I signed the checks & credit cards

Went quite a long way but was not moving nearly fast enough to actually notice

Did not make a bazillion on the next financial fad like those Masters Of The Universe

Passing on my accumulated eco-debt thru to whatever dispossessed generations might follow

Did not file any patents or copyrights and no inventions are held in my name

Was unable to attain spiritual enlightenment or even enjoy any lasting peace of mind

Won’t find my name credited on any scientific research papers

Found it difficult to obey every order given by the great generals of the consumer field

Did not uncover any new and beautiful mathematical relations

Lost my senses and grew weak just like all those great ones from every field

Was not a member of the all-star team for many years in a row

But, I no longer remember their names just as well as they never heard of mine

Could not find it in me to produce even a single page of deathless prose

Signed the checks & credit cards and was OK always spending more than I earned

Held the spoonfed opinions of others quite strongly but never learned to think for myself

Walked with a proud independence as I navigated by the bobbing tails of the herd

Did not have a pop hit and then grow fat and doped up out in dusty-neon Las Vegas

Pretty sure I almost won the lotto at least once or twice

Was not ever elected to any office since I never had enough vanity to run

Had a couple surgeries that I would be happy to talk with you about for hours

Got a son who lives up by Portland and a daughter out in Phoenix

Did not save the bug-filled rainforest or protect whatever greasy salmon

Let the quiet lakes and rivers grow filthy, passing by them daily, on my way to work

Could not draw too much sustenance from my predigested holiday experiences

Wound up growing morally thin and drawn out on my half-baked and spoon-fed beliefs

Did not finish my masterpiece because I thought I kept on starting over

Never saw any great circle or felt some spirit in the sky from outside our modular

Once I took time to roll down the windows and smell the roses as we were driving by

Could not notice how, when I thought I paused, that I was still being swept right along

Appear to be finishing up now but I cannot step back far enough to really tell

That is, think I might be just awfully close to that Happily-Ever-After once again

Going to sum it all up and make my peace here in just a little while

Did not volunteer my time but I still like to think I most likely would have

Got no wisdom for my kids but they come sit by me sometimes, just the same

There’s that ex-wife out in Fresno and a brother in Denver who still hates my guts

They laid me off and defaulted on my pension so then I also pissed away all my 401K

But I’m making my peace and seeking forgiveness and just maybe I’ll get buried green

Please Save The Rain Forest...For Us

You really must preserve the emerald forests whose rain and oxygen sustain us all

Even though, with our god’s blessing, we clearcut and settled all of our own several centuries ago

You owe it to humanity to leave this vast living system of jungle synergy intact

Though, ours is but a shattered, subdivided and dysfunctional shadow of its original self

Oh, pray, can’t you see the harm all these new roads, plantations and settlements bring

You can just ignore the mess that still expands in the aftermath of our own ordained progress

Oh! The forest tribes will lose the ancient homes where they have always lived in ecological harmony

Forget about how we butchered 30 million in a holocaust that we now celebrate as manifest destiny

Save the rain forest for generations yet unborn in the rest of the already-developed world

Ignore our swinish and brutal lifestyle but take heed of our pious pronouncements

Stop the illegal logging and slash and burn agriculture before it is too late and we must condemn you

Leave those places alone and unprofitable while we continue developing every acre of our own

Let your poor live crammed in unplanned favelas without hope but let the vast sub-continent sit idle

Then watch as we industriously bring progress to every square inch of our own sacred lands

Leave the monkeys and cats, the rivers, birds and the insects in their ancient web of life

Oh, and pay no attention to this vast wasteland from which we piously exhort you to conservation

Won’t you save the ancient rain forest for us all and for all our generations to come?

In any case, our caring firms will buy any and all precious hardwoods you might care to cut and sell

Don’t convert that miraculous living canopy into massive mono-cropped factory agriculture

But if you need help, why, our agribusiness conglomerates will be there to assist you

You must preserve this natural heritage and wellspring of diversity for our planet’s future

Do as we preach and ignore the greedy reality of the wanton destruction we wreak on our own lands

Remember that our god wills that you act as good stewards of his magnificent creations

Notwithstanding, he also bids us to take dominion over our land and rend great profit from his works

You should learn and live the mystical sustainability lessons that we never even tried to take to heart

Save the rain forest because our children like to see it in high-definition on our big screen TVs

You must act quickly because the earth’s special places simply must be preserved

We need your great forests to act as a filter for all the smog and CO₂ our sainted lifestyle creates

Save the rain forest and you can feel morally correct in helping to save all of mankind

We’ll send down some tourists, missionaries, along with corporate mining and agricultural interests

You must halt the spread of rampant development which is destroying the green canopy

Look at all the pretty exotic trees we have planted in our endless rows of suburbs

You must preserve this reservoir of medicines, foods and carbon at all costs

You need to do as we did not and act upon ideals to which we give only lip service

It is our duty as moral exceptionists to the world to lecture you on proper domestic policy

Save your precious rain forest so that we can feel better about continuing upon our merry way

Carefree Times On The Road To Our Extinction

We increased our numbers far beyond the carrying capacity of our native planet

We fouled the water and poisoned the air that, after all, only sustained our very lives

Our once rich soil has been blown away or contaminated due to our inept corporate farming methods

We poached the charismatic mega-fauna to extinction even as we destroyed their habitat

We have gouged the earth to burn the coal that sullies the lovely atmosphere…and our kid’s brains

We swarm upon each other in endless fool wars with our dear mother earth as but collateral damage

We cut the shading trees for firewood or for quick profits building things not meant to last

We dump our toxic wastes into the rivers that we have channelized and dammed. Yet still drink from

Our great cities appear as nasty pockmarks from the tiny vantage points we built out in space

We decimated the great whales and spiked the seals milk with exotic chemicals

Our miracle plastic litter drifts throughout the vast ocean basins and no one is responsible

We’ll melt the polar icecaps and turn the mountain glaciers into dry and naked rock

We have carelessly torched our vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas and released their CO₂

Most of us live in ignorance and poverty in spite of our noble free economies

The poorest among us bring forth the greatest number of new offspring into our overpopulated world

We perpetually delude ourselves with petty gods, sex, work, drugs, kids, food and patriotism

The once-beneficent rain is now filled with poisonous acid thanks to our virtuous industrial efforts

Deserts encroach more each year given our ravenous goats, constant firewood need & CO₂ emissions

We look forward to our lord’s infinite paradise after lives spent blindly pursuing individual happiness

The unsustainability of our societies shall not be altered should it perturbs our daily lives...at all

We make loud noise in everything we do, never even aware of how very still we really should remain

We slaughter each other over petty disagreements between our stale yet vapid religious fantasies

Our emissions silently destroy that portion of the atmosphere protecting us from deadly cosmic rays

We haphazardly introduce exotic species that wreak havoc upon finely-balanced native ecosystems

In our prideful ignorance our fictional god anoints only us, of all species, with a so-called eternal soul

We prefer catchphrases and demagogues to personal responsibility and inherited wisdom

We waste trillions on a military whose sole purpose is to kill people and destroy infrastructure

Our road to extinction is built upon ignorance, greed, hubris, intolerance and shortsightedness

We breed our meat animals to be weak and stupid and we exterminate all their wild predators

We unwittingly select for the strongest microbes with our anti-bacterial cleansers

We find fake news sound bites more effective vote-getters than reason and understanding

We fill endless toxically-leaching dumps with tons and tons of re-usable and like-new castoffs

Our batteries, paints and lawn sprays wind up right back in our own drinking water

We scatter lead and mercury which dulls the potentials of our own precious children

Our economic system is purposely blind to the fact that it totally depends on the global ecosystem

Though we tramp blindly down the road to extinction, we thank god above it’s not the road to hell

Blood On His Hands

    In Memory of George W. Bush, our 41^st President

Every car bomb splatters a bit more debris upon one of his finely tailored suits

Children bombed taking candy from GIs fall as dust, coating his distinguished hair

He smothers slowly under the weight of the flags that drape each returning body

Blood drips from every word of all the speeches that he reads…but does not write

His continuing resolve only adds another to all the other long-dried layers of blood

It stains his clean white shirts and it spatters upon his conservative ties from somewhere

He hears the sucking sound it makes beneath the soles of his wing-tipped shoes

He sees it smeared on the seats of the limos in which he is whisked in security

He cannot wash off the blood of those killed by car bombs at the markets

There is no petroleum flowing to use like some fine and purifying lotion

Blood flows straight from Baghdad out his shower in a steaming dark red mist

His personal savior smiles faintly, pointing out the blood stains on his own wrists

During interviews he is peppered with a congealing spray of blood upon his makeup

His sunsets will all be blood red until the far-off day when he finally passes on

Every soldier crippled by an IED bleeds out upon his sweaty presidential bed sheets

He coughs bloody foam after nights spent in the dreams of tortured citizens

On his visits the foreigners see it gush from his mouth, nose, ears and eyes

It stains his boxers and this febrile flow cannot be quenched by any Maxi pad

It oozes squeakily out of his running shoes with every step he jogs

The kitchen floor down at the ranch is always a mess of bloody footprints

He has a pink-tinged urine and there is blood in his stool

He is splashed by each and every one of the hundreds killed every day

He signs the checks for the killing with ink made from the blood of children

The White House pool is filled with the fresh blood of virgin Muslim women

There are blood stains on the white table cloths at all of his catered meals

As he speaks he emits a fine red aerosol that air brushes his hand-picked listeners

He sponges up his bloody guilt with his now-soaked but still fatal pride

Casually wiping his neck he feels something warm and wet upon his fingertips

His small glass of wine turns into blood upon passing his smirking lips

His handlers ignore the bloody mess like they did the emperor’s new clothes

As he speaks to the children they wonder at the pool congealing at his feet

Though there is blood everywhere, he searches in vain for the source

He dreams his veins are emptying into dirt and dust under a hot desert sun

He awakens in the ongoing nightmare of the monstrosity of his actions

The blood on his hands will only disappear with the bleaching of his bones

He coughs up fat clots with phlegm-soaked nuclei of inhaled desert sands

He awakes in the night with the guilty pain of a bleeding ulcer

His sweaty clasp leaves an iron-smelling residue upon his allies hands

leaning over a GI’s bed his dripping blood spreads tiny circles on the sheets

Pink bubbles gurgle from his lips as he pursues the fleeing refugees

His anger and frustration pound in his head and brings a pressure to his eyes

As he is driven by, it appears that motorists pump blood into their SUVS

They have installed a drain in the Situation Room for him and his advisors

Even at the most joyful events he always feels it squishing inside his pants

There is no more escape in scripture and his suckups are far too transparent

He clasps his hands together in prayer and feels the dried layers of other’s blood

Lies and rationalizations no longer hold back the dike of innocent plasma

He smudges a sobbing mother’s flag saying her son’s loss must not be in vain

There is no time for other issues in the struggle against overwhelming guilt

So blood from forgotten and ignored sources comes leaking under all the doors

You would pity him except he chose to take the role, live and in full color

Every morning squishy liberal parasites have re-opened all his old wounds

His smirk has disappeared and his face grown gaunt and thin and haunted

It is a mighty effort to ignore the death and suffering that he has foolishly unleashed

We must be reminded of his humanity when all we can see is his bloody mess

His political capital long ago soaked up all the guilty blood that it could hold

Now all of our passports are printed in blood so we cannot be mistaken

Dizzy from loss of blood he orders more military monies to try and staunch the flow

His wife and children just try to act like everything is really just quite peachy

Other’s blood must flow from his veins due to the infinite quantity of his pride

Now wounded and dangerous they backbite savagely to spread around the guilt

Lighting the White House Christmas tree he notes bloody trails in the snow

The favorite passages in his old bible are smeared with a mingling of bloods

At times he prays he might just be waking up, just before he began the war

It cannot be ignored yet he cannot think about it, anymore

The festering wound to his tumorous pride hurts with every movement

Yet strangely, he only calls for fresh blood to wash away the old and dried

More killing faster must be the answer to cleaning up this mess