What Could We Possibly Tell The Kids?

How do I stop them as they are toddling towards the shore of that vulgarly poisoned pond

What do I say when they ask where all of that trash on the side of the road comes from

How do I explain why the sky is a dirty brown so often when we are riding to their school

Help me to fit the filthy homeless we see downtown into our rosy picture of family life

How do I spin this dust and grime into a happily ever after that a simple little kid can buy

I need a way to say we just can’t afford to try and deal with climate change right now

Let me convince them that baby jesus knows everything but still let that Bambi get run over

What do I say when they ask why our putrid river doesn’t look like the pretty ones on TV

I need a good story about why we have to live in this tiny apartment after our foreclosure

How do I compete with all the slick ads they have seen when we are out grocery shopping

How can I actually convince them that homework is more important than texting friends

Why should they listen to me when they see me raging so uselessly at the endless traffic

What lessons can I impart to bring sense to this vast de-construction we call our progress

What do I tell them when they show me pictures of songbirds that no longer visit our yard

Why would they need to study hard to get into college if Dad just keeps being outsourced

How do I show them that our god speaks the truth but all others are false idols to be smashed

How do I sell them that healthcare competition gives us a choice of ERs when they’re sick

Why would they want to eat anything but colorful, sugar-filled, fat-ridden, salty, fast foods

What do I tell them when they say they hate those dirty kids who don’t speak any English

How would I make them actually prefer reading to playing first person shooter games

How can I convince them that it wasn’t always just mud, garbage, broken glass and dog goo here

Help me create a story about being too tired just getting the family by to try and save the world

Give me a child’s takeaway for the shopping carts filled with castoffs being pushed on city streets

Show me how to spin this bleak joblessness into a wondrous chance to be with Daddy all day

What do I tell them when they ask me where our water comes from and our poopie goes

What am I supposed to do when their teachers fill them with guilt over our CO2 emissions

How do I weave those poor frogs with 3 legs into our family tale where everything is beautiful

Help me explain why the school says we must make them take their ‘vitamin’ every day

I need to convince them that once our garbage is out of sight it can stay out of their minds

They must internalize that we are the victims of the unplanned effects of our own scripted actions

They cannot view our grooming products as causing fish some kind of icky reproductive issues

They mustn’t connect our neighborhood runoff with the toxic brew that is nearby surface water

Let me explain to them why we must bail out the banks but not the solar companies

Work with me to show them why it’s OK to toss out so much stuff after every trip to McDonalds

Prove to them its better to go play outside than to sit snacking enjoying electronic entertainment

Sell them on employers that will discard them forever at 50 to a society of Personal Responsibility

Analyzing Human Extinction

They might have been viewed as precursors, had their line not ended quite so abruptly

Their culture could possibly have evolved into more than a simple, greedy self-destruction

Maybe their fossils would have been enshrined in chapels, museums and laboratories

Looking at their petrified remains might have even inspired great awe and wonder in little ones

Their lifestyle in an ancient era would have been a lesson to their grateful descendants

Emergence from a rough and tumble past might have resulted later, in a state of grace

Their patchwork history and tattered legends could have easily anchored great cultures

Viewed as ancestors, their violent habits would have been seen in a totally different light

They might have passed on valuable lessons from out of a vast sea of ancient experience

Perhaps distant progeny would have honored them and sought out their blessings

It might have been possible that they formed the stem of a still-flowering species tree

Their DNA could have contributed to something beyond their short, harsh and angry tale

Had their seed carried on, their venal struggles might not now appear so foolish and so vain

Were they not evolutionary dead-ends their violence and waste might possibly make sense

Without wantonly destroying their supporting environment, they could have carried on

Possibly, if they did not extinguish so many other species, they could have even loved one another

Outcomes may have differed if their myths had endowed everlasting souls to all living things

Could have survived had they not gifted themselves exclusive domain over their one planet

Maybe their self-granted commandment to be fruitful resulted in their toxic overpopulation

Certainly the warfare demanded by their many one true gods contributed to their demise

They might not have shambled off into early oblivion had they escaped their own Social Darwinism

If they could have appreciated their inheritance, they might have planned for their legacy

Perhaps not basing their economy on shortsighted greed would have led to more success

Finally taking action only after they had collapsed their ecosystem was not a viable survival strategy

Maybe not gauging their progress solely upon extractive consumption would have helped

Trusting in ponzi perpetual growth instead of steady state survival probably aided their demise

Their never-begotten offspring might not have disdained their elders as irrelevant fools

Had they the sense not to bring on a mass extinction, things might have been very different

Possibly their urge to killing did not serve them as self-appointed stewards of the earth

Maybe market solutions were not appropriate for blindly solving all of their world’s problems

Basing price on demand did not ensure the long-term availability of any of their finite resources

Placing their bloated population’s marketed needs before the one planet that sustained them failed

They might have explored the universe had they not destroyed their own spaceship earth

In the end, their perpetual and expensive warfare did not confer to them any survival advantage

If they had not always followed monomaniacal will-to-power freaks, they might still exist

But, instead, they are rightly known as the precursors of nothing and the ancestors to no living beings