Weed-free

There’s this crazy debate that’s going on out there
about what to do about chemical lawn care.

It’s about the citizens who object

It’s about the trickle-down effect

That is, the trickling down of what
you put on your lawn
into the earth we share
and from there
into the groundwater

and it’s about
where the children are supposed to play
when the lawns are toxic
and the companies say
“please don’t shut us down! Just give us more time!
Sure, we know it’s poison, but isn’t it fine
to give the people what they want?”

But I’m wondering if what the people want
isn’t just what they’ve been sold?
We’ve got this nation full of people
just doing what they’re told:
believing that a weed-free lawn
is really what matters
and that truly, our tummies need to be flatter!
We’re so concerned with the outside package
we’re paying to turn our features into plastic
under a surgeon’s knife
because we’ve bought what they’ve sold us:
that looking nice is worth any price.

And then we wonder why we’re all getting cancer?
Well, ChemLawn, I have one answer.
And maybe it’s not the one you were looking for
but I am not sure
that your war
against dandelions
is really worth dying for

because when the state of our lawns matters more than our health
well
then we’ve got a society
with too much wealth
on its hands.

We’ve got a culture full of women
hooked on magazines
comparing their bodies
to those air-brushed beach scenes
filled with the eight percent of women
who actually look like that
and then the rest of us feel like we’re too fat
so they create a diet industry to take care of that
so we can spend all our time
and our money
trying to lose weight
when the fact is ladies, your body looks great
it’s society that’s got the problem

If we could just start liking
what it is we’ve got
we could change the world
we could change a lot
more important things
than the size
of our thighs
but the demand for implants
is still on the rise
even though silicon doesn’t belong
on the inside

that shit’s about as good for you as
drinking down pesticides

But our clean, green, chemically enhanced
lawns hide
the fact that we don’t know our neighbours
and our cities are not safe
‘cause as long as everything looks good
well then everything’s great
but
my finding seem to indicate
that this so called “market- driven economy”
is built on lies
and the free market isn’t really free
it’s about getting people to spend more money
meanwhile
there’s an epidemic of mastectomies
and one in eight women
like you and me
will get breast cancer
before anyone finds an answer
and then they’ll hand out chemo
like some kind of solution
while the pharmaceutical companies
profit
off pollution

Supply and demand.
Cause and effect.
Hasn’t anyone clued in yet?
There is a link here, and if it’s not clear
I would just ask you to look at your lawn outside
as one example of how we can each decide
whether our choices will lead
to our nation’s suicide

© evalyn parry (SOCAN) 2007 , all rights reserved