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

Yo, Conservatives: Do You Really?

Do you really ignore their careless toxic dust way up your nose and far down your lungs

Are you good with harshly ignorant laborers throwing up cheap shit all in your face

Is their flimsy pre-fab on flattened and devastated earth a relief to your tired eyes

Does that smoggy orange haze that you drive through soften your haunted outlook

Do you really fulfill your spirit from some musty old book supposedly written by a god

Can you actually enjoy that giant, poorly-engineered, way-overpriced gas guzzler

Do you think the lame media in which you immerse yourself helps you to grope your way thru

Are you still so sure you won’t live long enough to need any Medicare or Social Security

Do you really think energy efficiency spells the end of what you mistake for comfort

Do you perhaps take a vicarious pride in our cowboy diplomacy and wars of liberation

Are you gathering cosmic truth in your cycle of meaningless work and mindless recreation

Has living for today and grabbing all that you can not even worn you just a little bit thin

Does it grow difficult to lose yourself in prescribed meds, alcohol, religion or media rapture

Can you truly believe that our blind and greedy rush can continue even another 100 years

Have you actually considered the size and permanence of your stumbling daily footprint

Did you ever answer if you’re better off in today’s version of Morning In America

Do you really think if you just keep the family safe and happy everything will simply work out OK

Does the blasting noise of all the cars and harleys and trucks somehow blend to soothe you

Can you find safe and quiet refuge in the crumbling home that’s worth less than you owe

Is yours a parallel worklife with the next piece of veal in one more prairie dog cubicle farm

Do you really think that polarized 2 party gridlock inevitably gropes us forward

Must you judge all your actions with regard to convenience and time savings

Are you ok with those who fed chalky poison to babies helping provide food for your children

Do you really feel that things will just work out and we’ll muddle through like always

Do you really think it’s progress to channelize the rivers and fill in all the wetlands

Are you maybe only accelerating blindly toward some as yet unspecified objectives

Will you really reflect back in satisfied wisdom as you are fed and excrete thru medical tubes

Does their sporadic and uncontrolled noise really not rattle your uninsured teeth

Do you really not notice the billion wasteful and paranoid lights blotting out all the stars

Is adjusting the thermostat to your comfort really your only solution to climate change

Have you truly found peace of mind in a round of golf or an expensive pedicure

Do you not weary of making this or that hole a little bit bigger while moving it elsewhere

Do you really ignore the endless tolling of extinction, heat, drought and pollution

Aren’t you often looking forward for weeks to vacations that you do not even remember later

Can you actually believe that unencumbered greed is, in reality, sacred enlightened self-interest

Do you really sleep soundly thru the night, wake up refreshed - just to do it all once again

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

They Could Not Hear It

They could not hear the music which always flowed so smoothly from inside my head

I still could not understand them even when they stooped and shouted right in my ear

They did not feel the sad melodies with which I themed all of their activities

I understood every word they said but in the end I could not grasp their true message

Their motions became quite graceful when put to the rhythms that only I could hear

I shuffled about to those crazy tunes to which they never even knew that I was listening

Since they could not hear it, they determined there must be something wrong with me

But I politely rebuffed their earnest efforts at helping me along my way

My internal occupations made me seem quite inattentive and forgetful to them

I always wandered off course immediately without the strictest guidance

But they could stand me in a corner and I might remain still for hours on end

And how often I was startled by their gentle tapping upon my shoulder

So many times I would finally notice someone had been calling my name

I would smile in red-faced amazement and then simply shrug

Staring straight forward I never even saw the back of her embarrassed head

I waltzed alone to an orchestra that helped me soar and made them chuckle

I thought I sang harmoniously with my music but, to them, it just sounded very much off-key

There was no way I could share with them all of the beauty that I witnessed inside

They laughed and shook their heads as I swayed alone to those inner melodies

I had to turn it up so loud that I was deafened to many important commercial messages

They could not hear and I would not listen and so did my years dance right on by

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

They're Winning

Their billion points of too-bright and greedy light outshines some tired socialistic duty

It’s certainly no contest between living for today and preserving some hazy future

Encouraging vapid consumption politically trumps calling for savings and patience

Trumpeting military preparedness drowns their puny and weak squeaks for peace

ATVs lead the accessibility charge into the heart of our under-performing public lands

Fast food has saved us so much time that the raw oatmealers can’t ever even catch up

By the time this blind little fish suit is settled, all the rivers will be dried up and dead

Clear-cutting those last tiny remaining stands of old-growth is pretty much assured

Our kids are kneeling down in school and not hearing that they’re kin to monkeys

We can squeeze unlimited war funds from squishy liberals with no strings attached

Stalling for more research is a good strategy to maintain the cozy status quo on all eco-issues

Selling the yokels on local control lets us buy them out and get on making money fast

Family values and Jesus’ word make simpler sense than sustainability and preservation

Just increasing national debt is easier to rationalize than socialistic tax and spending

The fast profit in building cheaply has triumphed over making things which last

Education is for geeky loosers, not kids chosen by their mom’s god to lead the world

They’ve convinced us by making those jobs only fit for hopelessly desperate foreigners

We celebrate our independence with loud explosions and hot dogs, not tofu and tea

There’s just no more discussion that holiday’s are only to promote consumer spending

Rest assured that we know all about those liberty-threatening climate change wackos

Without any medical studies we found out ourselves that Crank is the only diet that really works

Political pitchmen have demonstrated that the profit motive will yield universal healthcare

The environment that supports it all is performing badly against people, jobs and money

They’re battling climate change by adjusting home thermostats to suit their t-shirt comfort

We’re making our skies cleaner by moving our factories to hungry lands overseas

Obese black men in NFL tights keep us from books as we graze supine before financed HDTVs

Literalist biblical interpretations are winning the debates against scientific results

They’ve succeeded in convincing us of the important differences among colas and beers

They’ve assured us we need not argue anymore over past lies they told the world

Their self-satisfied and smug smirks have shown that conservation is for quivering vegan rabbits

The coal industry has taken the marketing lead to a clean, independent energy future

Big oil has secured its tax shelters and successfully blocked subsidies for renewables

We’re successfully displacing native plants and animals in every single part of the globe

Threats of costs in jobs and money score major victories over living rivers and clean lakes

The global rich are capturing an increasing majority into a hopeless slavery from birth

They’re winning big since they represent the zenith of our treasured moral superiority

By A Thread

Balanced on a tipping point thanks solely to our own good and focused efforts

Risking not only our foolish selves but the entire complex web of life on earth as well

So close now we must shout above the noise we make so we do not have to hear

Hanging on by someone else’s fingernail while we concern ourselves only with the view

Piddling with the fancy GPS instead of just looking up ahead through the windshield

Held up by an unraveling thread yet somehow still struggling wildly to be freed

Heated almost to the boiling point but unwilling to turn down the flame

Out of breath but still running while trying to bray silly orders and directions

Able to see the consequences clearly now but still unwilling to change the course

Just looking at the road ahead as the entire load commences to sway and tip

Depending that the river ice won’t break as we cross far too late in the springtime

Speeding through a stormy night overloaded with worn out tires on bad roads

Stumbling in the darkness but too much in a hurry to take the time to fix the light

Wading just at the edge of a steep, invisible drop-off without knowing how to swim

Needle pegged on empty but so far away from any town on a cloudy, moonless night

Talking on the cellphone and screaming at the kids as the latte spills and a truck pulls out

Much older now, for such a long time, than we ever imagined we could become

Safe and dry with a picnic lunch in our rowboat unaware of the waterfall up ahead

In a hurry, but blinded, on a foggy night with the street covered all in white

So near to losing all we’ve built but staying focused on living only for the moment

At the point where an unlikely salvation can only just arrive in the very nick of time

Unknowingly separated by merest hairsbreadth from total and eternal annihilation

Milliseconds from a stunning crash we did not see coming and will not live to remember

Catching the disappearing rays of the last gorgeous sunset on our final dream vacation

Caught in a still picture of that fantastic blur at the end of this, our futile race

Poised upon a great divide and now at the mercy of entropy as to which way we flow

Having risen to the edge of space there is this brief and subtle pause upon our zenith

Reaching too far over, from several rungs too high, with no one below to steady us

Betting everything on an untested long shot some salesman touted as the next sure thing

Just one more minor system insult from initiating a cascading set of networked failures

Going so fast that even if we make it we won’t really know until it’s way long over

Hanging by one silky thread but still living really large thanks to greed and denial