Gone Like Midnight

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Sirens ring, shots ring out,

A stranger cries, he screams out loud.

He’s scared.  He has reason to be.  This economy was Dead on Arrival when Obama took office, and no matter how many tubes he sticks into it, it’s going to stay dead.  We need a new economy, a new economy based on worker’s rights, on economic justice, we need an economy that rewards the middle class for its contributions, an economy that cannot be exploited by Wall Street criminals and corporate magnates who don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves.  

And the same black line that was drawn on you,

Was drawn on me

That black line of consequences is getting blacker, it’s getting longer, it’s tightening around the necks of unemployed Americans like a noose.  More job losses, more home foreclosures, more evictions.  The consequences of Wall Street greed, the consequences of corporate media deceit, the consequences of Beltway arrogance and conceit, the arrogance and conceit of America’s political ruling class, America’s corporate masters, America’s war industry tycoons and oil barons and criminal bankers.   That black line of consequences has drawn me in, it’s drawn you in, it’s drawn everyone in . . .

If it hasn’t drawn you in yet, it will.

We live in a nation still ruled by deceit.  By fraud.  By corruption.  They’re pervasive, they’re so intrusive there’s no escape.  The media calls it capitalism, they call it politics, they call it Wall Street finance.  They call it everything but what it is.  The criminals of Wall Street are triggering a chain reaction of consequences throughout this suffering land and across this dying world.  If they are not held accountable, if the wealth they’ve stolen is not given back to their victims, democracy is truly dead and Obama will be nothing more than a funeral director spouting empty words to the grieving survivors of the American family.      

Below me, there was a homeless man

He was singing songs, that I knew complete . . .

The Sound of Silence

Homeward Bound

He was young once, long ago.  He believed in social justice once, long ago.  He played his guitar in People’s Park, in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, he sang about love and peace . . .  

But life beat him down, the system beat him down, injustice beat him down, the greed and selfishness and cynicism of the world beat him down.      

There on the steps alone, his guitar in his hands

Its fifty years, still he stands . . .

But he won’t be standing there much longer.  He’s given all he has to give, but all this world does is take.  He offered love and was ridiculed for it.  He longed for peace and was mocked for it.  He’ll be gone soon, and no one will care, no one will even notice.

Walking home, on those streets,

The river winds, they move my feet.

Harsh winds, blowing off the river of time, cold winds, blowing right through him like he’s not even there.  The river of time keeps flowing, it never stops.  The winds of hate keep raging, they never cease.  The winds of deceit never stop, and neither will the consequences.  When a nation sows that wind, it will reap the whirlwind.  

I looked out the window, down upon that street,

And gone like midnight, was that man.

But I see his six strings, laid against that wall,

And all his things, they all look so small . . .

He wasn’t too big to fail.  He wasn’t Citigroup.  He wasn’t Bank of America.  He wasn’t AIG or Goldman Sachs or We’re the Masters of the Fucking Universe and Don’t You Ever Forget It, Inc.  

He was just a man who believed in love and peace, and paid the price.  

Call me an idealist, but I think love is too big to fail, I think peace is too big to fail.  If they go down, nothing else can survive. If we haven’t figured that out by now, we never will, and this world is finished, it’ll be gone like midnight and there’ll never be another morning.