Questions, doubt, ambiguity, and dissent
have somehow become very unmasculine.
Authoritarian maniacs are
premiers, czars, and presidents.
Each one is more righteous than the next.
Each town they bomb
each human they kill
is done for “humanitarian” purposes.People don’t own the water in their own village
and they certainly don’t own the diamonds and gold.
Millions are forced to make dinner out of garbage and dust
while Russian businessmen and movie stars
are buying 500- million-euro villas on Côte Sud.Bees have stopped making honey.
People are drilling in all the wrong places.
The U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark, and Norway all claim the Arctic
but none of them seem to care that the polar bears are drowning.They are fingerprinting, photographing our licenses and teeth.
Big Brother is now in our phones, our pods, our PCs.
Not one of us feels even a little safer.
New Age mental health providers turn
out to be former war torturers with beards.
And the pope in a dress showing off his
ermine trim and cuffs
is telling everyone that
people kissing people they love is the greatest evil.
A woman running for U.S. vice president
believes in creationism
but not global warming.Why is everyone so much more afraid of sex
than SCUD missiles?
And who decided God wasn’t into pleasure?
And if the hetero nuclear family is so great
how come everyone is fleeing it
or paying their life savings just
to sit in a room with a stranger and cry about it?The Iraq war cost nearly $3 trillion.
I can’t even count that high
but I know
that money could have
would have
ended poverty in general
which would have canceled terrorism.
How come we have money to kill
but no money to feed or heal?
How come we have money to destroy
but no money for art and schools?The fundamentalists now have
billion- dollar private armies.
The Taliban is back
but never went away.
Women are burned, raped, bludgeoned, sold,
starved, and buried alive
and still don’t know they are the majority.Water is clearly nearly running out
but even in the desert where there’s serious drought
the golf courses are green and lush
and the swimming pools are full of water
for the twelve rich people who might decide to come.Special people adopt hand- picked babies in faraway lands.
Their flights there cost more
than the babies’ parents made
this year.
Why don’t they just give it to them?
Slavery is back
but never went away.
Just ask anyone who’s been whipped
how deep the legacy.
Six million dead in the Congo
and they never made the news,
and don’t tell me it doesn’t have
to do with color
and minerals.Poor folks are dying first
From hurricanes
Shame
Tsunamis
Radiation
Pollution
Floods
And neglect.
Rich folks
just put up fancier super- electrified gates
on their private perfect cities.Everyone’s having “benefits”
and throwing fancy parties
with lots of swag
so the rich people feel good about giving
away the tiny little bit of the whole lot they have.
But no one really wants to change anything.
If you really want it
you have to give something up
like everything
and then those that have, wouldn’t,
and then who would they be?
And that’s too complicated
so they write checks
and keep doing the same old things.
Selling change.
Making revolution profitable.
Corporations own everything anyway
even our hippie jeans, memory cells, and rain.
Why do so many women leaders look like Margaret Thatcher
and act even meaner?
Why doesn’t anyone remember anything?
And how come rich bad people
get paid lots of money to give speeches
and poor bad people are tortured
and in prisons?
Is there anyone in charge?
Or is this whole thing spinning out until it explodes
or dissolves?
And if there is something we can do
why aren’t we doing it?
What happened to fury?
What happened to accuracy
or accountability?
What happened to not showing off your wealth?
What happened to kindness?
What happened to teenagers rebelling
instead of buying and selling?
What happened to teenagers kissing
instead of blogging and dissing?
What happened to teenagers marching
and refusing
instead of exploiting and using?I want to touch you in real time
not find you on YouTube,
I want to walk next to you in the mountains
not friend you on Facebook.
Give me one thing I can believe in
that isn’t a brand name.I’m lonely.
I’m scared.
Girls younger than me are giving blowjobs
in homeroom
and they don’t even know it’s sex.
They just want to be popular
and get some respect.
Most girls my age are taking pills
or not getting out of bed
or eating or starving
or getting nose jobs or implants
or getting cut
or twittering away
or covering themselves
or desperate for a way
to be awake without faking
to be alive without freaking
to be serious
to be true
to even think of loving someone
when we’re already doomed.You tell me how to be a girl in 2010
I say let’s go for it
if it’s all coming down.
I say let’s speak it
let’s fight it
let’s right it
there’s nothing to hold on to
if it’s already gone.
They left it to us.
It sucks but it’s true.
It’s you and me baby.
