The Lights Are Going Out All Over

The lights are slowly going out all over

All around our engines are starting to shut down

No longer does the blue entertainment light dance out of every living room

More bridges are simply too unsafe to even try and cross

The stores are closing up, all across the little towns

Barbecues are flickering out all across this land that god had blessed

Monstrous RVs sit empty for lack of good cheap fuel

Bluehairs wait in vain for their outsourced contract foreign servants

Billboards are becoming illegible due to wind and rain and sun

The water taps only flow a trickle of dark and smelly brine

The roads seem to be growing ever harder to negotiate

Halted trains are blocking intersections in a mostly haphazard fashion

Can’t pick up no more early morning traffic scans or upbeat weather reports

Tightfaced mommies ferrying soccer broods are growing ever scarcer

Vacuous mall tweenies indolently draining daddy’s cash are disappearing daily

Our power just shuts off randomly for hours each and every day

MickieD even runs out of burgers with increasing regularity

Been standin on line for day-old factory white bread for hours, all the time

Bulldozers are sitting idle and power tools lay listless with no energy to drive them

Middle Management’s micro death march projects just aren’t moving us anymore

Toilets aren’t flushing so there’s clumps and tissue everywhere in the bushes

The president assures us that our ingenious people can meet all of these challenges and more

Suburban survivalists have taken over all the forest campgrounds

Wal*Marts are closing up all over cause China’s cut them off

Credit markets are frozen up again but there’s no bailout on the way this time

Military convoys are halted as the soldiers go on patrol to look for gasoline

The garbage trucks don’t come too much and the stuff has piled up real high

They say the fundamentals are still solid but it just doesn’t matter anymore

My downloads don’t hardly ever finish cause so many servers are simply gone

Monday night football even got called off last week cause the stadium lights were out

Formerly swaggering apartment cowboys cant find beer at their favorite stores

The cops are always hurrying off somewhere but never seem to stop

Saw tractors and combines sitting empty out in stubbly, unkempt fields

Staffs at all the hospitals are being replaced by unpaid security guards

The tourist has disappeared as an income source for hungry locals of every stripe

It’s best just to sit quietly in the churches listening to mumbling priests and watching candles burn

Living In Our SUV

It’s not too bad now that we got the three of them pushed up back to back

Sawed off the steering wheels and put cardboard on the bedroom windows

We got a couple plastic buckets marked for carrying water in and our peepee out

It’s a prime spot on the old interstate real close to the dump where we all work

Took my little sister down to the river for her first  bath just last week

Momma still ain’t strong enough to walk and she looks really pale
I’monna try to find her a star magazine as I work the trash today

Yup, we’re hearing that the fundamentals are still looking pretty strong

There’s lots of stuff to burn but the fumes get pretty smelly up inside the cab

Someday we’ll take over a big rig down at the truck stop and all live like kings

Every once in a while one of them black helicopters flies by real low overhead

Sometimes they drop them sacks of protein pills and that stuff we call happy candy

Our little dog caught 3 rats for us last week and we had a dandelion salad

I found a paper insert with all the stuff that used to be on sale ever saturday

Them scabs that started on my brother have covered pert near his whole arm

We think we can get a microloan to go buy some of those nice new orange jump suits

A group of us found a mound and laid out a cross made of stones up on top

Just last month somethin they called a jet flew over real high and on by so serene

It’s always hot except when the giant storms blow in and wash away the urine smells

We know from all the screaming not to make the slightest sound all night

Jesus is bringing guns and sweets and coffee said the man who killed my uncle

They lynched a guy who ate a dog that was guarding a family’s drying skunk meat

We attack some of the people who wander by and some of them steal from us

They’re looking at robust growth going forward because the basics are all in place

It’s great when they scatter those paper leaflets that help us start our cooking fires

My dad is the oldest left since all the gray hairs died a couple springs ago

They tell me it’ll soon be my duty to start having as many kids as I can, with their help

Daddy says our SUVs used to get packed to overflowing with food and clothes and toys

That fellow with his pencil was going on about some post-modern apocalypse

Jennie saw a camouflaged vehicle with guys inside in plastic suits and face masks

Some boys found 2 bottles of whiskey and raped my sister and then crippled each other

The women have all taken to wailing real mournful like around noon every day

Fires start up and flame out of control day and night and the burns look just awful

Mommie cried as she told me that this bleeding just meant I was now a woman

Somebody told me I better hush up unless I can start to speak some English

The bearded man said if I just believe, a reward of eternal paradise awaits me

From The Shadows

I crept out at night from our hiding place and squeaked a bit when it was very still

The powerful lay in temperature-controlled leisure before the holy big screens

Their angry bellowing and trumpeting kept me fearful in my darkened hiding place

I scurried about gathering a few of their scraps for food and to build a tiny nest

Sometimes when they would see me they acted as if I were not there

Other times I saw my tiny brothers left limp and broken in the dank urban desolation

Their power was so vast and all-encompassing that they were as gods to us

The completeness of their dominance left them as doubtless as we were hopeless

I rejoiced when I could steal back home with one or another of their castoffs

I knew how to stay very still and remain concealed as they trampled heavily on by

We made no issues with the gutted landscape they had created in their images

We prospered as well upon their increased wastes, the richer they felt they grew

They totally ignored us but slaughtered many of us in simple unnoticed accidents

We stole their tiny golden eggs at every rare opportunity

We did not know they made noise just to interfere with each other’s thinking

Sometimes we furtively hung posters of our churlish, clandestine manifestos

I piped out my shrill rage with all my puny lungs in the safety of our filthy warren

Fought tiny but brutal battles over under-nourished, whining females

Did not make so much as a sound as their ponderous footsteps approached again

Saw others crushed beneath the massive metal monsters those gods rode within

Though our fate was sealed long before we were even born, we trilled our reservations

We worshiped them in fear, never harboring a thought of usurping their grandeur

While we left nothing lasting, the signs of their dominance remained for centuries

Though sad to say not a trace was left by the time the next geologic epoch had begun

I spent a lifetime wet and caked with putrid mud without any promise of salvation

We were glad to be overlooked when they cast about for yet another enemy

I made my living darting from cranny to shadow when they were not around

Little remains of our existence except the legends from that era so very long ago

When I died, but one of the pups that I had sired still lived to sniff my dirty corpse

They had overturned our hidden nest and casually slaughtered us as we scattered

I had been in mourning as my sweet dam had succumbed to a poisoned bait

They never knew we bore the insects that carried the virus that took them down

The Quiet Rushing

Stood still in long funeral lines as fighting broke out somewhere up ahead of us

Vowed to pretty women, all in white, who scattered yellow flowers out upon us

Saw men too strong to think, die violently justifying the mistakes of others

Heard frightened foods cry out as the smell of death filled their nostrils

Became tangled up in confusion after falling over the most obvious of riddles

Saw smoke rising in threat beyond their peaceful white steeples

Heard the quiet rushing back in, once I had finished all my shouting

Felt the life draining out of me, when we left you with nothing

Stood listening to the village bells filled with their simple reasons

Got sucked under dirty water and spit out from gray tailpipes

Lost all the real reasons but still kept right on working

Might have heard the silence dripping during long and sleepless nights

Watched the vultures grow fat as the songbirds slowly lost their feathers

Walked where they had always driven and finally realized how far

Escaped or was released up high into our blue, blue atmosphere

Left blank applications at the locked compound gates of invisible leaders

Roared through concrete canyons ignoring other’s children

Saw endlessly cheerful ads going on blankly without me

Made up my mind to just be happy and to keep to my meds

Was touched by their great suffering even behind my moving windshield

Heard a quiet sobbing I could not stop to recall for many hours

Saw hopeless widows watching their many children playing

Got struck hard inside as we shoveled thru your charred belongings

Grew older and slower but was in no way deemed to be the wiser

Stood up to be counted and was downsized, outsourced, laid off and forgotten

Limped off, looking for that quiet place I had heard of in their advertising

Ignored all that disturbed me for just as long as I could

Watched the fat and inactive be carried off slowly, somewhere far away

Saw meadows going brown and the trees drying out into waste paper

Wondered why the snow had stopped falling and it all gotten so expensive

Was bullied into illiteracy and a disdain for the magic of maths

Watched the wolves make a comeback until we showed them once again

Found my palms were still damp even as I sat trying to be calm

Cursed out my fictional savior for what I knew were my own mistakes

Hung up my clothes neatly even though they were worn out and filthy

Enjoyed the dying images produced when at last my breathing stopped