I sent out this poem verbatim to a hotbed of apathy one week before the 2016 election. It’s about the end of the human race. Humans vs. Mother Earth. Again 2020.
"A Poem" (Denial’s Attrition)
November 1, 2016, A Travel Trailer in Shadow Hills, CA
1 Someday we'll jump off the runaway train
onto the last grass on the last hill
2 on the run from the voice of denial's attrition
3 which still stands as her only witness
4 We refused to use the accused's evidence
5 the rampart's lone exhibit
6 was evidence only proof admitted
7 Choosing invisibility as an excuse to exercise inadmissibility
8 an echo for every voice that refused to listen
9 On the run from our own admission of volition,
freewill rules us innocent
10 Appealing to our most vulnerable senses,
consensus favors denial on
11 trial with implausible invincibility
12 accusations are suspect to overruling their own suspiciously unruly
13 inauspiciousness
14 Unfit to stand, much less run with no defense,
we know whom to blame for this
15 We judge our denial while a cheek turns a blind eye for the trial of less than a century
16 Forgive luck for futiles casting blank stones slated to arrive at our wake
17 She accepts her sentence humbly on a high horse with the voice of our memory
18 The good book beguiles our sardonic smiles with infinity
19 Someday we'll jump off the runaway train onto the last grass on the last hill
20 on the run from the voice of denial's attrition
21 On the run from our guilt and feigned blame,
her chains will begin to drift
22 On the run, we'll begin to feel her infamous shift
23 With the case against us dismissed,
denial's attrition will begin
24 It begins to accuse us again…
25 Our harsh ruling unduly jeopardizes her sentence, fooling double jeopardy with penance
26 the faithful turn injustice on end when piety puts its own fate at risk
27 driving morality up the wall,
exhausting its resources like piss in the wind
28 On the run from the voice of denial's attrition
anything we say or do may no longer be used against it
29 the use of fate as a noose is still permitted by volition
30 Fate, cousin of preordained farce,
forces free will to its own evanescence
31 Fate, destiny's acquisition, uses naivety as weaponry and double jeopardy as penance
32 Fate, the great shapeshifter, may choose denial over volition
33 at the discretion of all life's earthly lessons,
fate may take human life in the barter
34 Gaea will thank us for our martyrdom
35 Fate, father of Rasa, author of all earthly sagas
in the hands of tabula rasa
36 Fate, the blank slate, may chose to use its pen as the last nail in the last coffin
37 Someday we'll jump off the runaway train onto the last grass on the last hill
…on the run from the voice of denial's attrition
38 Someday the tables will turn for the wrongfully accused as she admonishes us still
39 the last nail will stand trial as our last witness
40 Someday soon, the wrongly accused stands in our shoes
41 we will stand trial for denial's attrition,
in defiance of our own free will
42 Someday we'll jump off the runaway train onto the last grass on the last hill
43 On the run from the voice of denial's attrition
44 You and I will be the last to hear its unwary and incredulous echo firing back at last
45 from a lilting whisper to a shrill
46 On the run from the voice that comes back to haunt the ghost we entrapped
47 the fact is the past is the last voice which it ever told not to tell
48 Our runaway train's innocent claim is already arraigning itself
49 At last, our past is paved over en masse by declaring its first and last plea of "guilt"
50 On the run from the light of our past…
51 As our past claimed that our last shot of shining was just a shadow cast by the fire beneath the last still
52 On the run, our last shot fires back at our past
in a last pact to kill or be killed
53 by the light of our last moonshine,
our lilted echos are shooting for the stars
54 You and I will be the last to see our past denials shoot their dunce heads in the clouds
55 as they provide us with our last bit of shade from our last shot in the dark
56 You and I will be the last to hear our lilted voices echoing our curtain call as we bow out
57 You and I will be the last ones on the run…
58 On the run, our last pact has no use
for a backfiring gun
59 On the run, we can't shoot for much more than the sun
60 Jump the gun from the gavel to gallows to the grave
with only grief as our plaintiff, our past paves the way
61 With two words it's confirmed, "court adjourned," in the cesspool where life breaks
62 From a warm little pond on an island beyond, life carries on in our wake
63 From stardust comes gold, without yellow brick roads and no voice veiled in curtains of shame
64 With no fear driving absolution's curtain call up the walls of hyperbole's one-way race
65 We leave her in ruins, tattered, cheated and abused
battered beyond earthly complaints…
66 Our past as we know it, beaten and broken, becomes golden to a new earthly race
67 Standing trial for the accused, walking miles in her shoes, life's on the run for life's sake
68 Our past as we knew it, tattered and ruined, lives to see the shoe-in the mess we made
69 Grace will surrender our waste as it renders itself home to a new road freshly paved
70 Someday we'll jump off the runaway train onto the last grass on the last hill
our last rites will be read by our wrongfully accused
71 Someday the tables will turn for her as she admonishes us still
72 She read us our rights before our present passed through our last mass
73 displacing all that matters in man's free will and testimony