Maybe Tomorrow

Maybe Tomorrow

The reel will reverse
no ocean deep earthquake
no tsunami in Japan
no radiation threat
twenty-five thousand people alive
no families searching, no families
grieving, no families displaced

The reel will reverse 
no 9/11, two thousand seven hundred fifty one dead
no war on Afghanistan, or Iraq, 919,967 dead so far
soldiers sent to attack countries who did not attack us
innocents in both countries dying and we're not talking
about all the maimed, about lives destroyed, torn apart
and there is Egypt and Libya, and yet another war

The reel will reverse
no earthquake in Haiti, no hurricane in New Orleans
no ozone layer depletion, no financial meltdown
no Vietnam, they're still counting casualties forty years later
no Korea, no Third Reich, no genocide, no camps, no ovens
no more atrocities the reel must spin madly ahead to find
a peaceful world that respects all needs, no wars

Maybe tomorrow we will stop warring in our own government
between the haves and the have nots, and the parties who
pretend to represent each all the while they are representing
their own interests and it has nothing to do with the people
it is their own posturing, their own agendas, whoever is lining
their pockets and we are the dupes, once upon a time there
was dignity and honesty and best interests for the people

now the parties have people fighting people over the things
that will help the people, but everything is cloaked in innuendo
and no one without a law degree understands what is real as
they take up the cudgel to smash that which benefits them 
because they are too easily led to the slaughter of big business
self interests with politicians in their pockets and so nothing
happens on The Hill because morality is dead

The reel reverses all the way to the beginning of homo sapiens 
and not a thing changes, we look after our basic needs, clan together
to protect ourselves from the enemy, our brothers and sisters in the
rest of the world, create our weapons of destruction to defend or attack
just chimps chewing on ligaments, meat eaters, when we should eat
leaves, and we wale away on each other with drones and stealths
and it will only end in war or cataclysmic events we are unprepared to face