Oh, what times we live in!
Blood fresh spilt on new concrete
Not worn by treading feet
But by wheels pushed far beyond the legal limit

To the obscure faces
Flashed upon the screens to
The breathing and the buzzing of
Electronic machines
Showing places drenched in red
And with a click off to bed

An accident each and every day
Less bills to pay, less mouths to feed,
Less time for those in need to
Come to the realization no one cares

To hemming and the hawing
And the sexual see-sawing
Of a time looking for the next
“Big Bang”
In a bottle, in a pill,
In a rope from which to hang

To the Babbits and the nouveau riche
And the dusty dirty poor
Not featured in colossal tomes of yore
But every day headlines in the papers
That roll and rock and shape us

To the headless and the homeless
To the scattered wards of state
For whom red ink and tape decide your fate
In far away offices made of
A jumble of playing card names
Nothing but simple pawns in politicians games

To the women and the men
Changed and changed back again
If all the world’s a stage
I definitely missed the rehearsal
A sentiment that is so universal
Because global simply can’t big enough
Especially when five closets won’t hold all my stuff

To the Jacks’ and Jills’ and Jennies’
Slaves of nickels, dimes, and pennies
That stuff of empires of vampires
Who strut and slut and glitter
To show us what we must have
But must always lack
Situation bitter
You shameless hack

And lets fling mud and sand and blood
As speech is obsolete
Though we sit but two feet
From each other
After all what does literacy afford us
That the next and newest gadget can’t provide?

Run and hide
Literary minded sisters and brothers
For I’m afraid we have far outlived our time
Washed out with the next red tide

And the times they are a changin’
And the people keep on rangin’
From stereotypes set three hundred years before
So advanced are we, we bear
The burden cheerfully and call it
An advancement of the mind
No way to fix the score when we’ve fallen
Oh so far behind

So the others mock and jeer and scorn
They who are born in
Those same mystical bands of time
The 30 second sound byte
And 15 seconds of limelight
Because 15 minutes of fame
Is time wasted so shame, shame, shame
Almost like the picture without the frame

And so at last to take my place
Among the dead, though I still breathe
Soul and mind and heart and faith
Are all on permanent leave
And with a grin I slide right in
To the greatest of all sin
That of apathy

For when the writings on the wall
And not a one can read
Nary a voice to cry out
Or ripple to accompany the deed
That which has lost its voice
As a result
Of yet another
Mindless
Choice