we practice
paperless-peopleless-
ponzi-economics
while our politics
bleeds
& our climate
gasps
we’ve become
a suppurating
maw of unlimited consumption
we borrow
we splurge
we gorge
to waste
all there is
we armed the world
to kill––
& so it kills
we armed our
selves because
we were afraid
of fear itself
every day we
work more efficiently
to accomplish
less
with celestial
compasses we lose
our way
neither prayer nor
our personal
trainers can save
us
our traditions, like our
civilities, are
evaporating, but we
warm to the syllables of
words like
democracy, so
divided, sliced
& diced by our commodifying
times
we are, each of
us, terribly
alone
faster & faster
we spin
without knowing
why
we’re so
tangled up
in frantic doings
our souls have forgotten
their way home
we worship the rich
by digesting the dust of
national poverty
dysfunction is the
screaming celebrity on
our media screens
& we are so
unhappy
maybe the angels them
selves will descend to
stop our infinitely-
escalating-civil-
imperial-military-
industrial
wars
every conflagrating
couple, going up in
flames, once loved one
another
God gave our
country Thoreau &
Emerson, Whitman &
Washington, Franklin &
Vonnegut,
Reasoner, Murrow,
Cronkite &
Moyers yet we
have scarcely enough
sense or compassion
left in our American
bones to e pluribus
unum at all
remarkably,
we’re free––
& have a chance to
change––
to go a little
slower––
share a little
more
we need to wake
up in the morning &
give thanks for our
fellow Americans––
to respect one
another & shake
hands across the phony
divisions of self-interest,
selfishness, party-
affiliation & socio-
economic
class
we can still
remember how to be
civilized, kind &
considerate of
each other
&, miraculously, we
are blessed with
time