on Chinese slave labor down at the Wal*Mart

Tossing out any and all kinds of chemical rubbish and never even thinking of it again

Swallowing whole their expensive lies about the terrible enemies surrounding us

Laughing hard with everybody else about the need for even moderate exercise

Gleefully marginalizing the wackos and scientists, the squishy liberals and those silly tree huggers

Smirking at the weaklings as they scrimped and saved, recycled and economized

Blowing off boring nutrition and eating for the salty or sweet taste of fiber-free, fatty fast foods

Resting quite assured that god watches over and blesses only us, every single day

Visiting our drugged elders in the warehouse whose glossy brochures met all of their senior needs

Driving enraged and alone in a junk Detroit barge built to carry 8 fully-grown & obese adults

Sucking down expensive, high-calorie lattes like clockwork, every day at 10

Labeling recycling as an unnecessary and dubious virtue, simply of no real consequence

Projecting arrogance and pride through our loudly exceptionist and totally ethnocentric ignorance

Coddling our precious children, each quite exceptional & prize-winning in its own very special way

Demanding at every political foto-op that god should bless this land and our traditional excesses

Extinguishing exotic animals for firewood, marginal crops and other short-term, so-called progress

Condemning religious fanatics after prayerful talks with our own personal saviors

Treating our livestock like raw materials and manufacturing our food crops like factory goods

Acting as if consumer spending could actually be the driving force behind any sustainable economy

Expecting to continue this orgy of mindless consumption somewhere off in our fairytale heaven

Flattening forests and turning rivers into sewage pipes and our lakes into cesspools

Condemning all environmental and safety measures as too costly in terms of jobs and money

Cynically labeling research as junk science and fuzzy math and stalling for more study

Mocking their foolish efforts at saving tiny mice, foolish desert fish, stupid frogs and such

Plunging blindly on with the righteous moral authority granted to us by our one true savior

That Threatenen' Wacko Agenda

Pushing to tax the word of Christ like it was some kinda giant pyramid scheme

Promoting an end to burnin honest Clean Coal for a life in the cold and fearful dark

Putting trees, birds, fish and like clean air up front of families, jobs and christian values

Want us all eating that slimy soft tofu instead of good old supersize cheese fries

They’ll give your kids hands-on sex education, even before they learn to read

Said real hot water washing and nice clothes dryers are horribly evil polluters

Trying to make us turn down our thermostats and pull on some old itchy sweaters

Sponsoring some crazy bill to regulate barbecue and even lawnmower emissions

Lobbying to put the rights of cows and pigs above the price needs of decent consumers

Opposed to credit card bailouts meant to bring relief to us honest working families

Wantin us all eatin shriveled up organic muffins instead of hearty krispykremes

Would have us all smoking that dope sos we forget all about their elitist policies

Don’t like your nice green lawn and aim to close up all the golf courses

They’d like to force you to pick through dirty trash for junk they say needs recycled

Stoppin outside developers from bringing us in them good new construction jobs

Wantin to limit the size of your house and how much electricity you can use

Tryin to shove abortion, gay marriage and school prayer into the background

Foistin their tired, failed socialist universal healthcare schemes on us once again

Pushin fool laws to take away our sacred right to bear arms

Gonna even tax you for those few extry pounds that make you look real husky

Makin you quiet down your pickups and Harleys sos they can hear the stupid birds

Bannin your blazin security nightlights cause they want to save energy and see whatever stars

Forcin real sacrifice on families just to set an example in their fool greenhouse gas scam

Corrupting our children’s morals with their godless fuzzy science and junk maths

Want you to pass a test and get a license to have kids even though our God says to be fruitful

Plan on gutting our military and leaving us open to all kind of evil foreign terror

These wackos target our traditional lifestyle with that job-killing, costly hoax of climate change

Why they even want you to carry groceries on a bicycle like some frickin peasant

Out to make Big Gulps more expensive and ban double meat bacon cheeseburgers

Sayin Cheetos are unhealthy and Mountain Dew’s got too much sugar and caffeine

Don’t even want you throwing out fast food cups and bags and all that other messy shit

They’re wantin to tighten up on credit is threatenin our hallowed consumer lifestyle

Don’t even recognize the sanctity of the NFL or the importance of NASCAR to our way of life

Wanting to steal our relaxation and comfort and turn us all into pencilneck vegans

Their nutcake ideas are costing us real money, jobs and convenience every day

That wacko agenda is eroding our traditional family way of life, even as we pray

Marginalize Their Greedy Squeals

Cast out the amoral animals who for so long have set the agenda that led us into this mess

Throw out the fools who invented these various greedy, non-renewable ponzi pyramids

Go back to the best of the past and meld it to the New Green

Kick out those so-called free market, bulldoze-and-run, copy-and-paste developers

Because now they’ve had their 50 years of gluttonous and uncurbed, wanton destruction

Bring back respect and love for simply sustaining the earth and its treasures

Give up the worship of blind greed that has stolen so much without even paying interest

Root out the lie that it all must come down to the money, every single goddamn time

Wake up the financial innovators still caught in their wrung-out, unregulated NeoCon MLM schemes

Finally, even give peace a try, now that they have had their violent way for far too long

Bring back the dreams they so long have scornfully rejected without even a fair hearing

Their time is over now, so take a look around and simply review their accomplishments

Brush aside those who for too many years have labeled you as simple and foolish idealists

For they’ve starred too long in this show that has resulted in a dirty and unsustainable mess

Don’t bother to fight them, let’s just everybody move out quietly and head the other way

Forget their smash and grab, waste for today, foolishly noisy, selfish rationalizations

Get back in tune with the ancient song of the earth they still find so goddamn silly

Leave them to their phony memoirs but never forget their very real and very destructive lessons

Get them out of the way now, but not out of our history books

Quietly ignore their constant self-abusive hurry, anger, stress, noise and worry

Even bring back a bit from the sixties and we shall try to overcome, once again

Don’t struggle against them but don’t bother listening to them anymore, either

Ease them from power, leave them stewing inside their expensive locked and gated compounds

Clean up their messes, get on the right path and simply don’t let them do it again

Turn off their reasonless noisemakers and recycle their foolish gas-powered toys

Now we’ve seen their results and it’s time to straighten up and get started on our own

Go about your good business and leave them to strangle alone in phony suits and ties

Marginalize them with an overwhelming kindness and a smilingly-smothering concern

Herd them safely together like 1^st graders, in their own simple but noisy confusion

They had their best shot but now have walked away, tasking us with rescuing the future

Let a billion small voices overcome their scripted and poisonous corporate sound bites

Allow the sounds of nature to replace their random and self-centered advert nattering

Save more for those to come instead of stripping and wasting all we can now for ourselves

Smile politely as you pass by their lawn chairs, moving away in a different direction

Clean up their glossy spin along with all the careless litter they left on the ground

Forget their phony free market healthcare, education, environment and poverty solutions

Turn their toxic legacy into a great lesson that we shall never forget and never have to repeat

Junk their worn-out fantasy religious rationalizations and venal social darwinism

Free eroded corpro-conglomerated farm land from pesticides, fossil water and petro-fertilizers

Release our domestic animals from the ongoing holocaust their ignoble corporate masters perfected

Re-measure progress by the sustainable wild salmon harvest not by how many bloated SUVs they sold

Turn away from cynically smirking leaders reading with false twangs the speeches that others wrote

Suffocate them gently with soft pillows stuffed full of fluffy peace and love

Demonstrate that you understand them and then force them to listen to you for a change

Leave them squawking in meaningless, impotent rage - and then go post the video

Tax the living shit out of them in the name of those they have outsourced and displaced

Turn quietly aside and relegate them to a small but shrilly-whining margin

Don’t forget all their lessons and don’t let them back in power, ever again

Keep them aware of their results 24x7, wherever they choose to travel

Redistribute their pirated assets for schools, clinics, infrastructure and reclamation projects

Put them to work on chicken farms, in feedlots and bent painfully over in the onion fields

Convert some of their crumbling so-called trophy homes into museums of unvarnished greed

Preserve and combine names, dates and deeds into a twisted but cohesive history

Answer their last bailout pleas with empathetic offers of work at cleaning urban ERs

Busy their marketing and advertising geniuses promoting peaceful cooperation

Thoroughly safety test their adulterated, imported products on them, their families and their pets

Pester them with swindled widows, forgotten children, the uninsured and outsourced workers

Study their bios that their likes are prevented from ever again rising to power

Find ways to treat their greedy, monomaniacal, need to ignorant power with mercy

Set them savagely against each other in inconsequential and harmless competitions

Marginalize their greedy squeals for they led us to waste too much, for far too long

Step Up And Respin Ourselves

ditch the profitable fiction that war is simply a matter of our own unchangeable genetics

quit going forth and multiplying dumbly and decrease our numbers to a sustainable level

put aside our mindless, noisy, smoking toys and simply ponder the wind in the trees for a moment

forsake shortsighted smash and grab profit for a 1000 year economy and a thoughtful culture

dump the devastating myth that only we were born with a soul in the image of our fantasy gods

remeasure our success by what remains for our those who perchance might follow us

respin our myths and make it our responsibility to pass on an intact web of life

realize that there are neither jobs nor money without an ecosystem to support them

abolish the sinful suffering we criminally inflict upon our domesticated brothers…

understand well their sacrifices and at least consume them with some recognition

integrate our brilliant but incomplete economic system into the natural world that supports it

abandon outdated notions that clean air and water are merely so-called free goods

quit ignoring our toxic byproducts, dead bycatch and long-lasting side effects

stop believing that a giant shoddily-built house is the ultimate in status and luxury

stay under the radar instead of trying to buy people’s attention on 28% interest credit cards

pay a deposit on that packaging and make manufacturers take back wornout goods

for god’s sake, save fossil fuels and subsidize solar, wind and thorium reactors

get our dumbass noses out of the middle east by getting off of their petroleum

stop wasting more than all the other nations combined on our so-called dEfense

don’t bother building 500 horsepower hydrogen vehicles that fall apart in 3 years

let’s not make things clean and efficient merely to support another 3 billion in poverty

forget about interstellar travel until we right this little space capsule called earth

tax the fossil fuel emission costs they have so successfully and so improperly externalized

stop rewarding uncontrollable greed, blind ambition and absolute egocentrism

end huge bonuses for exporting jobs and pollution to slave-based economies

just quit letting it all come down to money in the end - every single goddamn time

reverse bad decisions even if they were made in private talks with one’s personal savior

just set the example for a greener world instead of whining about what others should do

tax the fat and the lazy just like the smokers, the drinkers and the gamblers

understand: you ain’t bustin out of this pigsty and flyin off to some half-baked heaven

realize that they’ll never compete to provide healthcare for the poor or the sick

just accept that there really aint a market-based solution to every single problem

treat keeping quiet as a virtue instead of generating noise with everything we do

tax all of the franchised religions at corporate rates to fund forgotten social programs

kick back at the credit moneychangers and stone the payday usurers into a docile submission

stop believing in fairytale eternal compound growth and embrace a sustainable steady state future

Sanctuario

I finally found this small place inside of me where I can go and really get away

There it’s always cool and shady, it is quiet and I can take comfort at my leisure

No one else can get in there with me but I may freely come and go,

Though I might be long absent, trudging down these hot and dusty roads

But when at last I find refuge again within that clean and well-watered courtyard

I easily imagine, for a while, that it all makes good sense once more

In my leafy refugio, sunlight remains cool and gentle beneath whispering Alamosa trees

It’s easy to unwind with all the loud and randomly chaotic outbursts so far away

There is this small and sheltered patio where I tend the geraniums and my fish pond

Where songbirds still find a home and butterflies are gliding past bumblebees

There the sound of small running water tinkles out its infinite variations

And just a bit of a cool breeze is ruffling the surface of that small pond

Some flower is always blooming and the soil is cool and moist upon bare feet

I remain quite satisfied for periods not measurable within my allotted time

From that hidden mesa, open to the gentle sun of winter, I look out with gladness

And all these good things in their proper places intertwine, with a quiet grace

Clean air wafts the scent of slow home cooking lightly to my nostrils

The stars and the Milky Way are not obscured by foolish nightlights here

I leave the muddy, trail-stained garments outside my precious sanctuario

Then I jump into the clear cool water to rinse the dirt of the world from my skin

There my trees are ripe with fruit and the golden autumn lasts for weeks

When the good rain falls it is always gentle and likely forms a rainbow

In the winter the southern sun warms my sheltered patio in gentle yellow comfort

The children’s voices carry to me and somewhere a wind chime plays quite softly

Time has long sanctified this place and left it to hold ancient memories

Its old timbers, red flagstone patio and sandstone stucco bring a real sense of place

There is no foolish lawn to be mowed, but honest chores still need to be completed

A good old dog splashes through the shore plants as frogs leap into the pond

Songbirds nest and crows gather to tell stories among the whispering Alamosa trees

And far above, the snow blows across those ancient glaciers, upon our sacred peak