what then?

My friends

who used to be little boys,

racing their cars and drinking cheap beers,

are now

decorated veterans,

war heroes,

with stories no momma wants to hear.

Gazes that go vacant

and questions left unanswered

or mumbled generalities,

the scuffing of a toe on the sidewalk,

hands shoved in jean pockets.

Where did we go wrong

that we kill the innocence as we send them

to kill the innocents?
Over oil,

over gas,

over ownership of a thing none of us ever really owned

in the first place.
We rape the earth,
rape our soldiers,

pulling the souls of both through the tanks of our cars

and blowing their dead fumes out into our filthy air.
Dirty, stinking, ridiculous war

lost our children,

my generation,

your sons and daughters,

while oil pumped by the gallon into our oceans

and we scrambled to save everything it touched.

We acknowledge its inherent deadliness

but loathe to admit

the vast scope of its poison.

Yet now,

like the first glow of amber before sunrise,

we see people rising up,

hairy faces and sandaled feet,

throwing down the gauntlet on corporate bullshit.

Banging away on drums,

growing gardens,

writing, letting words flow as if their very lives depend on it
(and let me tell you...they do, man, they do),

reaching out,

helping, lifting, sharing,

reteaching one another that this life is about love,

not stuff, shit to fill your houses and your time,

but people...and plants...and earth, and chalk sketches on a brick wall,

skinny words put to a fat beat,

just to make you smile
or open your mind to modern-day enlightenment.

Those of us,

we reject this world that has been fed to us by cable television and bought-out media.

We turn off our televisions, turn off our lights,

and head outside to meet our fates,

our dooms,

our destinies,

on the worn paths of mountains,

on dirty city sidewalks where we

spit rhymes,

sit on stoops and porches and

talk with friends until the words cease and then we listen,

just listen,

to the heartbeat of the globe,

pulsing beneath our skin, beneath our toes.

Don't disturb us, man,

cause you won't like what you hear.

When you open your standard-issue ears

and they are torn like paper

with the realities

of what is.

You think you're slick in your Dolce & Gabbana,

nice threads,

spun by child's hands

and sold to you in the vomit of fashion's bulimia.

Where is your heart?
Your soul?
To whom do you turn when the seal is broken

and you start to see the world for

what

it

is?

One day you'll turn to us,

the freaks, the geeks, the outsiders,

saying, “Wise ones, teach us, for our

oil is gone,

supermarkets are empty,

wallets are empty,

friends are gone...

oh what shall we do?”

And we'll give you a packet of seeds, an empty notebook, a trail map to the nearest mountain,

and a hug,

and bid you

Namaste.