untitled blues

sometimes i imagine
a flooded burning planet
poisonous machinery and processes
choking
washed out greasy streets
dying
with the scientific evidence
still alarming in the queue
describing how it bled out
and dried up
     mostly without a whimper

and the established advocates
still shuffling       waving in their
pale earth-toned power suits
and self-congratulatory citations
riding a storm of toxic atmosphere
a whirlwind without direction
clinging to a raft made of petitions
and resolutions that passed
like some kind of life preserver
     which they weren't

and even after all the lobbying
of media brokers
congress members and presidents
corporate whores and nonprofit do-gooders
nothing moved decisively enough
to make a fundamental paradigm shift
     a new paradigm also a clique now

there's no intention here
to color the future
as bleak as it actually
     might be
     we all find our own coping mechanisms
with the numbness that surrounds us
needing context
from the endless assault
on all that's considered
alive and vibrant
the best
     of being human

before the great reckoning
can the witnesses and survivors
     expect a coming together?
echoing bells in every town square
riverfront and harbor
everyone speaking from singing bowls
sustained messages
from the inside depths
of a thousand frayed      naked forests
bending to their limits
just before their limbs shatter?

and from the ambivalent university
of apologetics
there might only be another
study-in-the-making
like an oily structure that breeds
fear      accommodation      conformity
     another betrayal of an entire generation
and for all the talk of responsibility
the decision-making structures are precise
meshing each gear
in sterility
insulated beyond
the slipping troubled masses
out of range
     of the mirrors and truth tellers
          purgatory lock-up incorporated

--- e b bortz