As the winds grow stronger and the snow falls heavy,
as the oceans rise and pour over the levee,
as the sweltering heat makes us sleep in the day
and work in the night, I’ll take your hand and say:
Dance with me in the darkness, until the futile dawn;
sing while I play guitar, we don’t have long.
Read your poems to me while we have a little time;
we have no future, but we still have rhyme.
Let’s drink a toast, or two, to what might have been,
and what once was, before our time turned grim
Let’s plunder the pharmacy, or eat the magic mushroom;
don’t go into the night easy, but don’t rage at the moon.
Let’s savor all the moments, as our destiny arrives.
Let’s not waste another minute of our precious time alive.

This body is my palace of water and dust.
It is my earth,
my whole,
my entire empire.
Contained within my skin is a world
of complex systems and relationships
too immaculate to comprehend.

I lay myself bare continually.
Exposed vulnerable and strong, I embrace the wind.
Flexible and malleable, I bend and shift but hold my
center--
somehow my center holds.

I contain every natural phenomenon,
and each of them contain me completely.
I see my reflection in the water and I am the water,
I see the bark on a tree and my skin empathizes,
I smile and my soul takes on the wings of the butterflies
and flirts with the leaping wind.

And you come in and you dump your **** in my rivers,
oil and chemicals polluting my veins.
You mine my depths for the gold and discard the soil,
you exploit my purity.
You ignore my warnings and pleads as if you don't understand my language.
You are the ones who don't believe in climate change,
as if facts were fiction.
You don't believe in your impact on my existence.
You carry on as if i am worthy of nothing but disposal
and exploitation,
as if i am not as intrinsically valuable as you are.

Do you not see yourself in me?
Do you not see your own reflection in the waters of my eyes?
Do you not recognize the similarity in our skin?
Our commonality in the blood that pounds like torrential floods
on the windows of our souls
reminding us that we live?

Do you not see the web of life that binds us
so intrinsically together?
We are as inseparable as inhale and exhale.
We need each other--
we are the same process,
the same breath.

Establish a research and development facility tasked with recycling 100,000 commonly used household goods or packaged products back into the original base material needed to remake it into new product packaging. Pass legislation requiring all companies selling products with packaging to buy their source materials from a registered public-private venture allowing any firm willing to participate to do so. Companies must then manufacture packaging locally using source materials supplied by one of the public-private companies. Companies will also be required to hire locally using a diversity and economic income model incorporating or locating the participating companies in the poorest rural counties in the state.










Society grows great when Old Men plant trees.  -Socrates

Every misused glass of water,
Every slight at sons and daughters,
Every successful missile test,
Cars idling, cows lowing,
All the chemtrails we don't see blowing,
Every dent, every theft, every lie and mocking jest,
Can't be held tight to the chest.

Distended stomachs, cardboard boxes,
Soup kitchens and needy churches,
Gay slamming and alternate choices,
These and more need our voices.

Add the carbon in our air,
Two-headed frogs warning, Beware,
The paltry state of our bees,
The fires devouring our noble trees,
The motors on our inland lakes,
These and more will not wait.

All that crawls, swims or wings,
All of us and everything,
Is everything to all,
There's no time to hesitate,
For I am the aggregate.

To The Daughter I’ll Never Have:

I want you to know that I did my best. I fought for you, for the idea of our family. I stood up for what I felt was wrong. Giving up my selfish ways wasn't easy, but it was doable. You need to know there was a time when our world was fixable.

When I was a child this was paradise...

A cool Summer breeze was a stroll to the 100 foot Oak, drinking the sunlight.
The river was a new road in the December.
Spring was as full as your sinuses.
A dying Autumn took your focus away from mortality.

All at once we cut the trees to steal their fruit, broke the ice with our fast machines, killed the sheep that kept us warm and fed us, and remembered that we weren't invincible.

I can picture you now:
I loved the name Haley.  
Your first words were "Daddy".
You walked into your first day of kindergarten fearless.
You had this ferocious spirit that let you go into any situation without any hesitation. You got that from your Mother.

I was always proud of you, no matter how much trouble you got yourself into. There was something special about you.

I can only dream of the life we'd have together but I fear for the stability of my world today. Not even today have I met your Mother but I know she fears the same for you. What will the world have left for you and those around you left the clean up the messes that those before us made?

It is on that note I regret to inform you that I may never have a chance to meet you.

My time will be spent gluing leaves to the trees.
I will carry polar bears on my back until it breaks, bees on my shoulders until they are stung and swollen, and love in my heart until it swells. While you and I may never meet here on earth, you need to know that this love will not go to waste. Every ounce of love I was supposed to give to you will be shared with everyone who cares about our world now.

Please forgive me for being selfish.

Love,
Daddy

Some make plans to escape
Some just watch it burn