The future has been buried before me.
I often forget to dwell upon death.
I am too young, too full of life and breath.
And no one I know has died in my life,
so, why bother ponder upon sour strife?
Because suffering will find its seeds to sow
If I do not hoe my fair share of rows.
The future has been buried before me.
I remember the End of History:
1945 in Nagasaki.
At precisely 08:15, the bomb falls,
and becomes a small sun, painting the walls
with the shadowy remains of people
like crude graffiti upon a steeple
and that vision disturbs my sleep at night –
I won’t go gentle into the bomb’s light.
The future has been buried before me.
I say ‘buried’ because I feel this weight
that is heavy like Destiny or Fate,
sitting on my chest, robbing breath while Hope
quotes cryptic zen koans to help me cope
with academic doomsday data-prints
and ubiquitous statewide surveillance,
and historical inequality,
and radioactive, plastic-filled seas,
and a global economic cartel,
using banks and tanks to McGovern hell.
As if humans were gods that could not die;
As if we could never run out of sky;
As if the sea could imbibe all that Tide;
As if our species could not suicide!
The future has been buried before me.
I’ve been Private Manning news reports,
at night, learning about kangaroo courts,
and domestic militarization
from old, crippled men void of elation.
A quiet heaviness like being snowed in,
discovering imprisonment. Broken
like Pussy Riot, alone in their cells
starving to death because their Truth rings bells.
When Putin wins the next Nobel Peace Prize,
journalists will propagandize state lies.
The future has been buried before me. Buried before buried before me.
This is bleak. We haven’t seen the worst yet
because our government won’t let us fret
since the phrase “Trust Us” is the state’s motto
when people forgot how to overthrow
the insensible criminals who can’t
handle the meltdown at the nuclear plant
in Fukushima which may threaten us all
because the system is broken.
Broken like an immune system fighting itself.
Broken like the stream of trickle-down wealth.
Broken like the bridges between rich and poor.
Broken like those drones waging dirty wars.
Broken like a fungus and its systems of spores.
Broken like the people and their raging roars.
Broken like our leaders’ sense of what’s wrong.
Broken like any angry political song.