Our Progress Did All This To You

When you see brutal machinery gouging up the gentle land you once knew

We did this without so much as a passing thought about you

When your ears hurt from the noise and your nose burns from the stench

We drove casually by and did this to you without the slightest pretense

When the rain does not fall and the sun is too hot and it feels too crowded

We did this and We needed no help to get it all started

When the water is dirty and grows ever scarcer

We did this with kindness and you need not fear, sir

When you cast out any others at all different from you

We did this and they, our cloned brothers, were not just a few

When you soil your nests and move on without a care

We did our duty and squatted in relief before you ever got there

When you stole from your children the life from the land

We did them a favor and steadied your greedy hand

When all you can think of is escape to mass media hypnosis

We did this for you with love that you might learn via osmosis

When you sit alone behind your car's tinted windows, swallowing the smog

We did this that you all might be ground closer in their great gears and cogs

When your children learn nothing, take everything and return only scorn

We did my best to make them just like you since the day they were born

When you work for years just to be kicked away like sick old prostitutes

We did our part to import your cheap and disposable substitutes

When you used it once and flipped it away

We smiled at your bored children going off again to play

When you swilled fast food and dreamed of the days when you were slim

We laughed as you were driving your car to the gym

When you bought your new clothes for the thrill of their bright colors

We did this so that you would not notice that your life grew ever duller

When you financed new vehicles and drove around on your phone

We helped you to think that your life was your own

When you mortgaged your future to spend more today

We fooled you into thinking you’d never have to pay

When you babbled alone to your cellphone in a crowd

We reported this as well, although not quite as loud

When you always spent more and never kept anything aside

We did this so that you would have nothing to look back on with pride

When you bought all the dreams that conglomerates were pitching

We did this counting softly, laughing, not bitching

When you smoked and you drank and you ate your rich food

We wrote songs to sell you things by shaping your attitude

When you took pride in your ignorance of the ways of your brothers

We saw why you had appointed yourselves to lead all the others

When you tried to look back and make sense of your time

We did what We could to hide these empty things from your mind

When your eyes began to fail you and you could no longer touch your toes

We did this with you but you will remain very much alone

When you thought you had mastered this life and all of its fears

We smiled as you finally tried to look deeper than into a mirror

When you planned romantic adventures for your golden years

We saw someone’s life ending in embarrassment and irrational fears

When you envisioned a time in which you grew old with grace

We smell your stale bedpans in an inhuman place

When you at last sat alone and planned a death with true dignity

We see it in millions and chuckle at the absurdity

When you finally saw these few things that others let slip

We mumbled this sadly through your barely moving lips

Shut the FUp

Maybe you could just shut the fuck up for a little while

Don’t drive by all the time in your noisy and infantile trucks

Cut off your pointless roaring lawnmower

Quit screaming and just shut the fuck up for a minute

Get your damn dog to stop barking all night long

Put that moronic Harley with the loud pipes away

Mute those vile commercials

Quiet down your precious airplanes

Just shut the fuck up for a minute and maybe even think

Quit yelling over the music

Stop braying for another beer

Put mufflers on the earthmovers

Don’t slam the goddamn door

Get your cell conversation out of my face

Don’t drive by with your trunk speakers blasting

Quit filling the scary silence with brainless chatter

Try not to make noise for a while without panicking

Don’t break up the quiet without a good reason

Turn down your amps so we can hear our headphones

Be aware enough to move silently instead of clip-clopping like a damn horse

Keep your spoiled kids muzzled down around other people

Really be quiet when you are out in the woods

hush that moronic speed boat you inconsiderate fool

Don’t modify that snowmobile muffler to go out into our forests

Nobody wants to hear you belching and farting

Quit trying to play the radio over your power tools

Turn off those shouting talkradio idiots

Stop taking turns trying to laugh the loudest

Turn it all off if you are not paying attention

Speak out against the roar of the jets

Get them to crack down on those half-witted semis

Have them collect taxes on all the noisemakers

Tell him to shut the fuck up if he is simply babbling

Don’t drag out endless meetings by just repeating bullshit
Quit talking when others are already speaking

Have enough sense to be very quiet early in the morning

Enough of exploding those useless fireworks just to make a lot of noise

Quit just accepting without a thought that all our shit is just naturally loud

Don’t play your car stereo against 3 others in a recreational parking lot

Once again ban turning up the broadcast volume during commercials

Stop shouting at me from way off somewhere else in the house

Be more considerate of others or start getting used to being roughed up

Quiet the air conditioner, redesign the refrigerator, silence the dishwasher

Quit pretending nobody else is around when you rant on your stupid cell

Make them pay more the louder they run the same hateful advertising

Quit getting all nervous when everything’s quiet and you hear yourself think

Stop mindlessly parroting the pre-digested sound bites that you have been fed

Shut the fuck up and let them keep talking faster as they get more nervous

Don’t talk so goddamn much and maybe someone will listen

Recognize freedom from irksome sounds as a traditional constitutional right

Don’t work in cube farms where they bathe you in electronic white noise

If you need to shout, it’s probably not a good time to bother talking

Realize that loud noise makes people even more angry and aggressive

Boycott any product advertised with fast and excited music & raised voices

Turn it up as much as you want as long as it’s just in your earplugs

Bring attention to yourself and get singled out by the predators

Quit loudly repeating lies and nonsense as a tactic to get them accepted as truth

Reject the canned arguments that it’s too expensive to build quiet machines

Shut the fuck up and maybe people will consider the value of your words

Stop trying to fill the great silence that has never been empty