Bless Our Only Home And Damn Our Hurtful Ways

Bless the peaceful morning light that’s always been there to help us to awaken

Damn the gutted, blighted and abandoned urban landscapes

Bless the children’s upturned and smiling faces

Damn the slobs gaining weight while only producing sewage and litter

Bless the waves that strike the cliffs and lift the salt in smoky spray

Damn the factory fishing fleets with their gruesome toll of ByCatch

Bless those who work so hard and cheerfully to make us well again

Damn the greedy and self-serving whose so-called freedom rapes this land

Bless the myriad creatures in the ever-changing web of life

Damn the corporations that clearcut and dam until the salmon can no longer spawn

Bless the sick whose courage is a lesson to the healers

Damn the myriad poisons in the food and the water and the carcinogens in the air

Bless the birds whose gentle voices wake us to each and every newborn day

Damn those who take all their Wreckreation in gasoline-powered noisemakers

Bless the evening rain gently tapping on the window panes

Damn the overpopulation bringing deforestation, drought, famine and war

Bless the music so mercifully given us from whatever source it flows

Damn the angry voices with their loud, hoarse but empty shouts

Bless the farmer who grows our food and is the good steward of our land

Damn those BigAg soil killers whose only goal is higher stock prices via greedy oligopoly

Bless the patchy fog that gives a new perspective to those deeply green foothills

Damn the dogs of war, forever sapping human and economic resources

Bless the tiny life forms of that miraculous microcosm existing both within and outside of us

Damn the loud, the thoughtless, the blindly hostile and the obnoxious

Bless the protective silence that envelops us in the night

Damn the free market for letting mothers starve just to feed their children

Bless the source of our scientific discoveries and engineering skills

Damn those who loudly market Viagra instead of curing malaria

Bless those who count their blessings with a quiet, internal smile

Damn those who live just to show off every new bauble that they buy

Bless the heroes who find the ways to help the poor to help themselves

Damn the fundamentalists wound too far and too tightly up their literalist cocoons

Bless the mothers who use up their own lives to nurture their own children

Damn those whose twisted faith keeps women covered, pregnant, barefoot and ignorant

Bless the snows that fill the streams that water the crops that feed us all

Damn the shortsighted eco-embezzlers who profitably drain irreplaceable fossil aquifers

Bless the sound of distant thunder in the velvet darkness on an autumn night

Damn the incessant roar of the interstate and the fumes that fill our homes

Bless the changing of the seasons in the great wheel of the world

Damn the vapid tourists, always whining for the sun to shine

Bless our faithful dogs who wake with the great joy of togetherness, every morning

Damn those wielding political correctness simply to gain control over those they fear

Bless those who brought the hot, running water and electricity to our homes

Damn real estate plays and the same tired development plans used everywhere

Bless the European lands from which my forefathers had to emigrate

Damn all their sycophant spokesmen and their orchestrated fairytale press releases

Bless the ancient Bristlecones, watching centuries pass by, nearly at the timberline

Damn the ‘quick fix’ and the ‘just for now’ that, through management ineptitude, never cease

Bless the mighty bluefin tuna cruising the blue depths in warm-blooded hunting packs

Damn the Healthy Forests, Clear Skies and No Net Loss initiatives of so-called Conservatives

Bless the big families and their memories and the places that they lived so long

Damn Harleys, dirt bikes and ATVs, snowmobiles, jet skis and giant RVs

Bless those of quiet faith which runs very deep but remains mostly hidden

Damn drive-thru food, 50 oz sodas and their castoff packaging rotting on the ground

Bless the patterns in the clouds and their reflections on the many northern lakes

Damn the casinos and the slot machines, the blackjack tables and the roulette wheels

Bless the pedestrians, folk musicians and those in old but sturdy clothing

Damn augmented anorexic real estate pros in sunglasses with their tinted BMW windows up

Bless those who can fix and will repair, who maintain and do not deceive

Damn a market system that makes desired resources more expensive until they are simply gone

Bless the predawn hour when things can be brought into some decent perspective, for a moment

Damn the endless pressure to do things for the sake of some shoulder-climber’s fantasy schedule

Bless the mystic harmony in the math behind the orbits of the planets

Damn those who would recast science as simply another dumb-downed political debate

Bless the idealistic young people who challenge our beliefs and assumptions

Damn those who use drugs and terror to make orphan children kill

Bless the gentle steer for providing us with his good nutrition

Damn the soulless farming gulag that drags tortured victims to our tables

Bless the quiet music of the creek in its endless variations upon so many themes

Damn those whose presence is always accompanied by so much unnecessary noise

Bless those who can tolerate uncertainty and can still live with some doubt

Damn the irrational faithful who survive only upon regurgitated sound bites

Bless the new discoveries that help us to comfortably enjoy more while using less

Damn the wasteful, the inefficient, the oversized and the polluting

Bless those who can prototype and breadboard, innovate and discover

Damn those who mindlessly take for granted household electricity and hot water

Bless the little girl who smiles up and says so easily, ‘I love you, Daddy’

Damn to a living hell those who recruit suicide bombers in the name of god

Bless the cooling breeze that arrives with the shady afternoon thunder clouds

Damn the hot, dry wind that blows endlessly during this perpetual drought

Bless the innocent and peaceful beauty of the open countryside

Damn the smash and grab developers whose greedy work destroys the very dreams they sell

Bless the powerful salmon who feed the killer whales, eagles and the giant Kodiak bears

Damn the toxic factory fish farms producing tainted flesh made available in designer colors

Bless the rich and crusty bread which sustains us

Damn that plastic-wrapped, soulless white crap brought in semis from the baking factories

Bless sustainablility, interdependence, fewer people and a smaller footprint

Damn your mindless, consumptive, wasteful and inefficient so-called Progress

Bless good cops, volunteers, firefighters, medics and committed social workers

Damn the lobbyists, lawyers, bankers, politicians and advertisers

Bless the real farmers, dispatchers, nurses, doctors and garbage men

Damn the stock brokers, insurance, real estate and car salesmen

Bless the teachers, researchers, astronauts, inventors and smoke jumpers

Damn the evangelists, preachers, priests, imams, mullahs, rabbis, reverends and ministers

Bless energy independence and distributed micro power generation

Damn big oil and electricity, dirty coal and foreign dependence

Bless peaceful silence, open space, clean air and intact ecosystems

Damn eternally our spending ever more on the demented industry we call war

Bless those who strive to find harmony with the earth and its systems

Damn those who sculpt with bulldozers creating identical chain convenience stores

Bless the fullness, beauty and complexity of our short human lives

Damn a life experience drawn only from Hollywood movies and video games

Bless physics, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, ecology for the wonder they invoke

Damn drive-thrus, frozen meals, supersized drinks and disposable plastic forks

Bless those who take the time to try and make us think for ourselves

Damn those who try to sell us on their own short-sighted, selfish and stupid agendas

Bless the patient, merciful, forgiving, understanding and the sympathetic

Damn the road-raged, stressed-out, hyper, insecure and the caffeined-up

Bless the handicapped child who always tries so hard and smiles so sweetly

Damn the lazy & willfully ignorant as they graze vapidly in front of their media altars

Bless the built-to-last, easy-to-maintain and the better-than-it-has-to-be

Damn things ill-conceived and poorly-made – All things made to break and be thrown away

Bless the long and killing freezes of the cold dark winters

Damn the defenders of our liberties, scoffing though every year is warmer

Bless the clouds and moon, our sun, the planets, the Milky Way and beyond

Damn religious wars, slavery, forced prostitution and drug kingpins

Bless the ponds and lakes, creeks and streams, rivers, seas and oceans

Damn those awful things that we just keep on adding to the rain

Bless the change in sunlight that marks the slow flow of the seasons

Damn the 8-to-5 all year long with daylight savings time added for our so-called efficiency

Bless the myriad adaptations of the life force of which we are but one tiny groping pseudopod

Damn our fictional fabrication known as the soul, especially for granting it only to ourselves