Take Them As They Lived

Take them as they doze off from another heavy meal, flat upon their couches

Remove them when their attention wanders as they sip and talk and drive

Wipe them away as they celebrate outsourcing and downsizing bonuses

Kill them just before they fondle yet another frightened child

Take them as they cast their wrappers, butts and cans upon the ground

Grant them eternal rest as they approve yet more funds for their tools of war

Stop their hands as they sign the papers that doom another marshy habitat

Stop their hearts as they stuff themselves after another phony business triumph

Take them as they thoughtlessly order the latest trendy seafood being harvested to extinction

Lay them down as they pray for unquestionable guidance on business and political decisions

Strike them as they casually fill their inefficient vehicles with more wasted non-renewable fuel

Rein them in all the way when they grow childishly drunk and roar and fight

Take them as they leave the churches gorged and belching a thick righteousness

Close their eyes as a batch of Meth explodes in their haggard, toothless faces

Quiet their voices as they preach holy violence against other equally insane religious zealots

Still the breath they would use to whine over regulation’s awful costs in jobs and money

Take them on their cell phones, their iPods, their xBoxes and their phones

Relieve them as they lay frightened and alone in the sterile pediatric units

Lift their burdens quickly when they reach that terminal stage

Silence them as they spew forth hatred, teach intolerance and spread fear

Take them as they dream of impossible better lives in the filthy hovels of unplanned cities

Hustle them away after they brazenly kill and then cowardly plead their innocence

Grant them peace when their very teeth, bones and eyes are simply worn out

Relieve those filled with anxiety, stress and aggression of their selfish cares

Take them in their golf carts, ATVs, dirt bikes, jet skis, RVs and snowmobiles

Help them to help themselves to escape the pending charges they are too ashamed to face

Cast the outsourcers aside as casually as they have cast off others for so many years

Deliver the women suffering lives of institutionalized tyranny and abuse

Remove the willfully obese with diabetes, stroke, coronaries and emphysema

Strike down these so-called leaders who say they simply give us what we want

Lead away in quiet peace those who have lost the partner of their lifetime

Grant mercy to a soldier who remains somewhat conscious in the wreckage

Take that faithful old dog by surprise when he can no longer gain his feet

Halt her vapid and indolent consumption with a marketer’s dream of heaven

Reap them as soon as they stop to enjoy the benefits of a lifetime of work

Find them alone in lonely beds in the middle of another long and empty night

Take them away when their over-extended mortgages exceed the value of their homes

Surprise them with the bright flash of their own improvised explosives

Fill them with the grace of innocence if they are born unable to survive

Bring them compassion too late and let them waste away on their shame

Take the doctors on their sleek yachts and the lawyers in fine restaurants

Let the duped but faithful at least pass on with smiles upon their faces

Show the true emptiness to those who head corporate religious franchises

Help the honest seeker see a beckoning light towards the end of his path

Take them suddenly at their offices still buried in pointless minutiae

Overcome all their objections and dole out their final sales commissions

Free them as they lock the poor more tightly into multi-generational despair

Steady their greedy hands that they succeed in their blind self-destruction

Take the brokers at their watering holes and the politicians at their spending troughs

Carry off the bipolar in an unaccustomed state of mild equanimity

Stop the workaholic in the middle of many unfinished and meaningless tasks

Simply grant the domestic animals a peaceful oblivion as they are led to the slaughter

Take them filled with craving for the latest fad gadget they wish to finance

Lead them gently off when they mutter insensibly and cannot recognize a spouse

Guide our hands to relieve those languishing in persistent vegetative states

Collaterally damage the generals in presumed safety with a friendly, yet deadly crossfire

Take the burglars outside our doors and let the sun shine upon their dead faces

Let the spinster hear the con man gurgle himself a last rite over her phone

Stop their hands just as they are grasping yet another hefty bailout bonus

Take away far too many fellow species but provide us with comforting rationalizations