A Toast to the Other Side

by    shaun   lawton   

Change your mindset, learn to adapt 

Appearances are never what they seem 

That's why, whenever we're feeling trapped 

Human beings like to dream 

 

When we're repeatedly drawn toward news

With the battle lines marked in the sand 

Making it seem like we have to choose 

Just remember our nation's last stand 

Was the night before and the day before that 

To be in agreement is not in the scheme 

Because the fire that keeps us united 

Remains part and parcel of our theme 

Keeping the state of things perpetually molten 

To be shaped to our needs every new day 

So just as soon as you feel your mind revolt 

From poised and perfect balance, listen here:

Remember there's one thing we all can do 

Repeat after me, "What was it they said about opinions?

And that thing about keeping an open mind, too?" 

We all have the choice to rise above our dominions

So long as we're true to ourselves without any fuss 

Making our decisions without having to shout

"Have a little faith in one another because

Things have a way of working themselves out—

—We don't actually need to see eye to eye," 

For a country divided is by definition united 

Even if that's something we can't recognize 

Don't let ourselves get exasperated 

There's plenty left over for us to be delighted  

The world may be an oyster, but this land is our cup 

The workers we employ have all been invited 

To keep this grail of ours filling up  

All the good our country has done can get blurred

Over time in our minds until it just seems absurd 

That's why we remind ourselves, "take a deep breath." 

Everything's happening naturally and gaining force 

If you start thinking outside the box you'll see our course

Flows onward in a process of constant checks from each side

Regardless of our opinions, we're here together on this ride 

Ask yourselves just once each and every day

"Just what are we going to do about it?" 

It's up to each one of us who confronts their own ego 

To reprioritize what we hang onto and choose to let go 

I'll give you a hint even as it's strewn through this verse

There's no mistaking how to prevent things from getting worse:

This picture we've each formed remains all in our own mind 

We mistake this assembly for a "truth" we can find 

When in irrefutable reality there's always a bigger picture 

We can't ever see clearly due to our own perception's stricture

Until we each realize that the so called "problem out there" 

Remains a perpetual illusion caused by our brain's software 

And the actual dilemma facing each one of us stares back 

From the mirror every morning we reload for a fresh attack 

The least we can do for each other is admit it: 

We thrive on discordance, contention and strife 

It's the fuel that keeps driving us forward in life!

So with that spirit of America we forged not long ago 

I raise up my glass just to offer this toast: 

"Here's to my enemies and those on the other side

Cheers to your energy, spirit and drive; for without you, 

At least I am willing to testify, we would have lost long ago 

And been swallowed by the tides of a relentless world 

That needs us exactly as much to live on this Earth side by side 

Just to keep fueling that fire which keeps us all alive." 

                                                                        for Peter Herman 

Refraction blues.

 Struck a drumbeat rhythm of a different plane 

anotha sorry sukka going down tha drain

You don't even have to know what you're about 

there's a shortage on the radio giving out a shout

Complimentary citizenship becoming all the rage 

pick the right poker chip it doesn't matter what
your age might be or eventually become if you're 

so much younger now than you were then

why do you look in the mirror and try not to pretend 

the only audience is you make it resonate
along the rhythms of the underneath and penetrating way

not just for mainstream acceptable pay there's another reason 

breathing and you know you ain't deceiving another motion 

out of control one more jolt from the earthquake 

tincturing the potion for the soul one portion 

for each distinct reverberation felt throughout 

the earth's crust trying to stay on our feet 

who do we trust singing in the street 

with instrumental prowess we'll bring you to your feet 

nice and easy, honest.

In spirit this is a deliverance, in practice we just want you to dance 

go ahead and ask us take a chance we'll get back to you with the answer 

before the beginning of the disaster spells out for a tad too long 

disenfranchising us from the equation to remain all the more strong.

At least this is the vision in the world 

that we'd all like most to see let us stand together
as testament that in addition to each other

 we can each also choose to do no wrong

and this is the reasonable discourse for us to take

 in order that we might get along
This is refraction blues. It's an attraction 

to slamming on brakes reaction

gardenia growing moves. Just in accordance 

with planting seeds out in the garden

so that everyone approves. It's just this little thing 

I like to call Refraction Blues. 

There Is No Glass

   My glass isn't half full.  There is no glass.  I have a positive outlook...it's really just as simple as that. It doesn't mean I'm unaware of the tragedies blossoming on the planet, far from it.  I'm acutely aware of the many calamities plaguing Earth today, just as I'm mindful that an undue proportion of them are brought upon us, quite unnecessarily, by humankind.  

   The plastics accumulating in our oceans have reached critical mass. Polar bears in search of food are stranded on garbage piles as they're forced south due to climate transformation. Of course, anyone with the ability to perceive at least a portion of the overall complexity going on in the world today can tell that humankind plays a key role in having exacerbated (rather than helped to control) climate adjustment. It's really a no-brainer, which leads me to necessarily being forced to wonder why so many today seem to shrug it off, or even vehemently argue against its existence.  

    It doesn't take a pathological genius to put "two and two" together. We've got all kinds living here in our biosphere trying to survive every type of weather, be it emotional, psychological, familial or continental. It's not even accidental that half the human race looks the other way while the other half steps into the eye of the storm to face it. Face what,  you ask? Face the facts that are breathing us in and spitting us back out just as surely as we take them in or fail to do so. 

   What I find most telling about all of this is the utter simplicity of there being no need to argue over whether anything in the world is man-made or not.  It's entirely beside the point at hand. For example (and for the explicit benefit of the doubt) let's just say that climate change has nothing to do with human causes. Let's imagine that some climate variation isn't brought on by the billions of human beings and our countless generations of industrious pollution and continuous releasing of carbon dioxide influencing green gas emissions, etc. The cold hard and patently obvious fact remains nonetheless.  

   Even the climate revision deniers would be the first to stand up and proudly admit mankind has wrested with the elements to produce lumber and housing and automobiles and every other imaginable product that eases us into the comforts of modern living.  So they cannot possibly have a problem with admitting that we too possess the wherewithal and general ingenuity to help protect ourselves and those in need from the ravages of an uncontrolled climate bent on spreading natural disasters anywhere in its path.  For them to deny we have anything to do with causing climate variety is quite disingenuous, and amounts to evading the most pressing issue at hand. It's either tantamount to admitting that humankind has stood helpless facing his environment since the beginning of time, which is obviously an absurd assertion, or it conceals an inability or lack of desire to do the right thing and step up to the cause of helping ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and all our fellow citizen of Earth in the line of fire coming directly from rampaging weather and environmental disasters.  

   I find the very idea that these "gung-ho" types would backpedal away from such a challenge as that rather curious. Are they that terrified of the prospect? Or is it that they just don't care about other people? Or could it be they are total idiots or maybe just lacking in basic intelligence? What are they thinking?  Their baseless assertion, a monotonal mantra as mindlessly repeated as the chewing of a cow's cud, really comes as a surprise from people who will in the same breath proclaim their own superiority as a species. These climate modulation deniers act as if we can't control the growth rates of forests, or set up dams to contain floods, or do anything that humans have proven themselves capable of doing since time immemorial.  As if we haven't been lumberjacks sawing down old growth forests into timber with our bare hands for hundreds of years. As if we're helpless mites brainlessly afloat on a turbulent sea of an unmanageable environment. 

   These people who stick their necks out to argue climate modification isn't man made are not only missing the point, they're revealing their true colors.  They're all too happy to chalk it up on their school blackboards and give credit to all of our species' various achievements, from inventing airplanes and satellites and drones to massive engineering spectacles like the Hoover dam, not to mention paved highways and all they entail and railroads full steam ahead and on across the range of technological accomplishments from mass-producing incredible loads of factory assembled plastics and toxic waste of every type all the way through modern weapons production to the latest computer controlled iterations of the nuclear bomb.  Most, if not all of these triumphs and dubious accomplishments made possible by man's technical ingenuity come with their down-side of course, notably the mass pollution and wholesale destruction of viable sections of our environment which, in case these stalwart supporters of "derring-do" have forgotten or perhaps never realized in the first place, is an ecosystem upon which not just all of them rely on to survive, but their very own parents and grandmothers and children rely on to survive, as well. As if this needs to be "spelled out" for them.  They are the worst sort of hypocrites on Earth. The narrow-minded, two-faced parsimonious sort. 

   My oh my, just what would we ever do without these sideline spectators rooting for their team? I don't know about you, but as for myself, I'd be inordinately less amused and appalled online; "amuled," I'll call it. A sickening, lurching sensation felt in the pit of one's stomach when confronted by the kneejerk reaction of a self-serving pathological narcissist waving their dime-store petulant flags on social utility message boards and sites; a sensation much like the swift kick of a mule (or ass) who can't control their outrageous reflexes. You know the type--or maybe you are one of these braying human donkeys reading this (and you know it all too well buried deep inside that impregnable skull of yours). Whatever the case may be, we've got your kind tagged, you incredible windbag filled with so much hot air. But I digress. I really should compose myself  here.  

   If you're just another Flat Earth lurker reading this, it doesn't even matter anymore whether you reply in self-defense or just go on slinking by like the weak troll you are. Don't you have more important things to do than waste our time trying to communicate your so-called "ideas" online? Go back to your house and protect your family from a home invasion or something, you phony charlatan. You got in way over your head when you had to come up with a password to get on the internet. Pardon me for momentarily losing my self-control. There are no teams. There is no glass. There's just poisoned drinking water coming out of the taps on fire because our masters support fracking. You are a slave in chains and you don't even know it. Programmed to respond to dumb memes like a barking seal in a three ring circus run by demented clowns bought and paid for by the corporations we serve.  Well guess what, chicken-butt. We all play lip-service to fraudulent ideals. We're all in this boat together, we're all hypocrites like it or not, one way or another, and we're all being shanghaied by the rich dressed in suits in disguise acting wise in the aisles in church leading us blindfolded off a cliff into the gutters for a comprehensive manslaughter.  

   Us against them, you against me, up against them, sick of each other watching too much TV, except we each have our own dumb chosen series of shows, just cuz some confront while the others escape reality doesn't stop either of us from being pimped out like cheap junkie ho's, because we've been pitted against each other goodness knows, and I lash back fast and furious just like the next guy in the aisle who wants to pierce through the armor of our confederate foes because this bipartisan dream got bushwhacked so long ago we don't even care to remember how deep it goes. Seventy years since world war two ended, but after the cold war began everyone just pretended business as usual was simply alright when nothing could be further from the case, just look in the mirror at the accident surrounding us and if you're wondering who caused it the answer's staring you in the face. Don't talk back cuz I looked in it too, and whose reflection do you think I saw? I'll give you a clue: it was me, not you. 

   I'm trying to help us not fight each other, that's all I'm attempting to say, it's not like I sit here thinking my hands are clean and paid for while others are stinking of the blood and grease passed on down the generations. I'm patriotic too, that's not just for tea-baggers, it's for me and you, and what's more there's enough honor to go around to cover everyone on the ground and that includes your run of the mill science teacher just as much as it does your journeyman and hard working plumber. We're all in this together, every single link in the chain, from the environmental science service workers (that's technical mumbo-jumbo for janitors and garbage men) so don't you throw it back again in my face, we either work together to save the planet or die apart buried in a heap of garbage in disgrace.  Forget about all that, let's set aside our differences and gather up witnesses, there's music we gotta face.  

   Our glasses aren't half full or half empty. There is no glass. It's do or die. Don't even tempt me. We need to get up off our ass and reach out for the opportunity to work together and get it done. And some of y'all still have the audacity to point the finger at the other one. You know what, never mind. While I stand and argue about the poorest and the richest, you sit there thinking its about survival of the fittest. In your mind you think this is all a big competition. So best of luck to you with your single minded devotion, left to your own devices stranded by an angry ocean. Meanwhile the rest of us will band together with a plan. When the time comes, someone's bound to throw you a safety line. Don't blame me or the fact there's a schism. When your life gets saved just thank good old fashioned socialism. 

Kneejerk Deepdirt

Kneejerk deep dirt buried way down
So far below the surface like a subdermal clown
Looking so hard with your devil tattoos
Standing tall and proud so which will you choose
Government for the people by a real democracy
Or fall before Imperial Rule and drop down to your knee
Yeah I'm talking to you actual hypocrite
Walking Tall with your big ol' dumb stick
Holed up in your compound's artillery closet
So willing to kill and yet terrified to die
You'll never look any of your victims in the eye
While you dare to think it's others who are triggered
WTF is wrong with you after drinking their Kool-Aid?
Why can't you admit it's really y'all who are afraid?
You're the last to stand naked before the lion's den
Trusting in your skin deep fright and AK-47
Showing us your might by banding all together
If you're that scared of them taking all your guns
While voting for the kleptocrats who'll sacrifice your sons
Can't you see they're baiting you through all this extreme weather? 
As if you and all your buddies can stand against them together
Use your brains for once and vote them out of office
We can keep our fishing rods and guns, I promise 
If you think there's so much power in your self-controlled bullets
You ain't got nuthin' on the force coming down from the pulpits
And by voting for the right at this particular moment in time

We're just perpetuating and helping to erase the line
Between government and religion while you sit there feeling fine
All the while without a clue how they're using you to help undermine 
The true glory and power of this country while you whine
About people with brown skin and queers and immigrants
What's it really matter to you anyhow holed up behind your fence
With designer camos, grim tattoos and listening to Slayer 
Step out of your damn shoes for once and face it, you're a player
Being led on like a pawn on a chessboard so damn large
It's challenging to see over the horizon at whose in charge
While it sure as Hell isn't us with our attitude and ammo
We're being used, my friends, until the day that Blammo! 
All of us get trapped within the snare these Fat Cats have set
And that will be the day you see what I've been saying I bet
If we can't see you and me are on the same side 
As all the rest of us in this place along for the ride
Then what else can I say to you, my brothers and friends
Will we really keep on playing into their sick game until this ends
With greedy fucking bastards like some reality TV host president
Aiding and abetting the amoral majority in the Senate
Whose only dream is to line their own pockets, sick--innit? 
And this wrinkled, murderous cabal of Overlords and thieves
Are all about to die of natural causes as they bleed
The rest of us all dry as a parched desert while their families inherit
All the power, filth, corruption and lies insuring they will bear it,
The responsibility of taking over those positions kept for them
To continue with their parlor tricks, pulling the wool over our eyes
While their corporations keep on polluting all our skies
And destroying the tenacious and resilient ecology
It really takes an overwhelming tide of perpetual industry
To do that don't cha know, I mean sure the Earth is really strong
But it can't remain sustainable if this goes on far too long
And all I'm trying to say is think about it, grow some balls
Put down your hardened stance to do something good for us all
By telling this core of profiteers for once they can all fuck right off
And let's just vote for a democratic republic once in our life
Are we that afraid of giving power to the people amid all this strife
Or is it that we just want to die as soon as those old bastards do?
All this time I just assumed we all wanted our lives to last longer
So that you and I can rock on for many more years together
With our families and our friends, not to mention sons and daughters
What is it we don't get about our being led right to the slaughter
By a bunch of greedy murderers planning to use us for their fodder
In future wars they're still engineering while we sit here just sneering
At each other playing video games in training for our kids to hit the front lines
For their perpetual "war on terror" they're orchestrating before our eyes
Or do you maybe think our little ones might prefer to just grow up
Than to be buried in a ditch across the ocean before sunup
Look...if we can't begin to see past the limits of our own stolid mind
Then I guess the Corporate Whores have captured all our kind
'Til they become our Pimps and we their clueless bitches so that soon enough we'll find
What I'm saying here ain't even sarcastic it's dead on the money honey

And I've thought about it enough to fill my own cup  
So keep on staring at the Sun until you all go blind 
And wave away the relentless persecution of which we're all the victims
Aiding and abetting the most forceful and corrupt cabal of thieves
Ever put together under one administration beneath the eaves
Of our very own houses and you can't even smell it
Without a chance of understanding even as I tell it
Like it is--right to your face--it's just business as usual 
And that ain't fresh it's rotten and not one bit constitutional
For twenty-twenty and beyond, why bend over and take it four more years
I called it, bitch--in twenty-nineteen--in front of you right now, right here
So let's DO something for once and go out and VOTE, tell everyone you know
"This time it's different, your kids depend on you, we may die soon
But they're supposed to have a future--or will we just sit back
After they must get sutures when their faces get cracked by the angry fist
Of a mob-rules corporate mentality prone to defile them first then kiss
Their pretty little faces (and that ain't corpse paint--that shit's real) 
Then bury them in a ditch and piss on their unmarked grave
And deep inside you know it's true too so how you going to save face
Now while we're all slowly sliding toward Their imperial rule?
I'll tell you how: go out and vote next year, it takes no time flat
Just tell your buddies it's "counter-intuitive," how about that?
The war between the people (that's you and me if it isn't crystal clear)
And the callous empire of incorporated profiteers isn't "drawing near"
It's HERE RIGHT NOW this damn minute and if you don't write your senator
To tell them how you feel about protecting the rights of your own daughter
Then the cheating gangsters who gain control of the oval office will make her disappear
Along with all our sons no matter what the cost--they'll be able to pay for it
As the divide between us all grows wider and the super rich win while we lost it all
Not just our dreams and aspirations but everything else in between with our lives
That seems like what we're creating whether we vote for them or even if we refrain
And despite democracy, they've got you and me between a rock and a hard place 
Depending on one thing, which is: they know damn well we won't go to the polls 
And be bothered to vote because they now rely on us thinking it's all a waste of time 
So why bother, am I right? Well the reason to vote is to protect us all together 
Even my son and your daughter throughout all this tormented weather
And if that's not justification enough then go ahead, and just Bow Out
Despite knowing the non-voting contingency is what our would-be master's all about
So don't you ever remotely hint that Colin Kaepernick's not a real Hero
Because it's y'all voting for Trump and the Republicans right now who are the Zero
In this equation (mark my words) it's y'all who are about to get down on one knee
Before the Imperial King of your very own design, quite unwittingly it seems so
How's that for ironic? (and I ask this with love) 
Will we do something together about it, before push comes to shove?  

Closed Circuit Monocle Blues

When we all crowd up to peer through this lens
Mitigated and exacerbated by love- and fear-trends
The distorted picture we get doesn't even pretend
To believe in us so why should we bother to lend
This view the benefit of the doubt instead just shout
From your rooftops we're alive in this continuum
Take your views, chops, all that jive and shove it
Monstrous hypocrisy is the main thing we covet
What's left of us does not have the right to discriminate
Neither side recognizes a distinction to differentiate
The interlacing complexity of our evolving system's
Variables manifests too fast and there are too many to list 'em
So go ahead and hashtag your complaints in capital letters
So that your screed reaches blind eyes and falls on deaf ears
Into the closed-circuit echo chamber amassing lost files
For years on the world wide web just a massive recycle bin
That never gets emptied and the one single difference
Between internet digital trash and real life city dumpsters
Is no one goes diving for anything of worth deleted online
Because Facebook's just a vanity mirror maze carousel
Where we throw our voice into a chorus of ghosts
Our reflections engaged in endless porous discussions
Are really just the preliminary stages and repercussions
Of our mortal skins shedding one dead cell at a time
Building our individual polished and framed cenotaphs
To hang on the wailing walls of those who survive us
Every time we log on to this expansive social utility network
We're adding the pre-mortem makeup to display the memory
Of our corpses stacked up like cordwood to not be forgotten
It's not that this endeavor is reprehensible or rotten so much
As it has become a profitable mainstream business to cotton
To the cult of shareholders and corporate programmers
Subsuming the rest of us into their pentagon of tombs
The burgeoning cloud has plenty of chambers and rooms
To accommodate all who would stumble and fall
Into their feathery, winsome and tempting subterfuge
So what, in effect, are we to do while the whole world
Seems to be falling apart or unraveling at the seams?
Just stop and think it's been this way from the outset
Only now the rose tinted glasses are fiber optic implants
And we're living our nightmares as well as our dreams.

The Politics of Discretion

Before you think it works both ways
think again it works just one way
and it's working itself out
through natural selection
everything flowing into
a singular direction
a flow more ancient
than the generations
which carry it forward
because it's part of the
greater process of thermo-
dynamics drawing from our
only primordial ocean of light
on such a scale as to render our
comprehension of it besides the point

CRUCIFICTION Jam

Scars of the crucifix upon the cancerous 
tumors of a violated world, so its said 
to thee let justice be delivered in full to 
the oppressors of nature and allow us all 
to rejoice as the living sheds its lambskins 
sloughed off dead from popes to peasants 
in order to reassert the ancient  dominion 
on the clean slate of tomorrow's beach

Cuz it's a Crucifiction Jam

The dawning of the new imperious age sheds
our snake skins of false idolatry such as were 
shown in the chronic myths of scriptural deceptions 
see us refute the brain-washed mentality of the 
overt power system already half-past corroded
and allow ourselves to reclaim the joyous ecstasy 
of purity to recharge its ancient renewable power 
for putting forth our lives into vibration

Cuz it's a Crucifiction Jam 

Tuning the superstructure of this eroded 
empire surrounding so that we might revel 
in the foundation of having survived 
the persecution of our enemies 
the children of god--en espiritus 
luciferal ex espiritu daemonia 
en esprit du corpse y lux morte 
liberado--and on the ninth day 

Cuz it's a Crucifiction Jam

Erased a nightmare displaced 
by the worrisome tension built 
up in the highbrow rise of society's 
income inable to face the reflection 
in the feeding troughs, glossy moving 
waters always depicting the shadow 
of a beast behind us looking over for 
an instant before moving on away 

Cuz it's a Crucifiction Jam

Into the lengthening bands of the day 
disappearing into the night of wishes 
sown most bravely in the cornrows 
of sleep, walking through the forest 
and being well aware of this acted 
out extended play on creationism 
seeding its own fires from the edges 
of its spreading mantle, the hem-dress 

Of sparks leaving smoke curling in drifting   
imprints slowly withered by one set of eyes 
(just another manner for which the universe 
devises to look at itself) arising in the forest 
of the geometric night, a tidal wave called 
Domino, his story then must be for all to surf
when most will build their homes upon the collapsing 
wave, having mistaken their voyage for the wind 

In our sails until they hang their sorrows out to dry 
and come to call this breathing when standing in 
the midst of home the whole world's reeling on by
its predestined course stopped in the palm 
and dropped like a ball on a hot summer night 
the bolo about us a balance tied on to tune us in 
synchronization with our situation just a plumb 
weight dusted to achieve perfect pitch, look: 

Into the mirror tar baby and don't untie that rope 
rising into the sky from that stake over there 
behind and watch out for that guy in the shades
these carnies will go to great lengths to 
insure the traveling show must go  
on through every neighborhood in 
the good green wide wagon wheel of 
all that ain't wrong with Incorperatica.