Wednesday, June 13, 2018

life on earth

Life on earth will survive any damage done to it
No matter what insults we inflict on the environment
Whether or not climate change melts the polar regions
And the ocean overflows garbage like a cesspool.

Chernobyl’s exclusion zone has become a wildlife refuge
Teeming with species that thrive in our absence
Where people cannot survive the perpetual radiation
The question is not whether we can save the planet.

The question is whether humans will inhabit the earth
When it is very well known that we are in the anthropocene
When harmful human activities are altering the biosphere
Threatening catastrophe for entire ecosystems.

The question is whether humans will rise up and force change
When capitalist profits drive production that despoils our world
In a system that makes laws to keep us in thrall to fossil fuels
In a decadent culture of conspicuous consumption.

The outcome will be socialism or barbarism for us all
The reality that stares us in the face imploring us
Understand the urgency of the times we live in
Come together right now and make the revolution.

the road ahead

One day almost all of these superhighways will be relics
Like the canal towpaths we walk now as ancient history
And the abandoned railroad lines repurposed into woodland trails
Transport will be transformed into something else again.


All those diesel tractor trailer trucks barreling along
Soon enough will get consigned to museums and scrap heaps
Though I can’t tell you just what will replace them
There’s no doubt their pollution must stop.


We live with temporary solutions that make life better
Until the unforeseen consequences make life worse
In a dialectic that pushes us to find a better way to do it
Overcoming the entrenched reactionary forces of the past.


In China they built a road covered with solar panels
To be able to recharge electric vehicles traveling on it wirelessly
Making possibilities for tomorrow beyond my wildest imagination
For sure something amazing is developing there.


The system of distribution is more than the goods we consume
More than the many varied services we provide to each other
As long as  inequality increases poverty and human suffering
We need a way to share the wealth equitably.


Science fiction these days paints a dystopian future
Set in the English-speaking capitalist world
Where the surveillance state monitors the population
Instead of socialism offering the promise of science for the people.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Monday, June 11, 2018

Laurelwood June 11, 2018

album