where will we be when all the forests at last turn into tree
farms
and all the jobs have finally been exported
where will we be when corporations build all of the
food
and there are no more species to protect from extinction
where will we be when all the districts are properly
gerrymandered
and the elections are so much cheaper to pay for
where will we be when our children are full of mercury and
lead
and they are bursting with video smarts but empty of
education
where will we be when strip malls have sprouted from sea to
shining sea
and every brave citizen lives within five miles of a
Wal*Mart
where will we be when we import every drop of our oil
but our frightening bombers cannot fly for lack of fuel
where will we be when we are all safe inside the
air-conditioning
but the bugs have become immune to the chemicals we are
spraying
where will we be when the illegales leave for home
because there are no more jobs that we won’t take for them
to do
where will we be when we are permanently downsized just
before middle age
and there are no jobs anywhere and we have never saved a
penny
where will we be when all our credit card bills come due
but all we want to do is simply to retire and draw out
social security
where will we be when Levi's makes every pair of its jeans
overseas
and hungry workers down in Mexico lose their jobs to the
Chinese
where will we be when all the small plains towns dry up and
blow away
and the ConAgra crowd takes over completely as stewards of
our land
where will we be when grandsons cannot eat the fish that
they catch
and Appalachia has been scraped and flattened for the coal
that remains
where will we be when we can't afford new cars or the gas to
power them
and our own children sit on the streets in rags with dirty
faces
where will we be when our factory farmed fish are full of
poisons
and the milk from the mothers that we fight for is laced
with PCBs
where will we be when there is no more water for golf in the
desert
and the underground aquifer wells make that empty sucking
sound
where will we be when the drought just does not stop getting
hotter
and industrial crops wither and corporate-owned soils blow
away
where will we be when it's all wheelchair and ATV accessible
and our kids beg the conglomerates for temporary jobs at any
wages
where will we be when everything we buy, we proudly do not
understand
and we do not have the cash to hire someone to fix them
where will we be when we no longer need to save more time
and our lifestyle choices belong to those who manage our
bedpans
where will we be when millions contact a fatal influenza at
identical malls
and homeland security permits vendors to sell your viewing
habits
where will we be when the only real broadcast news is
subsidized by the state
and conservation is merely a hobby, smirkingly ignored by
those in real power
where will we be when our students finally learn the value
of a real education
then realize with growing anger that the good jobs are
nowhere to be found
where will we be when global competition pays us all 70
cents an hour
and the world finds itself, at last, in an egalitarian
corporate economic balance
where will we be when the educated far outnumber the jobs
that remain
and the ignorant and brutal can no longer prosper safely
within our midst
where will we be when the next demagogue simplifies all the
answers
and how will we avoid a war that kills at least two hundred
million
where will we be when all our engineering tasks are
outsourced quite routinely
and research and development is quickly farmed out overseas
where will we be when all our clothes are made in foreign
lands
and the only things we export are used packaging,
corpro-food and raw materials
where will we be when everyone gets the same tiny bite from
a fast-shrinking pie
and the corporations at last merge with their partners in
government
where will we be when we fall just like the old soviet union
and foreign investors abandon us to our unpayable debts
where will we be when the bills come due and there is no
more refinancing
as our own poison dust is carried over us by the hot and
drying wind
where will we be when the yellow and brown saviors come to
buy our homes
while the european brothers we alienated simply smile
politely as we leave
where will we be when we finally rid ourselves of concerns
over the biosphere
and we can concentrate on the last of the feasible
extractions
where will we be when all the coral reefs bleach out and
wash away
and the economic forecast far outweighs our environmental
scorecard
where will we be when religions compete freely on a global
scale
and the venture capitalists take them public for franchising
fees
where will we be when we have little remaining except our
nuclear arsenal
and the biological and chemical weapons we have stored in
the desert
where will we be when high tech meets those three upon their
horses
and we cannot simply point and click again to solve our real
problems
where will we be when the red Chinese smile upon us from the
moon
and still we let them ship us things built by the slaves we
are becoming
where will we be when all the baby boomers morph into
doddering botoxed zombies
still demanding more than those before them for doing much
less
where will we be when there are no more dolphins to perish
as simple tuna by-catch
and the sharks have all been slaughtered to make soup of
their fins
where will we be when our wonder drugs do not protect and
patients rot away
and the amoral without foresight go forth and genetically
modify the world
where will we be when drinking water costs more than
rationed gasoline
yet comes in dirty buckets siphoned from contaminated wells
where will we be when the market value of a human life
bottoms out once again
while the faithful suffer quietly all of their lives,
sustained by a fairytale heaven
where will we be when the conglomerates have finished all
their acquisitions
and southern china has no more farm land but lots of empty
factories
where will we be when the fix to the genetic modification
problem goes awry
and the ultimate solution involves unforeseeable risks and
too many trade-offs
where will we be when the Israelis fence the Palestinians
into a sandy ghetto
but their loyal soldiers shoot only upon orders from their
superiors
where will we be when the Kamchatka tiger leaves no more
silent footprints
and his mighty brown bear brother shuffles off into the void
as well
where will we be when the songbirds are no longer heard in
our backyards
and who would even notice while playing video games upon big
screens
where will we be when we realize our food supply is full of
poison
and the government cannot blame
terrorists for this corporate crime
where will we be when the most heat we can afford barely
keeps our pipes from freezing
and we can no
longer ignore the heat because there ism more no air-conditioning
where will we be when we create a digital life-form from
among all our images
and they take
into account the things that we choose to ignore
where will we be when the world realizes your son is not
worth ten cents an hour
but their
purchases of treasury bonds assumed two hundred dollars per day
where will we be when rodents become a vital part of the
food supply
and boiled
water is not used simply to make a little tea
where will we be when proud male lions no longer bring down
filthy hyenas
and fat men
with thinning hair cannot drive their large and loud pickups
where will we be then, it’s pretty easy just to ask right now
and the
drunken Inuit watch the polar bears retreat forever along with the ice
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