Lust For Life, American Style

They said to stop and smell the roses so we cut em all and then forgot them when we left

Knowing how short life is, I ran up my credit, declared bankruptcy and then walked away

I need to carpe every diem so joyously I graze myself further into obesity at every meal

As I realize that any day might be my last, I guzzle a couple extra beers every night

In an effort to meet my potential, I let my wastes fall wherever I produce them

To save a bit of precious time I toss aside the packaging as I quickly drive away

Wishing not to waste a single vital minute, she viciously cell-gossiped as she drove to work

Grabbing life by the horns, we took another vacation with our 2^nd home equity loan

I have set myself a goal of maintaining my instant gratification, over the long run

Determined not to be ensnared like ordinary people, we financed new ATVs and jet-skis

In my luxury performance sedan I truly feel in step with the grand march of life here on earth

Pondering my place in our wondrous panoply, I find the remote control once again

Striving to center, she purchased fine cosmetics, costly surgery and an unreal hair color

I financed a lifetime of stirring satisfaction identifying with my corporate home teams

Seeing that we might as well be comfortable, I bought another family land barge

In my moments of panic and confusion, jesus is there beside me, his hand upon my shoulder

Believing the thrifty died rich and the old died emptily, we resolved to spend it now

Why, with heaven assured for us, we can afford to let tomorrow take care of itself

Knowing I might not always be there for them, I grant my children’s every wish, immediately

Since you’re really never sure how long you’ve got, we’ll go ahead and get supersized once again

I seek a deeper, longer-lasting meaning as I drive blindly past the homeless every day

Knowing that you only go around one time, I grab passing pleasures by the armful

I pursue an unspoken long-term goal of simply enjoying each and every minute as it comes

Hearing of other’s suffering, we determined to grasp as much as we can just as fast as we can

In the light of world problems far beyond our control, we’ll just kick it back and relax

We took lessons from other’s early misfortunes and keep our savings to a minimum

Given the shortness of life, it seems right to get away from work as often as I can

I could never stand to be 40, so what’s the damn point learning this useless crap, anyhow?

We wanted it all, so we got a huge house, big-screen TV, ski boat and a giant RV

I always just had to smile when the Doc told me to start exercising and lose some weight

We’re going for the gusto and reaching out now for maximum enjoyment, in our great lust for life

We dine out finely in our new clothes and we usually make that minimum monthly CC payment

The world is going to shit so we might as well have a good time for just as long as we can

With those 2^nd mortgages, the house was way underwater so we rightly just walked away from it

I need to go for it while I can still enjoy it, not later on when I’m doddering and sick

Right now, my answer to the big questions is to just follow my desires, artificial or not

Lets Fight Them Terrists Here

I say “bring ‘em on’ over here so we can strip ‘em , whip ‘em and hang ‘em

We know what they look like and, buddy, it sure ain’t nethin like us

We’ll light ‘em up when they’re stooping down on top of them little towels

Why bother shipping all that stuff over there, just give us them weapons and ammunition

We can cut em down in the Wal*Mart parking lot and drag em over behind the church

I say let’s burn their fekin mosques when they go inside seekin’ santuary

We ain’t scared to fight ‘em here,, and besides we got no damn business over there

You don’t even have to pay us as long as there’s guns, refreshments and medics available

We’ll search them out like rats - with dogs and burn ‘em in bonfires for everyone to see

They can put it on TV and make a lot of money on ads and slick promotional shit

Hell, spend that money here and we can be happy killin and prosperin economically

Just let some fucking jihadis darken my door and then they’ll see what happens in a gotdam hurry

Hopefully, they try to tell us to grow beards and kiss on some little carpet 5 times a day

just let them tell my wife once to cover up her damn face and they’ll find theyselfs in little pens

Don’t forget that Jesus is with us here and covers our butts as we stomp on their faces

If we fight them here we don’t waste our money there in that stinkin, fly-ridden dessert

Won’t none of their heathen innocent citizens get hurt if we cap the bad ones right here

We’ll pose for pictures atop heaps of their corpses stacked in the backs of our pickup trucks

Local TV can show drawings of suspects and we’ll cruise in our trucks and pick ‘em off

We can video their torture and post it on the internet as an invite for ther friends

Lets fight them here so we don’t have to go way over there and get all like bogged down & shit

Lets everybody start on their own street alookin for sign of they evil, antichrist horseshit

We’ll blow ‘em up together publicly with their own suicide cell phones and car bombs

The army can pay us as civilian contractors and private security forces right here at home

We can RFID all honest citizens and have open season on anyone who don’t scan

Which fekin chickenshit was it anyway said we’re afraid to have to fight ‘em here?

We’ll publicize their mass shallow graves and arrest them when they come down to mourn

Let’s put a bounty on their robed caliphate asses just like we did with them other varmints

Let’s fight them here so I can teach my boys how to get her done real young

It’d be a great economic stimulus cause we’d need lots of services and supplies

I say don’t let’s just Bring Em On, I’m sayin Bring Em On Over Here, with tattooed foreheads

We can start by setting them fuckheads down in Gitmo loose somewhere in Arkansas

Ain’t gonna be no liberal protests when we save their homes from bath-robed martyrs

Instead of gettin unemployment, the outsourced can join up with the local militia

We’ll fight our way out of this here recession locally, battling godless foreign heathen

Yep, we can restore our world image by bravely resistin invading terrarist killers, right here at home

Leading The Undeveloping World

Lighting this new and self-inflicted Dark Age with our blindingly intolerant religions

Scoffing at any scientists whose work contradicts our faith - Or that of our donors

Denying millions to what we trumpet as the world’s finest health care system

Increasing illiteracy rates with every graduating class of our overweight and spoiled children

Devolving freedom of the press into cheerfully-empty, commercially-safe soundbites

Encouraging the ignorant poor to breed freely as the educated opt out of parenthood

Arming ourselves with god’s blessing for any neo-crusade our leaders see fit to pursue

Letting our infrastructure crumble around us but automatically raising cost-plus military spending

Rejecting investment in actual business for artificial speculation in phony financial innovations

Refusing to set any example on emissions and energy use for developing countries

Encouraging our own Balkanization through expensive multi-lingual governance

Rewarding phony, closeted leaders for exporting research, engineering, production and support

Building up vast stores of usable materials in our dumps for future hand-gathering by our descendants

Leading the world in time spent at war, anorexia, tv-watching, debt and obesity

Being the most aware of the importance of reality shows and entertainment news

Far ahead at portraying environmental issues as wacko threats to family and economy

Twisting the pursuit of happiness into a god-given right to shortsighted, selfish greed

Granting ever more control to the rich while patronizingly-fleecing the shrinking middle class

Measuring the success of political candidates through their fundraising results

Exporting our pollution to third world industry then scolding them on human rights

Being governed by multi-generational, aristocratically-inbred, star-power families

Rigging voting districts upon our election to ensure a continuing stream of victories

Requiring illegal workers since we made the jobs, conditions and pay so very poor we wont do them

Institutionalizing a paralyzed two-party system as if it were mandated by our sacred constitution

Profiting handsomely by encouraging polarization through destructive and divisive opinionating

Encouraging a faux economic growth through the promotion of negative savings rates

Performing phony political litmus tests like gun control, abortion, flag burning and gay marriage

Increasing our infant mortality and bringing back vitamin deficiency, TB and malnutrition

Smugly relying on disappearing non-renewables for all our inefficient daily activities

Cynically rejecting sustainability as an expensive hoax spun by elitist liberal conspirators

Keeping the military in check by granting it a hefty budget increase every single year

Speaking with a country twang to mask your elitist background and ownership by the corporations

Stalling progress by staying on expensively-crafted but childishly-simple message in virtuoso fashion

Scoffing with a god-granted exceptionist superiority at global opinion, morality and lifestyle

So-called 3^rd world Costa Rica has a higher literacy rate than the undeveloping United States

Quest For Inner Peace V2.0

I simply could not just ignore my body odor in the search for inner peace

Got flipped off while talking to Sally on my cell driving to my yoga class

Well, actually I go a couple times a week and it’s only $35 a month

I think I really noticed something after only a couple of classes

The other day I almost touched my toes for the first time since I cant remember when

I was really getting out there as we lay in the corpse position, then I fell asleep

It felt sorta like I saw myself take off silently in one of those rescue helicopters

Why, the traffic didn’t even bother me as I drove alone all the way back home

I think I scratched the side of a hybrid floating out of my SUV in their parking lot

Shutting down my comm device, I was shedding my earthly concerns before the class

I knew I needed another measured portion of the infinite, really soon

I was still a pilgrim despite the deeply worn tracks I followed thru our rodent warrens

I dropped my thoughts of dinner and even forgot all about my office foes for just a moment

I sought to see myself on a lovely beach in a rainbow sunset framed by reflecting clouds

I was only dimly aware of a woman’s gas in front of me as we assumed the next position

I repeated the computer-generated nonsense syllable that was my unique personal mantra

I pursued this inner quest as vigorously as I had pushed to get the kids thru school

My husband said he had learned to meditate as well and he practiced on the couch at night

Visions of the eternal void maybe just came to me in short bursts, as I exhaled

I took to going barefoot in loose clothes at times, in the privacy of my own home

My cooking shaded away from meat and towards instant packaged Asian main courses

Sometimes I felt a twinge of guilt sipping on a Latte instead of bathing in the Indus

After a long internet search I found a guided Indian Enlightenment tour with a real guru

I began to see a bit of God in all the plants and insects as I sprayed and weeded my garden

Passionate conservatism began to make a lot more sense as my eyes slowly opened

I peeled off layers of consciousness with the onions, searching thru my life’s mandala

Many weekends I applied but a half coat of makeup and wore my hair quite simply

There was so much more to me than these well-tended suburbs could ever reveal

The occasional housekeeping haiku began appearing in my personal diary

I wrote down the dreams that awakened me and tried to fathom them as I blew dry

Sometimes the New Age music cable channel brought quiet, purging tears to my eyes

I spent 20 minutes in the park listening for songbirds on my way to grocery shop

Changed my ring tone to a soothing melody and tried to let up on the car horn

Began to sense the triviality in the banal and un-insightful existence of others

Adopted a Tibetan orphan overseas on the internet and walked dogs at the shelter

Took comfort in knowing that I was following the ancient path of enlightenment

Get A Squishy Grip

How can you try to preserve these stupid trees when loggers really need those temp jobs?

Where’s the sense in expensive conservation when things cost so much already?

Forget the animals, get a tree-hugging grip and start taking care of our dear families

What’s a few degrees warmer and, anyway, what’s a polar bear ever done for me?

Get out of the way Spongy Bob, there’s manlier issues than this candy-assed sustainability

How dare you tell the urban poor they should not slash-burn and then farm their rain forest?

On what moral authority do you decide who can have how many blessed children?

Why should our nice lawns dry up just to preserve some inedible little desert fish?

We’re not giving up our comfort or our safety to drive some teeny-weeny shoeboxes

We’ll stay with the cheaper imports even if they break before they ever work

It’s not our problem if them squints like working 14 hour days and sleepin 20 to a room

No environmental wacko is going to force their lame agenda on our traditional family lifestyle

Why should we pay more for electricity just to give a coupla salmon a chance to breed?

Don’t talk to me about some web of life until all god’s children have enough to eat

We just import their stuff, it’s their own decision to abort their female children

You can’t tax that acid rain with good people already paying too much for their A/C

These draft rules are unfounded speculation that will cost us all jobs and money

There’s not a word in our sacred constitution about this fool habitat preservation

Buck ain’t giving up his SUV until Fakkim stops burning coal to cook his gruel

Look, this climate change hysteria could threaten the economy and our families

Now, I’m not sure about evolution but our God surely did say only the fittest will survive

We vetoed child health care but we must pass this arms spending bill with no strings attached

How dare you to say local control means outside developers get everything they want?

Don’t try to mess with our god-given right to thrilling petroleum-based wreckreation

Of course we must channelize that river to protect surrounding homes and towns

If you don’t like our mining, why you’re just welcome to go off and freeze in the dark

God said to be a good steward so I make sure and have only the best chemicals applied to my lawn

The welfare of our people simply must come before this environmental nonsense

Yes, the convenience of fast food packaging makes it indispensable to our consumer lifestyle

It’s just simple common sense that recycling is for the boy scouts until you get paid to do it

Cleaning up diesel fuel will only make imported consumer goods more expensive to deliver

Removing mercury from power plant emissions will hurt small business owners

Spreading scientific doubt on climate change bought us time against the crackpots

Jesus, research studies have shown small cars to be dangerous, especially to kids

By all means, we must permit mountaintop removal to keep our coal inexpensive

Of course, endless pointless environmental reviews impede our economic progress

So, get your squishy grip off of the freedom loving lifestyle we intend to keep on enjoying, forever

Blindly Destructive Hand Of The Free Marketplace

Coupled with an unwavering and blind faith in our choice from all of those One True Gods

The blind hand of the marketplace unerringly creates optimal economic solutions

Thus, toxic emissions from our vehicles should not be saddled with artificial taxes

But weapons producers can increase demand through promotion of phony bogeymen

Given our love of exotic hardwoods, loggers quite naturally clear cut and sell them all

Pure supply and demand is always superior to meddling government social interventions

Strictly for-profit healthcare will provide all the medical services the old, sick & poor really need

If it is cheaper to bulldoze cropland than to redevelop strip malls, that alone makes it proper

Exterminating predators in competition for our domestic cattle is natural to market economics

Quite naturally, social costs cannot be found on the ledgers of brave entrepreneurs

Nobody profits from forests quietly filtering drinking water, so their rate of return is zero

Producers need not pay for problems their contaminated dust brings to far off lands

Making coal clean is inefficient and costs the consumer more, so it is to be avoided

Air and water are free goods and pollution controls are simply taxes, not investments

Capitalists will always be rewarded for reducing prices through slashing labor costs

If the Chinese will pay $600/oz, starving tribesman will sell all the ivory they can gun down

Factory trawlers can rob an old african fishing village of its living in the name of globalism

Short-term crop increases justify the overuse of fossil water and costly, dangerous chemicals

It is merely simpleminded idealism to hope for economic self-interest to be tempered with altruism

Our financials contain no long-term debt reflecting unsustainable resource usage

I can use my 300 hp SUV solely as an air-conditioner because the gas is all I need to pay for

Why add costly insulation to my home when energy costs less the more that I use

Neither the producer nor the consumer has any economic incentive to recycle

Laissez-faire allows prices to rise until scarce goods are simply driven to extinction

A dirt-poor consumer lacks incentive to drive producers towards sustainable practices

Government income transfers are an unnatural artifact which corrupt a pure economy

Hiring illegal immigrants at a fraction of market rate is rational economic behavior

Using a cheap, unregulated foreign food ingredients yields a clever competitive advantage

Shifting production overseas saves costs and justifiably brings executives great rewards

A large, poor, uneducated, young workforce benefits producers of consumer goods

Realistically, pension plans make no business sense and are to be eliminated via bankruptcy

Citizens should pay their own way in free retirement and healthcare marketplaces

Tying electablility to fundraising neatly marries entrepreneurship with politics

Certainly, we can rely on supply and demand curves to intersect at sustainable catch levels

We reflect with pride on our pollution reduction, having exported all of our factories

A no-strings bailout of the Too-Big-To-Fail will produce a blossoming of industrial self-regulation

We will simply let the marketplace test the survivability of these so-called endangered species

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

I Stood So Limply By

I stood by, and the best that I could muster up was just a couple squishy tears

I simply watched, numbed with shock, and did not stop the bulldozers gouging

I did not raise a finger as we eviscerated the very habitat that kept us all alive

I sat in silence reading of the disappearance of one species after another

I barely noticed our chances for survival as they disappeared in my rearview mirror

I did not press them to build things meant to last or which might even be repaired

I just let them go on de-humanizing animals into identical factory protein units

I bred, in a tacit acceptance of our witless and self-destructive overpopulation

I never even questioned that foolish, wasteful and expensive necessity known as war

I let them preach greedy unsustainable profit at the expense of all our futures

I watched as they spent more than they had on destructive toys that they quickly cast aside

I stood by as they made our important decisions in talks with their very own personal saviors

I deflected the many unrelated facts which pointed towards the need for real change

I observed from a distance as smugly smirking politicos confidently called the shots

I stood by and let simple mono-maniacal control freaks press their warped personal agendas upon us

I turned away from mounting evidence that we brought on our own slide into a dark abyss

I sat grimly on their sidelines as they played their shortsighted and selfish game

I stood by doing nothing to stop myself from being part of all that I condemned

I let them twist my angry silence into an approval of their boundless greed as our guiding light

I avoided conflict and let them carry out the wanton destruction they anointed as our progress

I simply kibitzed while they de-constructed this living earth and all its systems

I did not lift a finger as the lilies of the field were replaced by barren, hot, black asphalt

I looked right past the poverty, suffering and illness as I hurried on by to work every day

I stood by as it got hotter, drier and dirtier - convinced there was really nothing I could do

I only passively ignored their mindless, but expensive, mind-numbing media spectacles

I foolishly tended just to my own implanted needs thinking so would things work out alright

I stood by with but a blank look as a series of precious wonders disappeared forever

I did not get up and shout, much less so much as raise a hand in mild disagreement

I never even once protested the ecological holocaust of our convenience-driven advances

I stood by in silence as the teeming masses wasted or polluted all of our basic resources

I did not clean up the roadsides, beaches, rivers, lakes and forests that we fouled

I never mentioned how I despised their all-consuming pursuit of consumer goods

I stood by with hands free but not helping those who tried honestly to do better

I merely watched in amazement as we grew fatter and dumber, sicker and lazier

I did not speak out nearly enough to counter their glib lies and foolish promises

I leaned my fat belly on a shovel while the potholes grew and multiplied all around me

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