Finally Lost My Wack Libtard Idealism

Lost sight of the person I once had wanted to become

Got comfortable with seeing bulldozers roaring everywhere I went

Got used to living in a greedy plastic land of marketing make believe

Gave up on those homemade, love-based, back-to-the-land, juvenile delusions

Forgot completely about swimming in clean water anymore in the summer

Grew able to ignore the polluted air since I was always behind dirty windows

Lost connection to the land but tuned into the stock markets

Came out of the forest and became a temporary stain on the pavement

Stopped looking for some small-footprint, self-sustaining lifestyle

Lost sight of the ideals that were instilled in me so long ago

Grew to find happiness in buying cheap new imports and saving nothing

Quit walking in the woods but made new trails with my noisy dirt bike

Learned to look for speculative potential behind all undeveloped land

Adopted a conservatism which promotes exploitation in all directions

Surrendered happily to every childish urge presented by the media

Succumbed to a fantasy lifestyle financed by expensive credit cards

Gradually lost empathy with the poor and totally forgot the underprivileged

No longer plant trees on Earth Day but I do know which SUV has more horsepower

Lost sight of happiness in the endless rush after pleasures I never remember

Look right on thru the endless suffering of my less successful brothers

Don’t worry about safe, homemade, organic food cause I eat out all the time

Forgot how to think critically and do not listen to that quiet voice inside me anymore, either

Don’t care that I lost track of the cycles of the moon and the seasons

Remain ignorant of science but freely quote from hundreds of Hollywood releases

Gave up on the redwoods and no longer fear for the baby seals

Let the rain forests go and what good, really, were those polar bears anyway?

Not going back to the land except on my powerful overpriced and financed OHV

No longer question the morality of war if our born-again leaders find it necessary

Quit worrying about a planet that I do not own and cannot control

learned to overlook my extra 25 pounds, double chin and metabolic syndrome

Found it so much easier swimming deep inside the school rather than against the tide

Gave my children everything in hopes they would always find me cool

Spend thousands on an illusion that I am not like those who came before me

Lost sight of the person that I had wanted to become when I finally grew up

Barely notice that I stay at work too long and commute way too far

Gave up any sense of responsibility for leaving behind a better world

Find it easy to sit semi-comatose flipping channels instead of reading books

Narrowed a broad curiosity into eToy price comparisons and stock watching

Haven’t taken up a new sport or picked up an old one since I don’t want to know when

No longer strive for a mystical connection to any land, weather or animals

Don’t really recognize the person in any of my old pictures

Sometimes try to consider what I might have thought of my new self, way back then

Caught up in watering, poisoning, fertilizing and mowing the stupid grass I so detested

Grew embarrassed of recycling when my Conservative betters deemed it a sign of weakness

Foolishly dress like a ‘Professional’ to keep a job I actually loathe very much

Don’t bother checking miles per gallon or tailpipe emissions but I know my 0 to 60 times

Quit worrying where the food comes from or where the garbage goes

Forgot about acid rain, global warming, overpopulation and toxic chemicals

Convinced now that greed is enshrined in our infallible constitution and the holy bible

Trying to make a difference no longer keeps me awake in the night

Long ago put down the musical instrument I once found so important

Wake up with thoughts of who I must backstab at work instead of who I should try to be

Quit living in the moment and simply work for short, mindless breaks

Never walk quietly and all alone in the moonlight anymore

Lost sight of all the reasons I once had to strive for a better world

Focused quite clearly on myself and what the kids want right now

Sometimes wonder who this person is that I married so long ago

Grown quite accustomed to the sight of miles of brand new and identical Burbs

Content with family adventure at some new and distant shopping mall

Anti-depressants and alcohol help to smooth out the bumps and the glitches

Feel cheated cause I didn’t spend hours at electronic games like my kids get to do

Accepted Jesus as my personal savior and abdicated all of my rational responsibility

No longer see well enough to scan those far off horizons for spiritual clues

Don’t bother to stop for the rainbows I only see now through my bug-splattered windshield

Look forward to salty snacks snatched from cellophane bags

Use my remaining thinking skills to analyze overblown corporate sporting events

Pretend to look rich to those just like me on vacations none of us can actually afford

Dress up like an outlaw on my financed Harley on weekends, insured by the AARP

Expect to maintain my accustomed lifestyle from the Social Security I so richly deserve

Paid off my credit cards again by cashing out more unearned home equity, then filed Chapter 7

Made big money cashing out my home & leaving the community my kids can’t afford to live in

Lost sight of the great wheel and was to quickly thrown off the corporate merry-go-round

Don’t feel like that aging person I don’t recognize in unexpected glances in mirrors

Am not a litterbug but don’t recycle since it doesn’t really matter

Love my second home but am mildly appalled by habitat destruction

Take fashion cues from my kids marketers, adding lame twists of my own

Quite often need a morning Ibuprofen just from sleeping wrong

Don’t walk the sidewalks anymore for fear of being seen as squishy

Financed a new and bigger house after the kids simply ruined the old one

Plumbers and electricians, roofers and carpenters make me uneasy

No longer unaware of a tee shirt in which the sweat has dried in its place

My search of the unknowable ended in small tithes and a blind trust in Jesus

Staunched my bleeding heart with a swab of Social Darwinism

Now we pull together with the tough love of compassionate conservatism

All the attractive women call me Sir and recommend what their fathers like for me

Spent the money my parents left me on a facelift and a new sports sedan

Found some drawings I once made but quickly regained my petty focus

Lost sight of stars that had guided me, but not just because of all the light pollution

No longer see important images in those great western skies

Now prefer the non-stop, empty din of the media to culturing peaceful silence within

Would not mind seeing all that empty wilderness if I did not have to walk to get there

Lay in bed trying to figure out how I can make all that money I need real quick

Learned that if I cannot really afford it, at least I can still put it on the credit card

Hapless Heartland Homeboy

I’m a six-pack cowboy ridin the range between beer joints in my loud pickup truck

I work a hard outside job for my money while shrugging off yet another hangover

smoke my Marboros because they’re made fer us tough but lonely cowboys

hawk up green slyme and casually toss my butts straight down on the ground

don’t trust them slick liberal boys in ther fancy new york suits

grew up in crowded apartments but replanted my roots to the country

been divorced three times and I’m way behind on alimony and child support

Budweiser is still the king of beers and NASCAR is the greatest sport ever

support our boys overseas protectin us from them sick terrorist sonsabitches

love that Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread with a little Frinch’s mustard

got a friend who cooks up good meth in his trailer down by the interstate

My girlfriend sometimes even cleans the toilet when she’s on that stuff

lost my license on another DUI and I still cain’t afford no car insurance

had three teeth pulled but it dinit hurt too much what with the Vicadin and beer

not really a part of the trash I live and work and play and sleep in ever day

My story don’t sound too bad when I’m sitting on a barstool durin happy hour

need new tires on the pickup and the muffler and the bumper are falling off

get 127 channels from the dish on the big screen I financed down to the mall

was late on the rent again but did charge the little lady a new weight loss plan

tore up my old credit card and got me anothern with no interest - fer 3 months!

lost my last job because of the goddamn terrorists and them yellow librals

Found a really old speeding ticket underneath the truck seat after my arrest

got them presents on sale late on Christmas eve over to the Wal-Mart

Left that puppy behind at the last rental after it shit all over the house and yard

got two boys who cain’t read but damn shore know how ta fight

They don’t do too good in school, but then, it looks like I turned out all right

smacked the old lady in the eye after we got home late from drinking

Then she used up our whole dam phone card bawling to her fat, slutty mother

got some dents and primer paint on the pickup but it still looks like a fightin vehicle

Boy, the sound of that country music makes me wanna drain off this last beer

like to look down on women’s legs in their little cars from my pickup’s seat

Praise Jesus and fuck that evolution cuz I ain’t kin ta no damn monkeys

like to fish and hunt and love to go camp in the great outdoors

save money by changing my oil in the woods right nexta where I dump my trash

got guns to protect me from when them black helicopters come

I say we get the USA out of the damn UN and the stinkin UN out of the USA

making less but gas and rent and food and cable cost more all the time

have to say I’m pretty satisfied with the way that things are goin

rolled all my bills into one monthly payment and the bar still cashes my paycheck

My 14 year old daughter run away and got knocked up by some ugly truck driver

want to trade in my snow machine on a Harley as soon as it warms up

There’s yellow shit underneath my toenails and scabs that don’t heal on my arms

I never took no welfare but I gotta say we did camp out for a while last summer

We took baths with paper towels in the restrooms down ta the Conoco

slapped the wife around for buying kids clothes at the Goodwill

don’t buy much flour or rice but we do eat a lotta Doritos and Reese’s Cups

don’t see no big-boy pickups in fronta Starbucks buying them gimmick lattes

Health food aint nethin but expensive BS fer queers and dumbass liberals

think my eyes are still good cuz I don’t set there reading all the time

Got my tax refund early from a payday loaner and bought the kids a xBox

couldn’t be cooped up in some office all day long at some freakin’ little desk

I’ll take the freedom to piss all over a different construction site every summer

I say God Bless America! and you cain love her or you cain just go ahead and leave her

Do’t cared that all my clothes are made in China and my gas money funds them tearwrists

don’t give a shit about no pollution and Hey! What has any damn polar bear ever done fer me?

The old lady’s got a little sugar but she’s still two full tons of real fun

took the kids to Vegas on vacation last time I got unemployment

Jimmy Jr split his head wide open while I was inside playing blackjack

caught somethin nasty from the waitress down ta the Dew Drop Inn

Told the wife I got bit up when I was out hunting with the boys

almost bought me a pre-fab but thanks ta the liberals, the gotdamn loan fell through

My sister has six kids and her old man run off three years ago

gonna get me a little spread and one of them fancy ridin lawnmowers

My dumbass kid just got his nose pierced and has a tattoo of a skull

keep a pistol o the passenger seat on my way to work, jest in case

The brother-in-law went to jail for gettin beat up in a bar by an off-duty cop

like to relax by sliding dollar bills down inside exotic dancers panties

The house is full of roaches and the fuckin’ landlord just don’t care

got drunk and dropped the turkey so I slapped the shit outta the kids

Went down to the tavern and left the boys in the truck with Big Gulps

forgot about the damn school play and bawled the wife out for being late with dinner

There’s hairs all stuck in some dried up yellow crud on our bathroom floor

won’t smoke no cheap-ass generic cigarettes just to save 50 cents a pack

always buy me a couple of lotto tickets, just in case, you know, heh-heh

swore off going to any church but I talk with jesus most every day

Thick, curly hair is growin at funny angles out my ears and my nose

don’t own no damn computer and I say screw the whole fekin Internet

So, let’s round up all them Mexicans and make the Homos string ‘em up

pissed a little blood on Sunday morning and got this cough that don’t go away

The kids got sent home from school again becausa them damn head lice

still like my beer but you can jest toss them vegetables out for the rabbits

My buddy broke a bottle on my forehead and we still don’t remember why

I’m 5’9” and 160 lbs. of evil little fuckup and I threaten bicycles with my pickup

Just the other day I run down two stray cats who couldn’t move fast enough

got grease under my fingernails and I’m white as a ghost under my wife-beater shirt

got no more butt left but I’m working on a real nice little beer belly

pitch them McDonald wrappers straight out the truck as I lick my dirty fingers clean

fity oz Mountain Dews keep me goin through them tough afternoons at the job

don’t know no percents, fractions are real small and I don’t count my change

Sumbuddy’s gotta have a money angle on this bullshit global warming stuff

got a bald spot under my ball cap but I don’t need no goddamn Viagra, baby

My mom has a little trailer where she watches Survivor and sips her Bourbon

chased a deer for an hour on my snowmobile before we run outta beer

Without no health insurance, we just take the kids down ta the ER whenever they get hurt

Abortion’s a gotdam sin, flag burning surely a crime and the 10 commandments are the law

I say we nuke them mothfakers first and then maybe later try to sort it out

we got to stop the queers and liberals from overrunning the whole damn country

Let’s just go over there and take all their shittin’ oil and shut them the fuck right up

To hell with recycling - until you pay me for it, I got better things to do

often fall asleep on the couch and snore with my mouth open and the TV on

don’t own no suit, cant tie no tie and don’t wear no fancy damn cologne

got leathery wrinkles on the back of my skinny, sunburned neck

like to whip somebody’s ass and I don’t want no more Anger Management class

got me a real job building townhomes for some dumbass urban numbnuts

don’t do no housework but I make some mean burgers on the grill

Too much school turns you into some kind of friggin’ pussy

warm up the truck for ten minutes outside the apartment when it’s cold

Rentin videos and a bag of potato chips are cheaper than a babysitter

try to splash the fuckin joggers when I drive by em in the rain

why would anybody in their right mind ever go for a stinkin’ walk

got a thing going with Lois who sells us doughnuts at the job site

like to build me a deck off the modular and put up one of them bubbly hottubs

don’t take no gotdam vitamins or put some silly shit on my hands

school says Ricky needs glasses but it ain’t none of their damn business

some fucker tried to trick me into a payment plan for braces for the kid

the old lady’s veins are all swol up and her ankles are getting real fat

we got us a family bible standing up by the DVDs in the entertainment center

you shoulda seen the tits on that blonde in the magazine in the portapotty

like to trade in my old pickup on a brand new Silverado if I could get the credit

gonna buy me a boat and take the whole family fishin’ out to the lake

ruint the carpet at the last place but the landlord screwed us so we didn’t clean it

got $18 and a half a tank of gas that’s gonna last me ‘til this friday

How Could We Be Like This?

Why did you scrawl ‘No Trespassing’ on old boards all around your filthy little pig sty

Who would try to root you out from that vile and tiny piece of your hog heaven

How could you simply flick your filthy butts down wherever they were finished

And why were the empty packs also permitted to fall crumpled to the ground

Why was it all right if you just tossed your cans aside, somewhere in the bushes

If you just didn’t give a damn, why was your pickup bed always so clean and empty

Tell me of the great pleasure you took from a loud muffler on that pathetically obese pickup

What was so great about drunkenly blaring music so long after two in the morning

So was it really OK to make all those new bandit trails on your obnoxious ATV

Where was the pleasure in ripping up the turf with a smoky, noisy dirt bike

How did you manage to shout so loud and so hoarsely for so very long

Who taught those fat, young girls to swear so coarsely in such hissy voices

How many ways did you find to exclaim with such great fervor that you just didn’t give a fuck

How many times did you let your boyfriend smack you and your helpless little son around

Was there any way that you could ever turn down free donuts or a Big Gulp

Were you really big and tough or was it pretty much just poison-laden fat

Were you able to spend your whole life watching DVDs and playing videos

Why did you drop out of that expensive school your helicopter parents finally got you into

Did it make any real sense to pull a huge speed boat behind a giant truck

Do you know why you wore an item once and then just tossed it casually aside

What do you want to be now that you’ve grow old and your credit has run dry

When did God grant you the right to cheat the illegales you enslave at jobs that we wont do

How were we stronger as a nation for your ingrained over-consumption

Show me how your asian plastic decal ribbon made you some kind of an ever-vigilant patriot

How could you love America so much if you could not always find it on a map

Why did you take comfort in us spending more on arms than all the other countries combined

How come everything you got was stamped ‘Adulterated By Slaves Polluting China’

Where have all the engineers gone who knew how to take us to the moon and back

Could your children read and write or would they supposed to learn that when they got to college

How long could the scripted bullshit you read so convincingly dupe the illiterates who elected you

How did you always easily overlook those who lay in filthy castoffs on the dirty streets

Why should I support you now that you are fat, sick, hurt, old and haven’t saved a cent

Tell me all the wondrous things your personal relationship with Christ has provided you

What good was yet another clumsy, obese & overpriced pickup to your everlasting soul

How could we dare to tell others to preserve ecosystems after we shattered the New World

How recharging was it really - having your drunk, fat ass dragged around atop a jet ski

Who do you think you were to demand that we clearcut our tiny remaining old-growth forests

For which of our precious unborns did we rip the final drops of oil from our last wilderness areas

Where did you get the gall to righteously preach abstinence and call it foreign aid

Who convinced you that we alone carried a bright moral compass for the entire world

How could your family be so rich and educated yet produce an airhead like yourself

Why would you let them spend a $trillion creating a petro-haven for islamic terrorists

How was it you thought you’d be able to work til 75 when you were laid off for good at 52

What can your son do that five Indians will not together do better, cheaper and faster

Since you could not recall last years 4^th of July, how then could you plan for your future

Why did CEOs globalize for bonuses except that all might live in an equally-abject poverty

How come you always drove a brand new car but never had any money saved at all

Why did you need 15 rooms for 3.7 people, 5 blathering TVs and a few unopened books

Tell me again all about how you were so lost but at last found your personal savior

Whose voice was it that you really heard on your knees praising sweet Jesus, my tired brother

What the fuck would you have done forever in your fuzzy and evangelical paradise

Would you still overeat and lay on the couch in your own stinking gas

What did you mean saying “It’s only business” as your layoffs shattered people’s lives

Why did you deserve so many times more money than the workers you continually shed

Where did your lovely daughter get those crude tattoos and nipple piercings

Why did your son still smoke dope if he seemed OK when he stayed on his meds

What did you plan to do all day when you were thoughtlessly thrown off the treadmill for good

Did interminable golf and fishing satisfy your precious, unique and everlasting soul

If you worked so hard for your family why did you not spend any time with them

Should you possibly have given a damn about some phony worldwide water crisis

How did you dare to idle your Ram-tough pickup just to run the goddamn air conditioning

Do you really believe your uninformed, fat and spoiled offspring can lay claim to world leadership

Could your One God condemn their True God’s followers to eternal Hell, just as theirs did to you

How did you go on wasting more in a week than they earned in a year for so many years

Did you deliberately raise children to be stupid enough to accept the mess that you are leaving them

How could you grant yourself the baseless right to be above and apart from the plants and animals

Why did you fail to notice that your society and lifestyle were simply unsustainable

How is it that you had no clue as to why you could not sleep at night

By what authority did you try and spread corporate democracy and franchised free enterprise

What made you believe others really wanted to share your synthetic, commercial visions

Why would you think that hair dye and skin cream could make you young inside again

What did your merciful God counsel you regarding that fifth new 300 horsepower SUV

How exceptionist did you think you were to chant ‘God Bless America’ at every staged photo-op

Why did you support a crooked Social Darwinism based on birthright, prejudice and favoritism

What did you really do with all the time you saved at all those drive-through windows

Why did your so-called leaders hire marketers to sell the policies of their corporate handlers to you

How come they confined themselves to 30 second sound bites whenever they had to talk to you

Why did your favorite so-called news channels spew forth the same sponsored vapid tripe

If you loved your kids so goddamn much, why did you leave them a gutted and shabbier world

How come you could name 50 actors but not a single biologist, much less one chemist

What drove your total focus upon satisfying your greedy hyper-consumerist needs

What god taught you to cast blind eyes on all those who lived on but a dollar per day

How did your get-rich-quick stock and real estate schemes help create a better society

As you died did you reflect in peace upon the many nights spent laying dissipated in front of TV

Why did you eat meat raised with all the soul there is in efficient modern factory production

Who really benefited from your narrow specialization and proudly loud ignorance

What kind of leader made great political decisions based on fantasy talks with a personal savior

Why did you deny them contraception yet refuse to help all their innocent, bastard children

Why would you replace biological diversity with poverty, suffering, filth and ignorance

What remained to you from all those years of anger, stress, anxiety and hurry

Did they extol your lengthy and expensive devotion to pro football and NASCAR in your obituary

At your funeral, was it noted you never left the house without several coats of cosmetics

Who were you to seek continuous immediate gratification even while earning your eternal rewards

How could you act like the world was yours to be pillaged in your patriotic pursuit of happiness

Why did it confuse you so much when you awoke in real silence for just a moment

How did you mostly stuff down the portions that were twice as large as you needed and toss the rest

How could you cast off all of this stuff we now mine from your toxic, overflowing landfills

How was it you fouled the air and water and still sang America the Beautiful so very emotionally

A Manifest Destiny...Of Mass Destruction

There were these great hardwood and evergreen forests standing undisturbed for millennia

We invented clear-cutting efficiency and the gasoline-powered chain saw

The land we found was full of life and a thousand kind of plants

We created lawns of over-watered, chemically treated, heavily fertilized bluegrass

The rivers teemed with spawning salmon on both wild and lonely coasts

We built dams and cut down the trees that sheltered their tiny fry, and they disappeared

The buffalo, grizzly, wolf and elk roamed the plains in uncounted numbers

We devised agribusiness to monocrop and to hold our livestock as deathcamp prisoners

The land held great wealth in silver, gold, oil, iron and coal

We gave the greedy and shortsighted free rein to gouge it out and walk away for 7 cents an acre

Snow fell white and pure and lay undisturbed all Winter in the mountain valleys

We turned it black with exhausts and the oil spilled on our great roads

Aquifers deep within the earth stored up clean water for a million years

We pumped it out in a heartbeat to irrigate subsidized crops for cows & snack foods

Sometimes the smoke from great unchecked fires blanketed the land for weeks

Now every day we belch out more toxic, climate-changing gases in unimaginable volumes

Songbirds in their millions greeted each and all the spring mornings

There are many now who have never heard them and so, cannot ever miss them

The skies were darkened by flights of uncountable passenger pigeons over billions of acres

We wiped out these so-called free goods as a cheap and easy to obtain food source

Men lived in tiny bands whose small household messes soon healed over as they moved on

Now billions squat in their own wastes under thick, toxic clouds of their own making

A group could strike out on its own to lands where no one had ever lived

We installed roads leading to identical strip malls from sea to shining sea

Every spring the gentle showers would slowly wake the land from a long winter

During such rains now, a bolus of coal-fired acid rain poisons the lakes and stunts the trees

A myriad of frogs croaked from a million scattered wetland patches

Today a tiny fraction still linger, many sporting exotic deformations

Grasses, flowers, field mice and hawks lived in many meadows

Weeds, broken glass, rats and cockroaches share empty lots with drunks, prostitutes & addicts

The great cats padded along in their mystical silence throughout the world

Now we require the use of the entire habitat that once sustained them

The cetaceans with their huge brains flourished in the oceans for a million years

Fifty thousand dolphins are sacrificed as our factory fishing bycatch, every season

Orangutans spent untold generations adapting to their remote jungle habitat

Today we just cut the trees down right out from underneath them in their so-called preserves

In the past the wolves would howl and the loons would cry out in the stillness

Now we roar on by in our loud trucks with 150 decibel music blasting, tossing out burger wrappers

It used to be that our numbers made sense in terms of what the earth could bear

Now the researchers say our population will stabilize at around 10-12 billion immortal souls

Every parent could believe his child’s life might be better than those who came before

More and more grow up condemned to mine garbage and carry water in dirty plastic buckets

The sun was cool in spring and one could count upon a dark freezeup every November

Now each year is right up among the very hottest that man has ever witnessed, but we don’t care

There was a time before plastics when we already had electricity and running water

Today there are electronic chips implanted in our beloved pets and spyware on our phones

Just a little while ago my own grandmother rode in a horse-drawn wagon

Now you can make a reservation to travel as a tourist into space

As children we rode three across hating the back seat of that hot old sedan

Now our kids must have varied snacks, video games, DVDs and personal air conditioning

Man witnessed the parade of the charismatic late Pleistocene megafauna

Now we are told that we are responsible for the latest in earth’s great mass extinctions

The lakes were filled with fish and there was always a chance of hooking an even bigger one

The government now warns against their consumption due to the pollution of our waters

The great eastern forest stretched from New York to Chicago

Now the trees and wildlife survive there merely at our decorative pleasure

Man and the bonobo evolved together sharing 98% of their DNA and homelands

Today we eat them even as we destroy their remaining jungle habitat

Giant bluefin tuna raced with warm blood throughout the worlds oceans

Now, even as we catch the last of them, their market price just keeps on going up

Old growth forests sheltered complete ecosystems for ten thousand years

Our technology replaced them with sterile single species tree farms

Galileo was absolved by the church for his heretical notions regarding the universe

Our evangelical zealots engage in a religious debate over evolution, without science

Oral traditions and rights of passage guided young men to adulthood in the tribe

Our fatherless youth must invent a directionless but violent culture on their own

Children learned the phases of the moon, the constellations and the useful plants

Now they clamor for fast food and the latest in couch-based electronic entertainment

Just yesterday one-income families with children could afford a small summer cottage

At this time speculators from far-away cities have driven up all the prices

In the old days family farms dotted the plains for hundreds of miles

Modern agribusiness has consolidated its holdings for industrial efficiency

We paddled the lakes in rowboats and canoes, murmuring and laughing

Now jetskis and speedboats whine and smoke from late morning right through the long twilights

Previously there existed a social contract between workers and their company

Today the corporation discards people as quickly as their useless and polluting byproducts

In the past the New World was filled with natural mysteries and untapped potential

We have successfully built an unbroken network of convenience stores and fast food outlets

The old folks helped stitch the children into the tapestry of their families

Now the elderly are seen as useless, drooling fools to be ignored, swindled and locked up

We minded our own business until called upon in times of great world crises

We protect our freedom and democracy thru preemptively defensive wars of liberation

Left alone, rivers meandered, sheltered fish, birds and frogs and left rich farming sediment

Now channelized, they provide no shelter for anything but trash and their runoff fouls the sea

The grasses, swamps and woodlands caught and held the precious rainwater

Acres of concrete now drain their oily burdens straight into vile but pathetic creeks

Every small town had its own hardware, grocery, pharmacy and feed stores

Merged and downsized corporations provide for our every modern need, straight from China

Bakers, butchers and small marketplace vendors were part of our everyday lives

Super stores stock shrink-wrapped factory feedlot steaks shipped inside dirty semi-trailers

Polar bears and seals shared the dance of life for thousands of generations

As we melt the ice, the bears must disappear right along with their prey

Tigers stalked for eons in the shadows of the volcanoes on the cold Kamchatka peninsula

The last of their penises are downed in expensive oriental soups as a purported aphrodisiac

Humans thrived while covered by a multiplicity of microfauna

Now household sanitizers speed the evolution of disease organisms & autoimmune disorders

For uncounted lifetimes worms, bacteria, plant detritus and silt tended to the soil

Pesticides, fertilizers, pivot sprinklers and massive machinery are now its uncaring stewards

For eons the earth and its atmosphere danced out their many graceful, interlocking cycles

In a hundred years we have altered the CO2 balance, along with the entire climate

Men took creatures as guiding spirits and thanked them for their sacrifices

We assume a dominion which permits atrocities on any and all animals, with our god’s blessing

In a delicate choreograph, chicks hatched just as their insect food appeared

With spring arriving earlier every year, the insects have gone and baby birds must starve

For centuries tropical mountain glaciers have served as natural reservoirs for the people below

With their melting people will go thirsty during the long and hot dry seasons

Coral reefs sheltered ecosystems for millions of underwater generations

Dynamite, cyanide, high temperature and UV rays have devastated them

Fetid swamps were known to reek with highly poisonous, miasmatic vapors

The cities built in their drained places fill infants brains with mercury and lead

Man was viewed as the measure of all things during the Age of Reason

We now rely upon faith-based initiatives to light our paranoid and superstitious way

Astronomers have mapped the universe and can see 14 billion years into the past

11% of our population cannot find our country on a globe of the earth

Our forefathers were amazed at the teeming schools of cod in the Atlantic

experts wonder if there yet remains even a viable breeding population

The mighty Colorado crossed the desert and fertilized the diversity of its delta

Now it is sucked dry in the desert, leaving behind only salt, chemicals and fertilizer

The Grand Canyon offered awe-inspiring, crystal clear, panoramic vistas

Nearby coal-fired generation plants now obscure the view on a quite regular basis

For centuries the Anasazi lived in cliff dwellings and grew enough food to live

Now the water is all spoken for and the great droughts that doomed them have returned for us

The Kwakiutl people competed to give away more than their neighbors at their potlatches

Our government subsidies the poor, enabling them to care for the needs of the rich for very little

The orcas and cetaceans have longer histories and brains as large as our own

Studies have shown that we have contaminated their blubber and their milk with our toxics

The Plains Indians were marvelously transformed all too briefly by Spanish horses

Electricity, running hot water and the automobile have also only briefly been part of our lives

We conquered, tamed, surveyed, cleared, settled and developed the New World

But, we lecture the Third World on their sacred duty to preserve their precious natural heritage

The press as the fifth estate was admired for its ever-vigilant role in democracy

The government and the press now produce ‘news’ stories that are shown without attribution

Scientists spoke slowly and carefully, always admitting to a measured uncertainty

Now pundits urge a small leap of faith to the literal truth of scripture and their fake news

We created the worlds first national park, the clean air act and banned DDT

We disavow global warming, drill in all wilderness areas and ignore coal-fired mercury and lead

30 million or 99% of native peoples perished in a brave conquest of the Americas

Yet all of our recrimination is targeted at shaming the Europeans over the Holocaust

Great storms came in off the pacific for millennia and gentle trade winds kissed the Caribbean

Presently, smog from china and sandstorms off Africa sullies their cars and lungs

Over thousands of generations the indigenous discovered medicinal plants

Big Pharma patents these as profitable drugs and keeps all the profits as the forests disappear

During a process of millions of years organic material was converted into fossil fuels

Every day we litter a blizzard of petroleum-based packaging and walk away without a thought

The bible provides rich examples of a broad and humane philosophical wisdom

We pick and choose our quotes to justify our venal and self-serving philosophy

A myriad of species from mammals to bacteria intertwined in the wondrous web of life

A leveraged corporate oligarchy of producers and suppliers greedily noses us all into poverty

Humans spoke with thousands of languages each supporting a different culture

Advertisers and politicians use Spanish as a sales tool and we all text in a pidgin English

Get Rich Quick...Destroy The Future

Help me make sense of this thing called progress that you say we are making

Take me with you as you run all the oh-so complex numbers of your pathetic spreadsheets

I want to fully experience the passion of your flag-waving, gun-toting workers

Let me feel their heartfelt patriotism and deep pride in bulldozing one more unprofitable meadow

Explain how the same smash and grab formula works identically from coast to coast

Tell me of your vision for a future…beyond this next development

Help me understand why your plans always seem aimed at producing more filthy gridlock

How is getting rich quick and getting out fast yielding our planet a sustainable future?

Give me the wonder drug that removes this dystopian vision from my mind

Do you really prefer cheap modular strip malls, concrete and asphalt to trees and farms?

How does it feel to replace a climax forest with low-bid, manufactured housing?

Help me understand why building cheaper and faster really makes things better for us all

If you really are leaders why do you piously intone that you only give the people what they want?

How did the pursuit of happiness twist into this wanton, greedy, institutionalized devastation?

How good does it feel buy their land after your speculation has jacked up the property taxes?

You claim to lead us on, so please just stop for a moment...and tell us where are we going

Help me understand the master plan behind your next quarterly profit projection

Help us going forward as we try to build upon your deconstructionist legacy

Why do the young feel empty and alienated, suffocating in your sterile planned communities?

How can a lasting society be founded upon short-term, individual blind greed?

Paint me the bigger picture that I might draw comfort from your self-professed competence

Show me it’s not just about your fragile ego and the striking of meaningless Big Deals

Explain how God created man apart to set us upon the world like starving mad dogs

Why must your expensive, over-fertilized landscapes look so very artificial?

Rationalize and defend this hideous half-urban, fake-rural sprawl

Why must we totally shatter balanced ecosystems just to build places to live?

Show us the bright and lasting vision behind each one of your fabulous but disposable works

Help me understand the pride you feel in your ever-increasing, cancer-like metastization

Outline the moral principles underpinning a life given over to real estate speculation

Prove that pursuing greed auto-magically brings a happiness that is worth other’s dying for

Show me how it’s always morning in America in your vision of an ever brighter future

Tell of your boyish pride in ordering about the huge trucks, mighty bulldozers and dirty men

Don’t you just pave the way for Wal*Mart and McDonald’s to finish the evisceration?

Then, you make even more money selling off the failing small family businesses

When there’s nowhere left to build must they all become ‘Sales Associates’?

Say again how very much you love this place even as yet more ground is broken for your profits

Where are you as the filthy illiterates you hire are leveling the young boys forts?

Isn’t Las Vegas actually the finest example of your true beliefs and your real legacy?

You gushily pimp natural beauty but ignore the noise and traffic of the sprawl you create

Explain how irresponsible quick money serves your True Conservative vision of a proper society

Why must the same tacky shit be ‘Coming Soon’ to every brand new street corner?

Help me to see myself in this mirror which you have shattered all over the broken ground

How do you sell off ancient wetlands destroyed forever in a month with a bright smile?

Are you demonstrating your deep wisdom with these new clothes and cosmetic surgery?

Why must you look out over endless roofs to newly-cleared prairie and salivate with anticipation?

Describe how your grasping avarice is simultaneously patriotic, religious and fulfilling

Do you feel safe hiding behind the perverted gospel of man’s greedy dominion over the earth?

Tell of your earnest but frustrating efforts to find dependable and cheap but illegal labor

Teach me how you routinely fail to mention known deal-breaking issues to prospective buyers

Grant me the unquestioning blind faith in your own avarice that fuels your febrile industry

Show me how you plead ignorance and forget to get back to me on important questions

Bring me up to speed on the new extra charges presented straight-faced at the hurried closings

Tell me about the deserved survival of the greediest and smarmiest and the most ruthless

Write down all the details so that those to come can marvel at your wisdom...and avoid it

Make the simple case again for jobs and money overriding their supporting natural systems

Create the soothing street names that support the mirage of our instant family values

Get your indoor tan, watch your diet and keep your tinted windows all the way up

Ignore the oily burden that your new parking lots flush into the streams you had channelized

May you find the real meaning to all your deals, as you lay dying in your own wastes

Yes, and may they bulldoze your graves, as well, making way for more new convenience stores