May 2008

Who Is The Future?  

Who is the future to whom I write?
Whose eyes will glance upon these words
The way mine searched for meaning
Among the entrails of a gutted life
All torn away and stomped asunder?

The heathens did come to bury whatever good we stored.
The barbarians did come to drown our song of love, of freedom,
And our pursuits of happiness—
Drowned by their cacophonous deluge that praised their god and master
Of war, impoverishment, exploitation, and enforced ignorance.

Ah, what a breed we have become—
And whose eyes will there be to read these lines
When these demons have claimed even the future as theirs,
Something they own, something they possess
And sell for the cost of one’s soul.

Give up your creative will! They demand.
Give up your awareness of self as all,
As one, as many.
Give up your vision
For as far as the eye can see,
For as deep as the heart can feel,
For as wise and playful as joy can be—
All this drowned for nothing but rage, fear and the stupidity of belief.

Whose eye will there be to read a citizen’s quiet revolt,
A protest against this sleep of death that grips
My over-medicated, undernourished nation—a slight, though
Existential protest against what makes us pitiless, without remorse and lifeless.
Give them their drugs of choice, their beliefs,
Their soaps and TV News.
Give them their ninety-nine cent discount stores
And magazines with ads for shiny new crap
And into the darkness of night they march—
Belching their chorus of doom, vomiting their smug delusions in unison.
How shameless, how absurd, how tragic.

To the eyes of tomorrow please know that I tried,
Did my best and wept myself dry.
I am sorry for leaving you no peace, for lynching tranquility,
And for the horror, sorrow and suffering we left you.
If you are there at all please
Know that a few of us did see the light,
Did act and did not go gently.

And, may it serve you to know
That we asked to become the monsters we are
When we chose to barter our freedom for chains.