Poem for the Rest of Us

Poem for the Rest of Us
America may be the best Babylon…but it’s still Babylon.

This is for the rest of us
This is for those of us who are done settling
Rattling our carts of straw and brick
through the supermarkets of empire to grab power wealth and success
Comfortable houses, perfect hair
We were taught that this is what it meant to exist
Groping for pearls in the mud under pharaohs empire
But now we are wondering
So this is for those of us who are sick of having absolutely everything and yet are deeply unfulfilled, like yuppie junkies and two-bit strung out celebrities.
This is for those of us who are tired of trying to be prom queens and prom kings,
Who are tired of trying to keep up the jones’ who never wanted to keep up in the first place
This is about resistance
Resist the Empire

II.
For there are CEO’s making millions
While young children are driven from their homes by foreclosures
Because their parents wanted to keep up with the Jones’
So they took out loans and the advertiser said “Yes! Yes!” be the best
So that everyone knows your worth something
Buy buy buy
Yet I say, resist.
Resist the Empire
For your billboards may say
War is peace but
I say war is profit and we all know the
Amount of shots it takes to get there.

In Portland we had a homeless friend named L.A.
He slept on our back porch with another vet friend named Shanghai
His pants smelled of urine
His life smelled of a yearning for a life that was not this one
He drank himself to death one night,
couldn’t stay sober with all his memories of how much fighting for an empire cost him.
it cost him his liver
it cost those Idaho graveyard withdrawal shivers

yet I say, resist.
Pick a paintbrush and hush over all this billboard darkness
Paint over it with love
Paint over it with truth

For Against systems of oppression—love wins
Against materialism and greed—love wins
We are returning harsh slaps with cooked dinners
We are washing feet instead of climbing ladders
Forgiving rather than holding on
For this is not a top down-trickle-down-legislate from the top-power over-you economy.
We’ll be like torches
bursting like mustard seeds through the underbrush
we are coercing people with our potluck dinners
With a sign above our door that says “welcome sinners”
This is about imagination
Leave your chariots
Your war machines
Your military-industrial complexes

resist the darkness in your own heart.
resist the darkness of your past
Forgive your father
Your ex-lover,
Holding onto the back of a decrepit car as it tumbles through a graveyard does no good to anyone.
I know it’s hard, but resist.

making sure that before you do anything
You fix what’s wrong In here
Remove two-by-fours from your eyes like they were early morning sleep boogers
Take the darkness out of here so
You can fix the darkness out there.

I know I’m trying, and I don’t get it right all the time
In fact I get it wrong a lot

So this is not me preaching to you but me reminding myself and that’s all preaching really is sometimes anyways
But resist
Let justice roll down
As you kiss the light of the morning
Resist.