Running with the herd

The pavement has lapped up the heat of the summer,
to gum up my tires and tear at the rubber
in an attempt to slow me down.
But I'm already beyond the boundaries of the town.

I can't seem to breathe as the breezes swim past.
In this ocean of wind I'm a sunk pirate chest
where the ship has rotted away,
and my handles and lid are fraught with decay.

But still life rushes on in its pain and delight.
I watch, insincere with routine oversight.
And my world is still worth the return -
in this fracas and fray I've got much overturned.

I pay at the pumps and steep myself in debt,
run on the back roads and sit on the front steps.
And I wander by rest stops and roads.
Each sleep-deprived moment satisfies some new goal.

If I pick up the pieces and keep the floors swept,
I'll amount to something with promises kept
to blend with the flock and the flow
of each aging face - someplace special to go.

Well that sky has reached noon and it's my turn to try
to stop sleeping so late with my dreams in the sky
and start running pace with the herd.
I may go unspoken, but I've listened and heard

as the desert swallows hillside and each grid bares its teeth.
Land becomes blank like wool cut from a sheep.
And the drums from the march echo still
past the farm in the suburbs, the monument mill.

I'll stand strong in the current and anchor my feet.
Stoic, resilient, I will admit defeat.
"Sun, burn my back and my bones!
And take what you need back to old Davey Jones!"

But my courage is curt where my heart has no bounds.
So I'll take what I get and fancy what I've found,
which is simple, and nothing but love -
the best form of therapy, a miracle drug.

Take that small bit of stardust and spread it about.
It's all that we get - and not so hard without.
Our troubles are what we have earned,
where the strength comes in seeing what we can endure.

So with the mountains our walls and the forest our floor,
pack up your things and join me out the door.
Huddle up round the campfire flames
and we'll burn all the worries we so tactfully and handsomely crafted for our shame.

Boardroom talk

Modern advertising is a leech upon the intelligence of our race. It is a satire and insult that constantly grows, seeking and discovering new and less obvious ways to soak our eyes and ears with pointless babble - intent on indelibly guiding our feet through the gaping doorways of eager strip mall outposts. There is no real purpose, no true desirability or necessity in the product-pushing. It has become a race of ill-timed humor and concocted catch phrases. It is a competition of mindless jingles and ridiculous slogans; a string of musical notes in pseudo-song that thickens the radio waves and saturates television speakers. When a new idea becomes successful, businesses rush into the cloning process, hoping to capture some slight piece of the present pie.

We are slapped across the face with meaningless images and symbols. It is nearly unavoidable. The motivating factor behind marketing method and innovation is to prevent the audience from fabricating their own opinions. Our decisions are already made for us in the commercial form of media propaganda. It sings to us daily and laughs at us nightly. It is a plague that leans toward mankind's assimilation. The individuality that ideally defines us has become slave to a faceless conglomeration of greed.

The darkest part behind it all is the simple truth that it works. Our desperate public readily eats from the hand of corporate campaigning with the wanton giddiness of a lovestruck teenage honeymoon. We abidingly ask for more, finding ourselves more and more deeply reliant on the convenience provided for us through cathode ray tubes and worldwide spider webs.

Boardrooms rumble with heady chuckles as executives watch their numbers soar. Money exchanges hands among the elite professionals who have come to expect success from their fancy marketing divisions. An increasingly distant society, with its middle and lower classes, buys into commercialism the only way it knows how - from paycheck to paycheck. Service and quality are no longer the standard way to edify the reputation of a business name. This is done through the sly media outlet of advertising - a strange world where integrity and responsibility equate with coercion and manipulation, and numbers have learned how to count themselves.

[This is a rant of mine regarding the current advertising and marketing situation. Although we are all children of the media, it is my wish that we begin to think more for ourselves, and prevent corporate contrivances from trying to make our decisions.]

We lack the life that we create

We've mastered the ability to manipulate our surroundings. In each direction I can maintain to look, I catch the glow of blue-brushing steeples and mountainous mounds of cold steel, forged floors, and brick undergrowth. We are gnomes of unspoken talent, erecting elaborate models whose stature and girth rivals that of anything found in nature.

The small partial remnants of pre-humanity lie cupped between cragged metal peaks, awash with benches, playground swings and garbage cans. Newspaper and bottle caps are deftly swept aside, past the tottering feet of youth and the life they chase in joyous yelps and cries of freedom. How I long for those days. The days where we could spread out on the ground in the magnificent heat of summer, inhaling the sweet smell of grass beneath our faces. We cawed with the birds as we scaled their treetops, and drowned like fish in the warmed pools of chlorinated water. Our bodies were browned and our hearts were filled. A scraped knee was a temporary and ineffective injury - a way to mark my territory with a bloodstain that came straight from the soul. So many of those streets and trails now contain a trace amount of my heritage. From whence I came, I soon shall go.

But the heat of summer is no longer magnificent. It is a burden, a death-threat; the sun is the emblem of inconvenience at which I shake my raised fist. He is worthy of nothing more than curses, curses I speak with the pained voice of adulthood, "Take your blaze elsewhere, you are not needed here! I desire moderation, comfort, stability and routine - all you offer is a scathed and burning reminder of what it is to feel, what it is to love and run and jump from rooftops into swimming holes! You represent all that I loathe!" I muster hardly a grimace as I fumble for the door handle that leads into desperate hope. The rush of cold and dank air-conditioned humidity blows back the peak of my slick, crusted hair, craftily configured to attempt to hide the receding lines of age that poison my thoughts. The familiar touch of the black leather chair beckons the sinking contours of my ever-changing form. I slump into the habitual. Monday has come again, and it always feels the same.