REMEMBERING NOT TO FORGET

Fifty Eight Thousand

Fifty eight thousand
Fifty eight thousand
Fifty eight thousand

It was fifty eight thousand
Young men and women
Who lost their lives in
Vietnam

Fifty eight thousand
Young, American
Men and women
Who died in Vietnam

And that’s not to mention
The tens of thousands
Maybe hundreds of thousands
Of injured and maimed who survived

And that’s not to mention
The millions, the millions
Of Vietnamese who died
Or were injured or maimed

And that’s not to mention
The MIA’s and the POW’s
Who were never heard from again
Other than their bones.

When people talk about the
War on Terror in Iraq
I just freeze up and say
We’ve been down this road before

I haven’t forgotten
Have you forgotten?
Fifty eight thousand later
And we demanded a stop to the slaughter

Your Precious Time

Precious Time

How can you waste your precious time watching TV?
Don’t you know how unhealthy it is?

If you want to watch something really scary
Make a movie of people watching TV

Catch them at home and at the gym
And at the post office and at the bank

You can see the bland expressions
The glazed eyes seeing something but nothing

Brainwashing at it’s best
Psychologically designed

Idiotic programming
Where people learn to be rude to one another

Where talking heads tell you what to think
And documentaries play loose with the facts

They’ll analyze and totally disguise
All the news and reports and otherwise

You’re left thinking, what was that about?
Or worse, not thinking at all

Not thinking about the war
Not thinking about the devastation

No images of starving children
No images of bombed out homes

No images of poverty and homelessness
Mostly images of exploited blond women

Or the criminally insane, having run amuck
Who abuse our children with their theater pluck

Turn it off and renew your life
Read a book, kiss a friend, play a fife

Make a dinner with many courses
Gather your news from other sources

A New World Order

The New World Order

The New World Order
Does it exist or is it a figment of my imagination
We don’t have to call it the New World Order
We can call it the newest order of the world
The newest attempt to turn chaos into order

Or, debatably, to turn order into chaos

New start
New Testament
New thing
New town
New ways
New word
New wrinkle

The New Way Forward

President Bush’s "new way forward"
As opposed to the phrase the other group,
The one designed by James Baker
Came up with, the more simplistic
And fresh and meaningful, "the new way"

The new way
The new way forward
The new way forward to do what?
Exactly?

To surge? To surge towards the insurgents
Mass surging to kill or capture insurgents
That is, those who are surging
We will also surge to kill those insurgents
who surge

I think I’ve got it. I think I understand.
I’m trying to conceptualize here.

I’m picturing a man, a simple man
Walking into a swamp - slogging actually -
Slogging through a swamp and stumbling into
Quicksand, a quagmire, slogging through a
quagmire
And saying, "I must go forward, forward into
the quicksand

"I know! I’ll find a New Way Forward!"

Which brings me back to my original question
Is there such a thing as a New World Order?
Another agenda behind the scenes
One that lays out the present scenario
That we’re witnessing in the world

One that makes sense
One that provides some explanation for the
Entirely insane policies we see being presented
On the news, the TV news and in the written news
Something that would – or could – possibly explain
the insanity
Of actually slogging forward into quicksand

Only another agenda, a secret agenda,
A secret new agenda such as
A Project for a New American Century, or
PNAC for short
Would – or could – possibly explain, what on the
surface appears to be pure insanity

What are the motivations for such insanity
Money, power, profiteering, corporate greed
Wealthy people sitting in secret rooms behind
closed doors
Making secret decisions, secretly. Moving the
chess pieces
Deciding the most profitable move for the
New World Order

Perhaps not.
Perhaps we just have unbelievably stupid people
In our most powerful positions in government
Making unbelievably stupid decisions and putting
our young, American men and women
Through the meat grinder of a senseless war

Personally, I don’t think they’re stupid
I think they are doing one thing and one thing only
Following the money. The money leads to power
The power leads to money, which leads to more power
and more money
All they need is a plan, an agenda
A Project for a New American Century
A profit sharing plan, A New World Order