Freeways And Wildlife Sanctuaries

You can hear the seagulls and the breakers slightly off to one side

While the semis jake brake and the cars whiz by the Amtrac trains on the other

They are protecting several tiny endangered plant species found only here -

In the slope up to the freeway exit behind another new Super Target

The elephant seals have begun to re-appear after being mass-slaughtered a century ago

Priuses tailgate Cadillac SUVs in unending lines through smog-enhanced sunsets

There is a green recycling bin by each one of the many public garbage cans

But, Yosemite valley is a twisty, overcrowded maze of dusty, half-lost traffic

The bread is good and there are organic fruits and vegetables readily available

Stores and houses crowd the farmland down to the tiny coastal butterfly reserves

Progressive is not an insulting word and alternative thinking abounds

The radio dial sports more Christianity than Country but less than Spanish FA-MA

They are protecting the beach nesting areas of the endangered snowy sand plover

Thirty-five million people already live here and more arrive every single day

There may still be good, un-crowded surf breaks just a short ways up the central coast

They pipe stolen water 500 miles to try and quench LA’s vast unending thirst

Chances are a freeway will take you to that remotest wilderness area

It’s all handicapped accessible and the poor earn money collecting all the recyclable litter

The gasoline pumps are fitted with vapor-trapping devices to fight the air pollution

Retirees carefully fuel their 70’ motor homes which tow monstrous SUVs

Bears roaming through the campsites are exciting nighttime entertainment

Having a flat out on an urban freeway might just cost you your life

They got commuter trains and carpool lanes and a host of ecological tax incentives

Quite often you don’t have an average speed, stalled somewhere out on The 5

The economy is hi-tech, service-oriented and among the world’s largest

Swarms of the brown people’s decrepit vehicles surround a myriad of small plots

The climate is mild along the coast, tending towards forgiving and inviting

There really is no end to the traffic but sometimes it’s a little lighter

Volunteer ‘docentes’ help to raise public awareness of the treasures to be preserved

It’s really hard to tell if they are moving ahead any faster than they fall behind

Cute little signs urge us not to dump because these drains all flow into our bay

Still, Tijuana, but 10 miles down, pours all its raw sewage into the ocean every day

These people buy more hybrid cars than any place else on earth

Their mammoth shining RVs consume power like apartments in slow motion

Every owner counts on the high six figures and above from the investment that is their home

The lucky urban poor raise children at campgrounds, fairly near to where they were born

They are protecting the fuzzy otters in the lush green kelp beds just offshore

Their organic spinach infected with migrant E. Coli sometimes finds its way into our markets

They'll Ignore You

They’ll annoy you without conscious effort and then tell you it’s none of your business

They’ll step on your face with a condescending smirk while clawing their way to the top

They’ll throw shit on the ground when no one is around and then just drive away

They’ll make gasoline-powered noise to blot out the good silence that makes them feel uneasy

They’ll throw up cheap crap on good land, make quick bucks and then leave town for good

They’ll call you when you’ve had an accident and then drive up in another new leased BMW

They’ll pimp real estate to gullible strangers like a mother bird feeds her tiny chick

They’ll ignore the homeless as they drive by every day behind their tinted windows

They’ll act righteous beneath their fascist, literalist, fairytale personal saviors

They’ll spout gibberish and call for soundbite political debates with real scientists

They’ll carry their canned, evaporated culture far from home and never see a thing

They’ll piss you off with their thoughtless waste without ever even knowing it

They’ll shame you to the civilized world with all their ignorant, macho, cowboy posturing

They’ll spend thousands to go hunting but demand that all forests return a profit

They’ll blithely support resource extraction ignoring any and all of its long term costs

They’ll call birth control a sin but use the excess ignorant as their contract wage slaves

They’ll never walk anywhere outside except to shiny vehicles parked closely nearby

They’ll mouth the nonsense of televangelists and conservative think tank analysts

They’ll work diligently on their pathetic golf games on grass that’s a toxic green

They’ll take pride in an ignorance knowingly pitched to them as tough, manly and rugged

They’ll no longer require your services once you have called them on their charade

They’ll spoil and ignore their lazy children but blame their failures on poor schools

They’ll unknowingly waste more every hour than most people earn in a month

They’ll demand ever more criminally wasteful military money and call it patriotism

They’ll support our troops with plastic bumper stickers on their sleek imported cars

They’ll subsidize terrorists with hard cash every time they fill-up at the gas pump

They’ll idle their 300 hp engines to serve as personal room air-conditioners

They’ll go out for expensive meals prepared and served by the angry working poor

They’ll refinance all of our futures and every one of us will have to pay

They’ll drive to the wilderness and run loud generators to watch action DVDs

They’ll ignore you and get up way too close then start making lots of noise

They’ll always know lots about the latest bright and shiny consumer fad

They’ll take tax-deductible ski vacations with their corporate mega-churches

They’ll get tough on crime but cheat on their taxes and shortchange their illegal workers

They’ll be concerned for their security and burn bright lights which also blot out all the stars

They’ll call for roads to eliminate congestion and immediately crowd them with tacky shit

They’ll bulldoze native plants then spend enormous sums maintaining toxic, artificial lawns

They’ll cut your throat behind your back using canned & coded corporate PC catchphrases

They’ll twist the words they put in your mouth and then put them to use against you

They’ll advertise for proactive self-starters who must also be good team players

They’ll produce elaborate fictional schedules as they socialize in their meetings

They’ll forget your name should they ever be unable to avoid meeting you face to face

They’ll espouse a laissez-faire evangelical Social Darwinism fueled only by their shortsighted greed

They’ll copyright your handmade ideas and cheaply manufacture them overseas

They’ll change lanes impatiently over and over, angrily saving even more wasted time

They’ll make sure everybody in the office thinks they work 12 hours every day

They’ll be full of friendly smalltalk and jovial smiles when their boss happens by

They’ll mouth free enterprise while lobbying for their own tariffs, subsidies and tax breaks

They’ll dismiss your ideas out of hand while endlessly quoting their gutless, invisible leaders

They’ll drive up your property taxes and then buy you out to make a quick profit

They’ll sell you on personal responsibility but control your very bowel movements

They’ll rule as corporate control freaks but then plead complete ignorance to company crimes

They’ll pay vapid fast-talking salesmen princely sums to pimp their useless products

They’ll get fat bonuses and stock options for their, unfortunately, immeasurable contributions

They’ll cut your benefits, eliminate your position and renege on your retirement

They’ll purchase influence and legislation to insure their own continued success

They’ll rend the very fabric of the living world and belittle you for not putting people first

They’ll always chant of costs in jobs and money over environmental and safety concerns

They’ll pass you at full noisy throttle then brake hard to turn off at the very next corner

They’ll eat the pus-like middle of their white bread and then toss the phony crust aside

They’ll speak of a love of peace while subsidizing their weapons-making donors with no-bid contracts

They’ll pray to a god who rationalizes all of their greedy and short-sighted actions

They’ll glowingly praise democracy while buying up votes and peddling their influence

They’ll ignore you completely until it might cost them a bit of power or just a little money

No Need To Protest Once They're Done

It’s hard for them to miss what they were too young to have ever seen

There’s just no sense in protecting anything that’s been gone so long already

Once they’ve disappeared there’s no need to fight over their extinction

Won’t have to try and save it if it was bulldozed so many years ago

There’s no point in boycotting that new Wal*Mart once the doors are open

Ain’t no way to stop this self-destructive process that we know simply and surely as progress

They aren’t going to get worked up over your old and faded pictures

It won’t matter anymore, anyway, when nobody else remembers

Once it’s been so hot for a hundred years no one alive will know any better

Just bulldoze those native artifacts and keep the work on schedule

Soon you won’t even be able to imagine how this all was before we came

They’ll say, ‘There’s no way you could have ever swam in this awful river’

No need now to preserve what’s been paved beneath this parking lot

Who cares that, over there, was where we used to keep our horses

Won’t make a bit of difference anyway, after a couple million years

No sense in arguing after all the trees are cut

Anyway, there’s still a few of them left, over at the zoo

Don’t have to file suit now since that marsh has been all drained

Forget about the bag limits, all the good fish are gone and the rest are full of poison

Why, they never even took the time to listen to all them songbirds, anyhow

No need for public hearings once it’s been graded flat and all paved over

It’s probably just always been really noisy around here, in any case

Can’t let the bears live too near our kids in their happy new backyards

It’s hard for them to try and restore what they neither created nor destroyed

Once we’ve broken ground there’s never any more objections

So, what actually was the point, in the way it was before

No way that this was ever just quiet rural farmland, in any case

When we are done, nobody will even listen to those squishy whiners

They won’t fight for things now gone, so far beyond their imaginations

Once we’re done extracting, there’s no profit whatsoever in restoration

Now that there’s this new road through here, why not add just a strip mall alongside?

After that, some cheap apartments over there won’t make any difference, anyhow

It’s gonna happen one way or another, so might as well get in on the money

They can fix up their little yards if they really need to try and make a difference

Now that it’s gone it’s just some NewAge fairytale to be dismissed with raucous, scornful laughter

No need to get offended now, it’s all been settled in accordance with our laws and tradition

Hel-lo-o

Hel-lo-o, stubbornly staying on message is mere propagandizing, not holding the line on socialism

Slash the foolish military budget right in half before it chokes us all to death

Realize that god does not provide you guilt-free disclaimers for your political decisions

Stop trying to muzzle scientific research using political debates, buzzwords and sound bites

Wake up - The facts are long in on global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it

‘Property rights’ to small streams are an empty shibboleth for your faceless corporate investors

Stop ignoring the recycling hybrid drivers on energy efficiency and alternatives to smash and grab

‘Local Control’ simply empowers outside developers in their formulaic coast-to-coast rape and ruin

Freedom and democracy do not magically emerge overnight from foreign war, rubble and poverty

Look, gun rights, abortion and gay marriage are really not the most important issues that we face

Hel-lo-o, France is not even the enemy, you alternatively-gifted, brainwashed and illiterate pawns

Your fundamentalist, evangelical, literalist brand of heaven is but a comic fairytale to the godless

Evolution is not enemy to any non-dogmatic religion but adds to its deep and insoluble mysteries

Demagogic fundamentalism is way too simple, childlike and constraining for literate adults

For god’s sake at least clean the restrooms in the national parks

Yo, mover and shaker - that house of yours is not some go-go investment instrument

You will be cast aside by employers but still need to work to survive, in your golden years

Credit cards are not the way to maintain a phony lifestyle despite your negative savings rate

Hel-lo-o, we are not building a better world through our mindless mass consumption

Our military spending is infinitely more wasteful than our ‘failed’ social programs

Further breaks for the rich have never trickled down and floated the poor up out of poverty

Your precise information control is not conducive to the open and free society you brag we enjoy

Health insurance and early learning programs are cheaper than prisons and emergency rooms

‘Gaming’ is one more vice pimped by corporations for the government, just like alcohol and tobacco

Your overpaid, unregulated military contractors are running amok, armed and on steroids

Holy wars over resources have failed many times before we ‘invented’ them once again

Hel-lo-o, how is simply mortgaging future generations better than taxing and spending?

You fucking idiots voted for Bush & Obama twice so don’t even look for someone to blame

BigAg’s ethanol is no energy alternative but actually a well-tuned subsidy-lobbying effort

You have led us from the world’s summit into a dark and deepening box canyon

The pitiful, foolish, lazy, ignorant and undeserving hang on your every sponsored word

You cannot discredit honest science with a merest smirking grin & the imperially dismissive wave

I’d call for all your impeachment sirs, but I am but another squishy, cut-and-runner

No, we are not better off or more secure than before this dark time began

America the fat and ignorant cowboy bully is such a shameful, humiliating image

Hel-lo-o, your god did not appoint you sheriff and moral compass to the world

It’s pretty hard to cut and run as the setting cement of cultural decline reaches up to our knees

Contrary to your baseless rhetoric, clean air and pure water do not compete against jobs and money

Leave the Middle East to sort it out for themselves in the stinking desert, without our petro-dollars

Evolution does not rise up against your sacred Bible as yet another Creation Myth to be smitten

GM, Ford and Chrysler are as out of touch as yourselves and the aging senate

Hel-lo-o, mommy doesn’t need a faux armored troop carrier to take the kids to school

Look, you can’t afford two lattes and a $12 lunch every day, you clueless chump

Increasing population to pay our debts will ruin our lifestyle as well as the environment

Producing food like lightbulbs poisons the earth and destroys the sanctity of our family meals

You will never find that account from which to draw that time you are always striving to save

Don’t leave us ignorant and poor to make China rich, innovative and ecologically-devastated

Make them depend on our water technologies, our energy innovations and our food stuffs

You have no right or reason to mouth ‘God Bless America’ after every speech you did not write

This wasn’t, isn’t and won’t be God’s Country and we surely are no chosen & exceptionist people

Jesus cannot and would not guide you with your foolish military decision-making

There are way, way too many black men in your fabulously overpriced and outsourced prisons

Clean air, pure water and intact ecosystems actually are also valuable and finite economic resources

Hel-lo-o, a sustainable economy does not threaten your precious Traditional Family Values©

Just stop with the blatantly-hypocritical, faith-based, saber-rattling and moralizing, already

Look, this is just an undeveloping country on a small but lucky planet,

circling an average yellow star, in a so-so spiral galaxy, in one of many possible universes

Darkness In Their Light

They bought items made and shipped from far away and they saved really big

Their jobs disappeared and others worked as slaves unable to afford what they made

Her bathrooms were always so clean and shiny and safe

Her antiseptic cleansers biologically selected the strongest pathogens for survival

He awoke in the Saturday darkness and drove far to the wilderness

At the trailhead to the lofty summit were already parked more than 50 cars

His lush green and manicured lawn was the envy of his good neighbors

It leached precious water loaded with eutrophifying fertilizer and toxic pesticides

They pointed, clicked and texted their way far out into the vast reaches of cyberspace

They rejected organized learning and spelling and syntax and grammar also eluded them

The country saved money eliminating preventative social and health programs

They ignored that required new jails and emergency services proved even more expensive

The president emerged, firm in his beliefs, after talks with his personal savior

The imams were unbending in their narrow interpretations of their infallible Koran

They had real jobs cutting down trees those foolish tourists spent money just to see

When they were done there were no longer any jobs because no more stupid tourists came

They counted on an increasing population to pay the debts of their wondrous times

Subsequent generations lived in ignorant poverty on a shattered and overcrowded planet

He enjoyed his pricey morning latte and needed to get out for lunch in his new car

At 50 his services were no longer required and he realized he had saved nothing at all

They clamored for freedom and local control of their natural resources

Outside developers bought them out for pennies and built empty, gated second homes

They spent trillions building the most powerful military the world had ever known

Their greatest threat was a scraggly band in sandals that eluded them for years

They realized they could no longer stay the course

But they knew well that they must never cut and run

Executive perqs and compensation increased some sixteenfold

Meanwhile, real worker spending power declined by nearly 12%

They flocked to their beloved seashore to raise families and retire in the sand

They drained the wetlands, eroded the beaches and polluted the ocean with their wastes

She was uninjured after missing the stop sign due to her kids and her cellphone

But that compact economy car was destroyed - Thank god giant SUVs are so very safe

He could quote movie stars and commercials as well as a myriad of sports trivia

As he lay dying he finally realized his own thoughts were few and unconsidered

The dam provided inexpensive electricity and eliminated the threat of floods

The rich silt no longer fertilized the valley farms and fishing livelihoods were lost

The industry advisors spoke with one voice regarding the country’s energy policy

Their society was left supporting terrorists with every tank of gas they wasted

She took great care of herself, watched her diet and did not drink

She died thin and pretty and having not recognized anyone for more than twenty years

Ancient traditions had sustained their Asian society for several millennia

In a rush to modernization they lost their culture and destroyed their environment

Concentrating all week on those two short days off from the endless work to come

But every weekend was lost just the same in a dusty, noisy, swirling blur

Always fighting deadlines and following tight and pressured schedules

They finished way late without any fanfare because, in reality, no one really cared

Sensing the creator everywhere from all his works so close at hand

Swallowing dusty scripture without masticating, like little black pills of literal truth

Springing from the void into mother’s warmth and safety

Ascending into paradise or maybe just decaying into dust once again

I Blinded Myself And Things Got Better

I blinded myself and it made things seem better

I always made sure that I wished to see before I looked

I filtered out the disagreeable in realtime as I listened

I presumed and only then would I try to understand

I put things together just the way I wished that they would fit

I discarded pieces with odd shapes or unpleasant colors

I magnified and expanded that which I found pleasing

I jammed and nailed stuff together which did not really match

I ignored those facts that did not support my beliefs

I quickly forgot things I could not agree with

I did not listen carefully to everything they told me

I swallowed uncritically when it suited my agenda

I rarely played if I could not win

I left things out when I told my stories

I did not do much but still got full credit

I wasted time but let them say that I worked

I made artificial sense out of a mindless confusion

I convinced myself that there really was a trail that I followed

I questioned their false arguments to the finest detail

I overlooked things when necessary without even noticing

I bit my tongue almost accidentally instead of speaking up

I mouthed party lines paid to be written by some and spoken by others

I kept very quiet as all of that kept happening

I opened my mouth when I was certain that it was safely too late

I believed it when they said I was my own worst enemy

I blinded myself and it brought me some relief

I buried myself in their endless projects, all amounting to nothing

I crawled into the bottle on my own precious little free time

I got faith and it cured me of those questions which had nagged me

I just tithed weekly down at my media-spectacular mega-church store

I joined the club and signed up for the trip

I let others steer since I still had many things to do

I filtered my experience through a semi-permeable layer of dogma

I found the choices they presented to be clear and our path straightforward

I focused unquestioningly upon implanted inspirations

I blinded myself even though my eye had never offended me