Finding My True Place In The End

Take a deep breath, at least one of the molecules entering your lungs came from Caesar's last breath. Enrico Fermi

There will still be a place for me amid the inorganic and the inanimate

Taking part in the complex cycles of the atmosphere here on earth

Cycling with the moon as she waxes and she wanes

Flowing with the tides in steady and peaceful respirations

Falling with the gentle rain from clouds of mist above the valleys

Crashing on a rocky shore with no one there to see

Carried upon the wind that always blows across the southern ocean

Inhaled by the plants in one form and respired in another

Circulating deep within the ocean around the globe for many centuries

Exposed with the dancing motes of dust backlit by a shaft of sunlight

Thrust up with the mountains built during vast tectonic plate collisions

Flowing with many different rivers through long inter-glacial epochs

Glowing with the northern lights in the star-filled Antarctic sky

Part of me in the rolling dawn and sunset that travel around the world

Ingested by the plant eaters and left behind to nourish wildflowers

Breathed in by living organisms to become part of them as well

Reacting in the upper atmosphere with the sunlight that sustains

Escaping into the quieter reaches where the planet’s gravity is not measured

Subducted down below the earth’s crust to flow up again with the liquid magma

Part of some few molecules in certain raindrops of every passing storm

Refracted briefly in a rainbow visible from one empty spot on the desert floor

Locked for centuries in the bogs or for millennia in coal deposits

Merging with the sun when it grows to claim us in its old age

Rippled by the passing of the cosmic background energy

Falling as snow and merging with the icecap for a thousand centuries

Rising with the smoke of countless burning fires

Riding with the earth around the sun, through the milky way, across the universe

Part of the biology of your sorrow and the chemicals released in your laughter

In one layer of stone finally exposed once more to the morning’s light

Helping conduct the voices of the birds and the calling of the insects

Freezing up as winter darkens, gliding down with the falling leaves

Blind chemicals from me reacting in someone’s creation of a work of genius

Consciousless but swirling, in those patterns perceived only by the living

Busy with the cycles of the inorganic and the radiations of the life force

Part of me was part of them and will be part of you as well as all of this

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

Faux-Golden Years

For now I am ready to retire and become that cute and cuddly grandpa

But my prostate has swelt up like an orange and I need that quintuple bypass

I wish to take my time now and to stop and smell those lovely roses

Yet I am 30 pounds overweight and my blood pressure is way too goddamn high

I look forward to the things I worked so much for all those long, hard years

But I have lost my hair and my back just plain hurts me every day and all the time

I plan to see all those places I have only dreamed of during all my work-filled life

However, I cannot walk, even quite slowly, without wheezing and turning red

I want to take some time to sort things out and make a bit of sense of it all

But my memory fails rapidly and I find simple explanations really are the best

I look forward to great adventures in the freedom of the open road

I poke along in my bloated RV between those safe, costly and sterile campgrounds

I finally get to spend some time with my family and my grandchildren

Turns out I don’t really care for them and they don’t have much time for me

I am excited to make new friends and live a rich and rewarding social life

I wear little diapers because I leak a bit after each of my 15 daily pees

I want to travel lightly, looking for excitement, like I did so long ago

I go nowhere without several pairs of glasses and all of my prescription meds

I collect my thoughts and refine my experiences into a unique vision of my own

I am viewed as a simple dodderer, quite inconsequential and totally irrelevant

I will finally spend some time communing with nature and learning of myself

Hopefully, my hearing aid does not feedback too loudly or have its battery go dead

I plan to hike to the many places I have noticed driving by, where people never go

My cardio and knees are simply gone and I tire quickly in the grocery store

I will hit the hot spots and go to all the famous beaches

Laws may have to be passed to keep my ugly body safely hidden from public view

I hope to gain a new perspective regarding our lives and our times

The world moves so fast around me I just want to keep out of its way

I will stand up for my rights with the others of my storied generation

I mean to attend those creepy Day of the Living Dead demonstrations

I can spend my time helping teach the children to know right from wrong

I am just another body to be looked after, according to their teachers

I try blending in, but my wrinkles and my thin white hair set me far apart

People blow right by me though I walk just as fast as I deem it sensible

I can easily fall asleep by friends and family with my mouth lolling open

If I have a good bowel movement I judge the day to have been a pretty good success

My thin and shiny skin has large dark blotches in among the spreading wrinkles

My yellow toenails get cut twice a year whether I can see them or not

I love getting out of doors and riding in a golf cart while smoking a cigar

I prefer eating dinner at 4 pm to avoid any indigestion when I try to sleep at 9

I talk to people I haven’t seen for years but they look at me quite strangely

Each new diagnosis yields a flood of flattering attention that brings meaning to my life

Chapel Of Bones

As you now are

          So once were we

As we are now

          so you will be

so once we lived

          as you live now

so soon change we all

          as you see how

as you walk today

          so once we traveled

as we lie still

          so your lives unravel

so once we laughed

          as your laughter now echoes

so quickly follows silence

          when one’s breathing goes

as you leave today

          so once left we

as we lay tonight

          so will you stay

so once we prayed

          like you meditate

so soothing your voices

          as day grows late

as you gaze down

          so gazed we cruelly

as you are drawn

          so were we quite truly

so once we cried

          as you grow quiet

so moist your firm cheeks

          our tears long dried

as you quickly forget

          we forgot those before

as we are forgotten

          so are your regrets

so once we journeyed

          as you now travel

so still our bones

          as we have learned

as you now love

          so loved we then

as you grow old

          so came our end

so once we played

          as frolic your children

as you grow older

          so our flesh decayed