Clues That We May Have Displeased Him

Teachers burnt out by armed fatherless gangsters and cursing infant whores

Laid off engineers numbly transitioning out the door with a few shabby boxes of books

Working class fathers brewing Meth and waiting for their promised good new jobs of tomorrow

The terminally ill finding religious solace in the fantasies of their pain meds

Mothers placing folded flags on clean beds of the sons who are never coming home

Malnourished babies sucking emptily at their refugee mother’s emaciated breasts

Salesmen with many tired-out stories whose services are no longer required…anywhere

Convicts who return with a certain sense of relief to their secure families behind bars

Self-medicating counselors helping substance abusers find decent ways to cope

Once-proud farmers forced to work for miserable hourly wages on corporate pig farms

Frightened young peasants toiling 14 hours every day for $3 and sleeping 20 to a room

Aging middle managers pitifully eager to please even after their recent downsizing

CEOs excited to clear their names of baseless charges yet, speaking only through their lawyers

Exemplary black men with extreme rates of hypertension and prostate cancer

Politicians standing firm on unilateral decisions privately made consulting with personal saviors

Rabbis, coaches and fathers swarming about in teen internet chat rooms

Devoted doctors performing hurried cosmetic surgery on old women in order to make golf tee times

Our children running amok on caffeine and sugar, but…they’re just expressing themselves

Loan swindlers pleading for federal bailouts to profitably refinance the already defrauded

New nurses changing jobs for raises but never quite learning proper medical care

Lonely and trusting retirees cruelly duped by those of their own offspring’s generation

The forgotten working poor agonizing in the night over whether to pay rent or buy food

Volunteers spending their own time and money only to be sneered at as foolish suckers

Rappers and reverends pimping their narrow fantasies like they were running sick old whores

Frogs gamely in a last stand on the crisscrossed ATV tiretracks of doomed wetlands

Hungover so-called craftsmen erecting one more overpriced modular dream suburb

Another clueless Texan idling a pickup for personal comfort, way out there in Calorada

Our boys on their fool’s errand amidst a civil war in a country we destroyed

Graduates who can’t read or write any language and don’t really know what they ‘r sain’

Gushing acceptance of every increase to already-insane levels of dEfense spending

Despoiling the land to rapidly guzzle any last oil reserves...without creating any alternatives

Believing that noisy, expensive, gasoline toys results in some kind of recreational renewal

Growing up without healthcare, exercise or education but…getting lots of fatty foods & sugary drinks

Letting the slickest, greediest and most self-centered continue to set our course

Mouthing the ironclad platitude that this blight they greedily label progress cannot be stopped

Falsely pitting people and jobs against the environment that supports them both

Balancing taxes on vices to maximize revenues while still retaining the hopelessly addicted

      Coupling pious patriotism with divine right in a loudly ignorant, exceptionist duet

Not being able to stand an office job yet eviscerating the beloved outdoors in your work

Tossing half a billion plastic bags per year in a mocking tribute to our own lifestyle

Using false interpretations of musty fictional scripture to foment hatred and conflict

Writing off any candidate who cannot compete in raising funds for empty media sound bites

Fretting over foreign pollution after outsourcing ours to dirtier offshore production standards

Watching as plans and animals pitifully struggle northward as the heat just keeps on increasing

A Child Learns Personal Responsibility

I Was born with a hangover from the whiskey me mommie took for her pain

I was a little bit small since they both smoked but I smiled as I lay there

She had no milk for me and the formula played hell with my skin

Lay gurgling in my crib as the diesel fumes wafted in over me like a blanket

I cried all the time with gas and a stomach ache that they could not see

Her new boyfriend shook me almost hard enough that everyone could notice

Took in a lot of insecticides but still spent too much time playing with roaches

Got an untreated fever that brought pleasant visions and damage to my brain

Mice scampered over me sometimes after the big parties were over

Sat in their hot car with the windows cracked. Almost in the shade, by the tavern

Played on the dirty floor while they mixed and cooked the smelly meth all around me

Could not see the squiggles in their little books so they marked me down as slow

Loved those bologna and cheese slices with yellow mustard on soft white bread

Still think of my childhood when that peculiar smell of a WalMart overcomes me

Began to love jesus and was gently but firmly abused by the pastor in control

Appeared slightly palsied from the mercury in the tuna salad sandwiches

Daddy got out of jail when I was around 5 and he hugged me once and left again

I loved my mom despite her teeth falling out, the sores that never healed and her stringy hair

One time I asked her what dentists did on our way to the emergency room

I got lots of caffeine and plenty of sugar beginning even before my baby bottle

We traded head lice, boils, ringworm, impetigo and pink eye about the family

Santy claus was good to us cause Mom & Dad always bought us stuff instead of paying rent

We always liked playing on the clean marble down at the child support office

Sometimes I would visit mama working over to the Conoco

I often said I had finished my homework so I could go and play on the GameBoy

She had no pre-natal care and we did not get our vitamins and minerals

My first time in prison was a real eye-opening and educational experience

I played among the crumbs, dirt and dust on many housing project floors

Potato chips and sugar cookies kept me quiet and helped me get to be a big boy

The diabetes kicked in and took mother to the couch for good before she was 35

I dropped out of school, the army would not have me and I never learned to work

I could not feel the blows of others and goddamn how I loved to fight

I felt nothing from the hurt look in their eyes as I walked away

My teeth turned into rotten snags as my gums receded

I had a pin put in my leg after they tried to run me over

I got a cracked glass tattoo around the scar from a minor gunshot wound

Now, anything I want, that I can get my hands on, I just grab - without any of them regrets