When is too much too much?

Somewhere along the line 

the final straw landed on the back 

of our grand society 

and there was a sickening crack 

and it’s been breaking down 

ever since 

and nobody has the sense 

to figure out what happened.

What was once a progressive

three steps forward and a half a step back 

became a three steps forward, two steps back 

and now it’s three forward and three back 

and still 

nobody knows what’s happening. 

So we surround ourselves with bits and bytes, 

digital this and digital that 

and call it advanced or high technology 

and for all anyone knows 

it very well might have been the final straw.

Sometimes he wakes up in a dead silence 

where no recollections have yet to appear.

No schemes, no dreams or frivolous props 

have yet to clutter his empty stage mind 

and for a little time he knows what it means 

to rest in peace.

The Asylum

I wander through the asylum 

watching and conversing with whoever. 

Some compare Obama to Hitler 

while others obsess about the weather. 

Die-hards clutch tight their precious guns  

mumbling it's a god given right. 

Crouching in fear behind tables and chairs 

for all the 'what if’s' and 'what might

happen' while those in the garden
pretend they are on a Caribbean cruise 

cuz everything is just hunky-dory  

according to the lady on the evening news.

All smiles and celebratory
for the banker crew and it’s five year high.
In a global asylum they bargain
for the biggest piece of the proverbial pie

and I just wander and wonder
what the hell is going on here and there
and everywhere this madness
hiding in the form of the normal and sane.

Broken, they readily admit 

because it sounds so much better 

than just plain sick.

Three quarters of the House and Senate republicans voted No 

on the Sandy relief bill.

In the great expansion 

all hands will eventually part 

and in time 

even greed will lack a host 

to suck upon.

* * *

We are the generations 

our great, great grandparents 

warned each other about 

and we inherited their inability 

to work things out 

and whether we like it or not,
right or wrong 

our children’s children 

will inherit the same inability 

to just get along.  

Lone Wolf

I’ve forgotten the touch, the caress, 

the madness of a life shared 

and miss it not, doing as I please 

while pleasing no other, 

running free through what years 

I might have left.

I’ve forgotten the dreams, the aspirations 

most hold dear in noble futility 

and like a lone wolf I howl and I howl 

at a luminous moon, 

giver of soft light and nothing more 

is expected. 

The Tea Party Kid

In a make believe world 

he sips imaginary tea 

from an empty cup. 

A little kid pretending 

he’s all grown up,

rebel yelling ‘spending cuts!’ 

but what he really says is 

‘me, me, me,

my plans, my wars, my policy!’

* * * * *

Mass Hypnosis

I finally got rid of that propaganda tool 

cuz I am so tired of being played for a fool 

so I turned in my cable box  

and now, like in the good old days, 

commercial interruptions is the price I pay 

for free TV, 

limited to a certain degree 

but ten channels of crap is hardly any different 

than a hundred channels of the same.