I sometimes feel like an alien creature,
for which there is no earthly explanation.
Sure I have human form,
walking erect and opposing digits,
but my mind is upside down.
I feel like a run-on sentence
in a punctuation crazy world,
and I see the world around me
like a mad collective dream.
An endless stream of people
move like ants on the freeway.
Cell phones, pc's, and digital displays.
"In Money We Trust,"
we'll find happiness,
the prevailing attitude.
Like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac
is somehow symbolic of food.
Morality is legislated,
prisons over-populated,
religion is incorporated,
the profit-motive has permeated all activity.
We pay our government to let us park on the street,
and war is the biggest money-maker of all.
We all know missile envy only comes from being small.
Politicians and prostitutes
are comfortable together.
I wonder if they talk about the strange change in the weather.
This government was founded by, of, and for the people,
but everybody feels it
like a giant open sore,
they don't represent us anymore.
Blaming the President for the country's woes
is like yelling at a puppet
for the way it sings.
Who's the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?
A billion people sitting watching their TVs
in the room that they call living.
But as for me,
I see living as loving,
and since there is no loving room,
I sit on the grass under a tree
dreaming of the way things used to be.
Pre-Industrial Revolution,
which of course is before the rivers and oceans, and skies were polluted,
before Parkinson's, and mad cows,
and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas
like skyscrapers, and tree paper, and earth rapers
like Monsanto and Dupont had their way,
as they continue to today.
This was Pre-us,
back when the buffalo roamed
and the Indian's home was the forest.
God was nature
and heaven was here and now.
Can you imagine clean water, food, and air,
living in community with animals and people who care?
Do you dare to feel responsible for every dollar you lay down?
Are you going to make the rich man richer?
Or are you going to stand your ground?
You say you want a revolution,
a communal evolution,
to be a part of the solution,
maybe I'll be seeing you around...
Thoughts from Within - a poem written and recited by Woody Harrelson.
Featuring selected artwork by David Dees.
