Even as we sit in our happy little homes utterly warm and comfortable
many more squat quite hopeless on hardpacked dirt floors
Even as we concentrate fully upon our surreal consumption
well over a billion live on unable to afford even the basics
Even as our own vast health care choices grow ever more costly
others need not pay for that which is not even offered
Even as some of us grow wiser about the food that we eat
some eat the wild animals that can never be replaced
Even as we struggle to manage the tattered remnants of our forests
many walk miles just to cut and carry their own daily firewood
Even as we spend ever more on our hi-tech weapon systems
Our greatest enemies cannot afford shoes for their feet
Even as we stand thoughtless in a hot and steamy shower
teenage mothers carry filthy water to their sickly children
Even as we despoil with concrete and bulldozers
others use hand axes, fire and goats to gain their own advantages
Even as we casually cast our fast food wrappers out upon the roads
millions make a crude living by combing through garbage
Even as our loving mothers shepherd children safely inside locked
mini-vans
starving babies suck with empty eyes at dusty and desiccated breasts
Even as we grow bored and find no meaning in our lives
Dirty and hungry hordes consider no more than their next meal
Even as our monstrous SUVs thirstily guzzle the dregs of the oil as
we drive all alone
they
have no power, sewers, running water, cars or <gasp>
even television
Even as we discard decent clothes merely for fashion's fickle sake
others cut their footwear from the remnants of old tires
Even as we indulge in communal botoxification
infants die in the desert with flies in their eyes
Even as we lavish thousands upon the care of our pets
children in their schools do not get even our used eyeglasses
Even as we prepare to suck the oil from our last wild places
we council the less-fortunate to leave their own rain forests intact
forever
Even as we deplore their sick & irrational religious fanaticism
our cause remains righteous because the one true God is on our side
Even as we imprison them as unlawful combatants
we attack them and kill them quite against the rules we invented
ourselves
Even as we constantly preach about the value of sweet freedom
they must choose to be either with us or be counted among our hated
enemies
Even as the tender buds emerge in the gentle rain
the unholy diesel fumes blacken the lungs of our precious children
Even as we grow fatter, feedlot-style, on factory corporate sludge
too many others share our castoffs with the rats and the roaches
Even as we proudly disdain the need to read and to write
the ruling 1% finds it easier to pass off even more twisted &
unsubstantiated half-truths
Even as world opinion grows ever stronger with regard to our actions
we grow yet more righteous and even less empathetic
Even as we prepare to spend more on the military each and every year
many children supposedly safe at home dose on mercury, lead and
diesel
Even as our leaders preach of security and prosperity
their corporate cronies cut benefits and move both production &
design overseas
Even as they urge pay cuts, layoffs and pension eliminations,
executives get more of everything, come profit or come loss
Even as they embrace you with false smiles and promises of a grand
future
their earlier work left you out of their plans and alone on the
street
Even as our blessed children loll like fattening swine upon our
couches
we continue spending more money that we have not yet even earned
Even as our grasping fingers clutch at last at the marketers prize
there remain but few traces of our folly in the ash underfoot
Even as in May the young calf happily nudges his mother in the meadow
the feedlots & slaughterhouses prepare a place for him come the
Fall
Even as we joyfully celebrate that Friday finally came again
we are already awaking to a depressive and smoggy Monday morning
Even as we look forward to the quiet contemplation of a dignified
retirement
we actually just grow older without grace or respect and in fear
Even as the day draws to a close and the quiet shadows stir
there is still time for more noise and room to belch acrid smoke
Even
as the tourist industry
produces more fun every year
the things that they pimp become worn out and cannot be recycled
Even as the church bells peal out across quiet township sunsets
somewhere criminals are callously stealing pensions from trusting
widows
Even as we summon up the best from within us for our greatest effort
our sociopathic so-called leaders demand young lives before they can
know any better
Even as the quiet waters flow through boreal forests without end
Our mere survival smears more brown deserts around this blue-green
planet
Even as honest tradesmen strive to do the good thing every day on
every job
greedy salesmen cackle as they waste their fat commissions on foolish
baubles
Even as we calculate the billions of light years known to the
universe so far
we do not even nearly comprehend the incredible shortness of our
vapid lives
