Exceptionist Just Desserts

You drove in air-conditioned comfort on even the shortest of unnecessary errands

The toilet in your tiny nursing home room has become an impossible destination

You lamented that the big box chinese stores were all so far away

Now you are so lucky with a super WalMart right next to your house

You ate as much as you wanted of all the wrong foods for too many years

Finished that up without any insurance for your multiple medical conditions

The brave accomplished your mission and you had a great photo op

But the media conspirators followed that up with cruel ongoing coverage of the thousands of dead

It was so hard back then without any fast food drive-thru places

Now I can grab a quik lunch to eat in the car on my way to my next showing

You re-financed and took equity for great vacations on your credit card

Your house is worth less than you owe but your payments keep going up

You kept rolling newer cars into more expensive leases just to drive to work

Laid off and unemployable it’s funny how you can’t even sell that POS

You often wondered why your mother was bitter and angry on your visits

Now you sit in a drugged silence between institutional meals with soap operas droning

You kept your waterfront lawn green with fertilizers and pesticides

You were outraged as the fish all died when the poisoned water turned into algae soup

You put your complete faith and trust in private dialog with your personal savior

You thought you ascended safely to heaven, never glimpsing the empty truth

You spent hundreds monthly on creams, supplements and rejuvenators

Fashionistas take your foolish measure with half a glance then simply ignore you

You always carried plastic-bottled water to stay hydrated as you drove around

Their factory was not far below where others were releasing your half-treated wastes

You deftly combined stress, overeating, drinking and inactivity for years

Now they turn you carefully twice a day like some fat and overcooked bratwurst

You drank yourself into a stupor upon every possible occasion

All of that lost time now just makes your too-brief life seem even shorter

You stuck to mouthing the core values of voters targeted by your financial backers

Gridlock, bad planning, fiscal immaturity and arrogance is your legacy

Your knowledge of sports and entertainment was both wide and deep

It dispassionately evaporated like the water in your tissues upon your demise

You smirked and shook your head over those ignorant, poverty-stricken lands

Now your boomerang children hear they have steady jobs, good housing and even buy new cars

You met your retirement head on just like all the challenges you had faced

You collapsed on the 5^th fairway in a lime green shirt and funny white shoes after 8 months

You leveraged a second home for family gatherings in some toney region

You visited maybe three times and they sold it off just as soon as you died

You felt safe in your monster truck the size of a Russian family apartment

You hurt your knee because it was unsuitable for carrying a few groceries

You made your own rules with guns, knives, fists and your powerful muscles

You finally took your own life soaking in your stale and smelly piss in a wheelchair

You were aggressively noisy, proudly ignorant and fiercely independent

Your back and your hemorrhoids brought you to welfare and Medicaid

You ate nothing but pre-prepared corporate food, often for days at a time

Now you live large under the hot lights of the earlybird cafeteria specials

You sold your vote to the most attractively packaged puppet that was dangled

You’re angry at somebody because your debt just grows and the job you just lost was shit

Cheap illegales worked quietly inside and outside of your oversized trophy home

Now their foreign tongue is everywhere and they vow to re-take your land

You blew off school and took up some now-forgotten extreme sport and old video games

Now you think maybe some kind of sales job might just work for you

You bravely rode looking tough without a helmet and your lip curled up in a Harley sneer

You breathe, eat, shit and piss through tubes and you can’t move a single muscle

You gave in to their every whim in hopes that they would always be your friends

They lay near half-eaten snacks on your couch greasy, tattooed and pierced

You got a good job cutting down the old forest and said, well, fuck them tourists, anyway

Now the big trees are all gone and no visitors ever come and you have no job

You followed leaders who relied on faith in god tempered with a studied ignorance

Their colossal blunders have sacrificed your future and forfeited your morality

The Plague That Took Us

It killed not just living creatures but harmed the very earth that spawned it

          It fouled the blue waters and sullied the clear blue atmosphere

It destroyed many of the ancient microbe communities deep within the soil

          Its poisons spread evenly all throughout the vast planetary ocean

Many plants and animals species were totally extinguished

          Rats, roaches, weeds, flies and dirty pond scum prospered in its wake

Vast tracts of ancient forests, both tropical and boreal, simply disappeared

          It clearcut the valleys and rained thick silt that choked the life from the rivers

It grew in speed and power as it spread and multiplied

          Smoke and noxious gases blocked the sun wherever it was concentrated

Wandering fishes of the wide seas did not escape its deadly influence

          Evidence of its presence rained down to the deepest ocean trenches

Its burrowing unleashed sequestered toxic metals into pristine mountain streams

          Diverse plains were reduced to vast & sterile, monocropped factory wastelands

It ignited wood, coal, petroleum and natural gas immediately upon their polluting extraction

          The wastes from these activities ensured that little could return

It shattered the biospheric web without malice, foresight, understanding or regret

          Its simple movements alone became synonymous with habitat destruction

Evidence of its presence was visible to those orbiting in space

          It could even bring on global climate change with its vast toxic emissions

Sometimes it killed on purpose, more often, blindly, via simple collateral damage

          It ended great migrations and blocked the ancient spawning runs

It leveled mountains and dammed rivers, melted glaciers and turned the rain to acid

          It altered precipitation patterns, global winds and the ocean’s circulation

The world’s precious little fresh waters carried off the burden of its toxic runoff

          It joined meteors and volcanoes in producing a global mass extinction

The overwhelming noise of its progress filled land and sky and sea

          Its emissions changed the sunsets and its light even hid the very stars

Strangely it always sought out and killed vast numbers of its own kind

          There were parasites and viruses its habits raised against it as well

It even managed to spread into the atmosphere as far out as the moon

          In inhospitable environments it carried its own sustenance and protection

Often its effects were so destructive that this plague itself could not remain

          A savagely virulent minority were like the tyrant queens of drone honey bees

Little remained after its passing as it often spoiled what it could not use

          It arose so very quickly that many other species could not co-evolve

It was as if the life force experimented using entropy upon its own creations

          Even its closely related genetic cousins were not spared its savage attack

It burrowed in the earth, sped across the ground and flew through the sky

          It showed remarkable resilience despite incessant intra-species slaughter

It seamlessly integrated violence into nearly all of its behaviors

          Its activities managed to alter the planet’s carbon, nitrogen and hydrologic cycles

It wiped out entire symbiotic communities by targeting a single species

          Spreading invasive weeds sprang up to replace wild flowers in the shadow of its passing

It spread across the nurturing earth like a hideous mold on an agar plate

          Fires, explosions & smoke seemed to be by-products of its very respirations

Even ancient reptiles and amphibians perished in a geological instant

          But, many insects & microbes survived its onslaught and even preyed upon it

It could live in its wastes on dirty water and seemed content in its own fouled air

          It altered its own evolution by absorbing the radiation and mutagenic chemicals it released

Just the spreading runoff from its actions often crippled distant life forms

          It melted glaciers, expanded deserts and increased UV penetration

It metastasized in unplanned, cancer-like nodes nurtured by devastating supply vessels

          The tentacles between its colonies radiated destruction on all sides

Its success seemed to lie in its complete disregard for its own survival

          Its unconsciously generated diverse forms of emergent destruction

More powerful than a disease, its effects were like those of a geologic force

          Its behavior exhibited no discernible purpose, rhyme or reason

But when its resources were depleted, it disappeared as quickly as it came

          And after several hundred million years naught but a plastic trace of it remained

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

Enjoy Your Squalid Exceptionist Inheritance

Let the children decide...

We leave you our giant and inefficient homes for you to try and keep warm

You can see our gas-guzzling monster vehicles rusting in the junkyards

We offer you the opportunity to find the alternate energy we never sought

Go and mine the landfills for the finite, recyclable resources we so carelessly discarded

We have raised you to be confidently ignorant with a great sense of entitlement

Take these faded pictures of the smog-free Grand Canyon that we once knew

Enjoy the new and better jobs of tomorrow they promised when we were outsourced

Adventure cruise your Arctic now, safely free from icebergs and polar bears

Feel comfortable in the canned environment we built from coast-to-coast

We hope that you can spend some time in all the casino gambling venues we developed

Enjoy the love of loud-proud, petroleum-powered recreation that we instilled in you

Partake with both hands of the rich fast-food and snack heritage we have created

Act upon all those life lessons embedded in the video games you endlessly played

Noisily penetrate your forests now that we have opened them wide to all

Good luck overcoming our self-righteous, go-it-alone international policies

Be careful with the decaying roads, bridges, electrical, water and sewers

Here’s my old Spanish book, the brown majority will applaud your efforts

Keep an eye on this nuclear waste we buried for you and yours to come

Mind our close primate relations whom you will find only as inmates in our zoo prisons

We bequeath you the challenge of securing daily drinking water and firewood, on foot

Remember to decry immoral family planning while continuing to ignore childhood poverty

Use our cloak of Social Darwinism to make the less fit invisible in all their misery

Take over our mighty defense industry and ensure the world continually fights for peace

Just try and surpass our disdain for sustainability and efficiency

Continue industrial torture of soulless cows, pigs and chickens as god bid us to do

Peruse these records showing how cold it was and how much it used to snow

But you won’t have to worry about impotence, even during the great pandemics

Enjoy the persistent poisoned fruits of the grand partnership of chemical giants and agribusiness

No need to thank us for all the marvelous healthcare innovations that you cannot afford

Ppnder our old stories about swimming in blue lakes and clean rivers

Keep our literalist, evangelical beliefs working towards a Traditional Family Values future

Assume this vapid credit card debt we financed our phony lifestyles with for years

Continue demeaning scientists and engineers and don’t bother reading or doing the math

Go off and find yourself in this vast but center-less sprawl that we have created

Take up the mantle of our core values and the clear vision of our moral duties

Enjoy bulldozing all the cheap crap we hastily built as it rapidly decays

Take comfort in our fiction of the patriotic nature of your greed

Continue happily supporting the royal families we have ensconced to govern you

Good luck stumbling upon the environmental catastrophes we are unwittingly creating

Find your individual fulfillment and spiritual awareness among 9 billion others

Be glad that you do not have to worry about species that are already gone

Take the fruits of globalization and enjoy sharing equally in its grinding poverty

Relax and enjoy the relief from manufacturing and engineering leadership

Take up the foolish cycle of poisoning, fertilizing, watering and cutting artificially-green lawns

Try and partake in the benefits of the negative savings rate lifestyle that we pioneered

Continue to nurture that great culture of lobbyists and influence peddlers we built

Adopt our pseudo-scientific, jobs & money, stall tactics on any new regulatory issues

Cherish our god who is love and follow his bidding to spend trillions on national defense

For large sums of money, let industry experts produce government policy

Litter profusely anywhere, without the slightest guilt, based upon our good examples

Perhaps you can store CO2 emissions in the underground aquifers we already emptied

Always rely blindly on technology but disavow junk science for faith-based certainty

Relax and feel safe in the exploitative tourist meccas we created overseas

Experience being in the minority thanks to our love of cheap, illegal labor

Check out the great views where the ash, maples and elms used to grow

Breathe deeply of the mercury and sulphur-laden wastes we left in the air

Like us, barely notice as crime, ignorance and poverty mounts from all sides

Take more tax-deductible ski vacations in fundamentalist church vehicles

Quite easily swallow their latest propaganda thanks to our dumbing-down of your education

Rest easily within that patriotic sense of entitled exceptionism we have instilled within you

Continue blithely ignoring the quiet strangers who clean up all around you

But always remember your Nana as she lay babbling in her own wastes at that shabby nursing home