Making a desert and calling it the American Dream

There is no going back
to the good-old-used-to-be.
The Ozzie & Harriet world
of my mythological youth

Beaver Cleaver on crack!
The idea stinks worse than
a roadkilled skunk!

I don't yearn for the misremembered days
I can't feel your pain.
The past you dream of is dead
That's a clear as if
it were written on a six-story billboard.

There is no virtue
in worshipping dead gods
whether they were carved on Easter Island,
dreamed up by Madison Ave., or enshrined on Mount Rushmore.

Do you actually believe that
we can continue are hydrocarbon-based
credit card-driven consumer culture
'til the end of time?
Towing the Beemer behind the RV
to visit the grandkids in Spokane,
is that what the American dream
is all about?

Some may think so
but the Brazilians, Chinese and Indians think not.
The sad truth waits
with the menacing barbians
who are part of the human traffic
crossing the Arizona border.

If the mythical past,
shallow as a text message
as malignant as a sex offender,
is dead, what then?

It's time to break the chain
of ordinary madness that dooms us
to an unsustainable future
It's time to stop making a desert
and calling it the American Dream

Can we do it? I don't know.
If we do, then we can
become straight "A" students
in the eyes of our ancestors.
We can create a new America.
A country that would make Washington, Lincoln,
Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King proud!

Capitano Tedeschi

Making a desert and calling it the American Dream, copyright Feb. 11, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

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