When They Finally Knew

100 yards out he knew they would leave the gravel road to go flying off down into the ponderosas

as she was read the test results she felt the thoughtless life she had always known slip away forever

while they were lowering her father into the earth she realized suddenly that she was next in line

when he could no longer jog he became aware that his possibilities were forever strictly decreasing

glancing up from her call she saw the oncoming semi just before it intruded deep within her vehicle

seeing that bright light he still had one moment to remember that it meant he was passing away

helping to inter his firefighting brother he gained a terminal empathy that would never leave him

as the plane tumbled so rapidly to earth each one of them had far too long to imagine the conclusion

though they said he died instantly they could never know exactly how his consciousness had fled

for several seconds after his decapitation his eyes still saw & his brain still functioned – And he knew

the sensation of a crushing weight on his chest induced a well-founded & prophetic sense of doom

T-boned & launched from his cycle he felt cool air on his helmetless head before striking the pole

As her car filled with water she struggled to find a way out in the rapidly-shrinking air pocket

They saw the flash as a suicide bomber was remotely detonated directly in front of their tea stand

He watched, stunned, as the shooter took out several of his friends and then turned towards him

The morphine slowly overtook him and he knew this would be his last trip under – and it was OK

Grandmother grew quite calm as she somehow involuntarily accepted that her time had come at last

As a 3 year old, the approach of death under anesthesia was just another in a series of tiring dreams

The old dog lifted a tired head just in time to see the muzzle flash of his owner’s shotgun in his face

After months of unremitting pain he realized that it would never cease - at least while he was alive

Things slowly faded out given the uncontrolled bleeding induced by the IED which had taken his legs

She found herself looking down from above the table upon which they worked so feverishly upon her

After the shooting he lay surrounded by homies but the sound of the approaching ambulance dimmed

She did notice as something snapped inside her chest as the burly EMT began performing CPR on her

Some Richly-Deserved Side-Effects

“Deserved: Highly merited and just” – Oxford English Dictionary

We’ve always cheered on attention-obsessed, big-lie pushing sociopaths instead of real leaders

Thus, we have earned the right to enjoy repression, poverty & war under their vanity-driven regimes

We demanded ever-increasing dEfense budgets as we patriotically slashed education & entitlements

Guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that some 71% of those aged 17-35 fail military admission tests

Coal marketeers assured us mountain top removal, mercury & CO2 emissions were safe for families

So ADHD kids cough as we adjust thermostats to T-shirt comfort in record heat, under polluted skies

They promised us the better jobs of tomorrow and lots of savings when they sent our jobs overseas

But, instead now they offshore both engineering and design just to keep their huge bonuses flowing

Big Oil said fracking would patriotically yield us clean Energy Independence from greedy arab sheiks

Really, they’re sticking us with no alternatives and the cleanup exporting that Energy Independence

You always sarcastically dismissed their socialist nannying over smoking, obesity and lack of exercise

OK, but diabetes got your foot, just breathing is hard and your heart is simply shot-Happy Ever After!

You proudly made damn sure they never passed any form of gun control WhatSoEver - Gotnam it!

But they watch your every move & know all about your guns, when you use them & how to take them

Yes, you’ve stockpiled guns & ammo against gov’t drones and those black UN helicopters in the night

But I’ll bet you’d just wind up shooting each other over food scraps from your faux-military pickups

You spent thousands of hours at boring jobs ‘just can’t waiting for’ that next big 3 day weekend

But you can’t remember which from when and somehow most of the selfies got lost on your phone

You knew better than to waste precious tax$ on that, whatever it was, national infrastructure scam

So it’s cool that the water’s bad, the roads are worn out, the grid is broken and the internet is slow

You scornfully reject that dam Obamacare – Yup, to hell with them moochers and gov’t death panels!

But you did wind up paying a parasite lawyer to guide you thru your healthcare-induced bankruptcy

You spent thousands playing the fool just to be sure your precious children would be your friends

Apparently it worked cause now it looks like they’re back home to stay: 30ish, jobless & in debt

With all the cool stuff you really needed, you never even saved enough for one family emergency

Then, your unexpected forced early retirement at 55 left you deep in debt, depressed and unhealthy

Corporate scientists introduced many time & money-saving chemicals they never had to safety test

Now all our kids are lazy, autistic, sickly slow learners and we’re all obese & pre-cancerous

It was easy to ascribe the terrible sufferings of others to your omnipotent God’s mysterious ways

Feels different now that you’re weak & old, the wife’s demented and your kids only call for money

You always said you’d never want to live to be 60 and those old people had a for-real duty to pass

Turns out that 80 is the new 60 since every new expensive medical trick is paid for by your Medicare

You derisively rejected their calls to recycle and smirkingly dumped your household toxics as well

If your dumbdowned heaven existed, you’d see grandkids cursing you as they mine your filthy legacy

You studied only pointless sports stats, twisted political soundbites and smarmy blockbuster lines

Got any hipster clichés now as you lay, tubes going in and out, so very still & pale-On your deathbed?

He’s now a part-time God

Look, He still knows all about everything but it seems like these days He’s just not online all the time

His individual plans for each of us are still in effect but maybe He’s not monitoring 24x7x365 currently

OK, it’s an issue…But, His customer support teams in our world are busy, trying to pick up the slack

These earthly minions must now rationalize ever more horrific events as part of His Mysterious Ways

I’m thinking maybe He might be like semi-retired what with all the awful stuff that’s been happening

At times you get gospel music & ‘Your prayer is very important to us…’ during our personal dialogues

Even commoners can plainly see that His omnipotence isn’t always working everywhere, all the time

But His priests, rabbis, preachers & imams do remain clueless as to the cause of these long outages

Maybe there are big issues in distant galaxies, but then, that never affected His omnipresence before

If it were anybody else, I’d have to at least ask if there might be some pay for looking the other way

For instance, greedy CEOs are living like kings til 90 while little girls get gunned down in classrooms

Could it be possible that some of this results from outsourcing portions of His work to like demigods?

Make no mistake, there are still times when we just know He’s been there, watching over us in grace

But: Scientific studies show that Divine Intervention is down some 60-70% since the last Dark Ages :)

However, the price of eternal salvation has not dropped at all during all of these last 5000 years

In the meantime, the devil’s heathen idols have picked up huge numbers of apostates, worldwide

Many Conservatives argue that it’s simply divine retribution & not merely His inattention to our ways

Perhaps that does indeed explain the success of those violent, heretical, caliphate-seeking jihadis

But why would the increasing numbers of poor, unwanted & abused children be punished from birth?

Is it possible that His merciful grace is capped at under 8 billion souls on this one small blue planet?

None of His agents of any stripe will comment on His impossible, but obvious, intermittent absences

Yet, certainly we hear increasingly strident calls to greater faith to soothe His possible ire with us

The amoral among us have posited that divine record-keeping has possibly been reduced as well…

Still - The true faithful continue to toe the line, ever fearful of losing the promise of eternal paradise

There’s a movement to part-time faith and many others now say they worship at home, in private

There are also many reports of sporadic power of prayer outages in many areas across the globe

Yet, many of His franchisees here on earth just go on about their business like nothing has happened

For, as ever, many declare that the richness of His plan shall only be revealed in the fullness of time

Perhaps it’s merely a work slowdown intended to focus attention on our blessing-entitled mindset

Surely America’s decreasing exceptionist indulgences are directly linked to lack of a divine presence

In any case, our politicians incessant imperative that ‘God Bless America’ seems far less effective

Maybe it’s just some kind of an auto-pilot malfunction or another type of heavenly technical glitch

There may be a backup in processing all the martyrs & innocent people we have sent along lately

Possibly He’s getting on towards retirement and has simply decided to slow down a little bit

Or, perhaps He wants to spend more time with His family and His other interests – as outed CEOs say

After all, what are the joys of 24x7x365 attention to every atom in the universe & all our petty lives?

Bristling With Dumbed-Down Canned Opinions

“America’s Strength: The Morality of Its People” - latterdayconservative.com

It’s not like they’re ineducable - These good working folks all test out around average as school kids

But, whiners say, the school systems failed to get them to absorb enough education to think critically

That is, teachers could not spin the curriculum entertainingly enough to hold their fickle attention

In any case, now they bristle with tough canned attitudes & fierce, but quite dumbed-down, opinions

Yes, they can loudly mouth the latest in god-fearing, faux-patriotic fake news in supreme confidence

They also know this fact: If it’s hard to read, it’s always boring, stupid, irrelevant and unnecessary

They can see they can get any info they might really need, in a hurry, right off their smartphones

But they can parrot tons of slick ads, worthless sports stats, cool movie lines & obscene hiphop lyrics

Many of them leave it to Jesus to sugarcoat all of those overwhelmingly-confusing metaphysical fears

Employers don’t need geniuses but they find these folks lacking, vis-à-vis simple Chinese peasants

Proudly-loud Harleys & giant smoking pickups noisily herald their quests for fast food & Asian plastics

They do have a deeply personal grasp of terms like diabetes, hypertension, obesity & arteriosclerosis

They’re OK with soil destruction, H₂0, pesticide & fertilizer overuse - So long as white bread is cheap

Addicted by conglomerates to factory food, they just can’t understand why they keep gaining weight

Coal-friendly, Clean or not, they bravely battle that climate scam armed only with old thermostats

Way too often they are far too loudly-eager to bomb places they often can’t even locate on a map

Their Creationist bedtime story is so remarkably lame that the best satire cannot make it any funnier

Their beliefs are buttressed by an unread Constitution & Bible plus media Traditional Family Values

Scoffingly dismissing socialist satistics, they know ours is thE finest healthcare system on thE planet

Ruggedly independent, they only grudgingly become welfare & disability moochers – by the millions

They angrily support phony political scandals ginned up by blustering rightwing media mouthpieces

Amazingly, corporate sports really is a highest priority in their short, but wasted, lemming-like lives

To them, working like servants for the rich, who program their ideology, is what freedom is all about

Their fix for the madness of all the mass shootings is to heavily arm Dad, Mom and the kids, 24x7x365

Their hatred of them dam regelaters stems directly from their freerange apartment cowboy heritage

They know recycling is st00pid & only for doped up socialists, unless & until they get paid for doing it

They realize that exercise is a waste of time, pushed upon them by smothering government nannies

To them, that overreaching EPA or Employment Prevention Agency should be abolished immediately

They anchor their ignorance to an unquestionable, childlike faith backed by loud & nasty attitudes

They always elect rich, old white conservative men who label them moochers and offshore their jobs

They harbor a gut-level hatred for those who would reuse, recycle, refurbish or, god forbid, reduce

Their outdoor recreation must always entail burning gas NASCAR-style on a jetski, snowmobile or ATV

They don’t need that damn Obamacare since they’re already used to blowing off their unfair ER bills

You can observe them in any of those 8 snack aisles stuffing their carts with chips, cookies & candies

Don’t quite yet get that living on 88% interest payday loans really isn’t a long-term financial strategy

Yes, proudly-ignorant & bristling with attitude they’ve cast away fool reason for unquestionable faith

Non-Cognitive Non-Dissonance

We can virtuously outlaw birth control and righteously ignore poverty’s children..simultaneously

Why did god say we all can have all the children that might come to us, accidentally or on purpose?

Is a multi-generational cycle of uneducated, fatherless, unwed mothers part of His mysterious plan?

Or, are poor children so gifted our Creator levels their path with lifelong disadvantages - From birth?

Because no matter how much they improve, they began far, far behind their more fortunate brethren

Does He actually wish the unplanned children of teenage mothers to grow up fatherless & in poverty?

Is it some kind of divine multi-generational punishment for the past sins of society’s least fortunate?

That would certainly vindicate our ignoring these ill-fated offspring of multi-ancestral sinners

Or, given their monumental costs to our society, perhaps they are a harsh punishment meant for us

Certainly, none of us can say who can and cannot have children, for that way lies the darkest of evil

And, no, we mustn’t require a license for bearing offspring…even though it’s way harder than driving

So what if new parents depend on government assistance for housing, food & medical treatment? -

It is a basic & divine human right that any of us may breed at will, at any time & as often as we like…

It’s OK their preschool boys have no fathers: They’ll teach themselves how to get a prison education

And it’s none of our business if she has 4 children from 3 different, but all absent, accidental fathers

Who are we to demand proof of a stable home environment & economic security before having kids?

We cannot violate a convicted addict’s rights by demanding drug tests of her during her pregnancy

None among us is moral enough to dictate to welfare teens that having a fatherless child is verboten

Yes, compulsory birth control is simply genocide, so...the ranks of poor & ignorant must forever grow

But, our belief in Social Darwinism does allow us to ignore one more generation of poverty’s children

Thus, by our beliefs and thru our faith not prejudice, we righteously perpetuate the cycle of poverty