Painkillers

I find myself using painkillers more than ever these days
There is so much pain to kill in my body and my mind
There are the usual headaches that are magnified these days
Jobs and money parents and children nannies and cars
Now we have the meltdown of our government civility is out
supremacy is in it has never been fair now they don’t even pretend
The planet is rioting the sky is turning red the sea is turning black
the wind has taken over from the days of cool dry air
Suicide is on the rise sex is on the wane no one wants to bring kids
into this world and we are all too stressed to get undressed and have
some fun together Even our Gods have begun to turn on us
religion is a carnival or an army without peace love and charity
The Red Queen is now in charge – “Off with their heads!”
Our machines have turned into KGB and rat us out as malcontents
Big Brother and Big Sister watch us in the loo while no one knows
who authorized the new regime Koreans are plotting Washington is
rattling missiles the bombers are on high alert the soldiers are
endlessly deployed we send them off to fight terrorists far away
then bring them home and let them die from neglect and decay
Our food comes from Monsanto our drugs from Bayer Inc. except
the ones made in trailer parks or tossed over border walls
Clearly this is the wrong time to take away our painkillers
Clearly we need all the oxy we can get just put it on my tab and let me
go on my way to the land back to the land back to the open prairie
where men could be sodbusters women too and everything we had
was made by hand and the highways were filled with diamonds
the amber waves of grain swished like water in the wind the sky was
big the trees were tall and all the world was before us like a promised land
You see now what the painkillers do for us They take us through the
Looking Glass or maybe it is just a rabbit hole or a black hole or a hole that’s six feet deep the point is it gives us somewhere to go someplace where we can hide from you our cherished sisters and brothers who determine where we go next
in this never ending millennial house of mirrors.