It's gonna take a lotta love; or, God bless the conspiracy
by Richard Peabody
[ poetry - august 02 ]
Mars needs women.
China needs oil.
Hey maybe they can work out a deal
For all those unwanted Chinese girl babies?
Big Oil doesn't care about women or children
Or caribou, or Inuit, or gators, or swampland.
Big Oil needs love though, and lots of it.
Do you think they have a contingency plan
Up their sleeves for when the fossil fuels are gone?
I mean besides perpetual alerts and World War III?
Russia needs love.
They have all this untapped oil under the Caspian Sea
And no way to dig it up and no way to distribute it.
Beginning to sound like a James Bond film isn't it?
China needs love.
They have people lining up to get car tags
So they can chase their NASCAR dreams.
And Big Oil needs a lotta love.
Cuz they can drill the oil and pump it through
A new pipeline to the Chinese so they can embrace
All of that lovely cha-ching.
And that's a type of love after all. A love that needs
colossal spin control and a publicity machine.
Only one thing stands in the way of this lovefest -
A Stone Age dinosaur of a country called Afghanistan.
And Afghanistan needs all our love
Like some kind of Asian Neil Young.
Dan Rather was on the BBC the other day
To state that we know less about what our
Government is doing right now than at any
Previous time in our country's history.
That sure makes me feel safe.
Don't you feel safe?
Because corporations need love
And Big Oil needs love, too.
So much love that they're even rewriting old
Sci-fi films - gone are the evil corporations
Waging mock wars in Roller Ball or Robo Cop.
They prefer it when the public sees other
Countries (or planets) as the bad guys, or the threat.
Return with me now to the 1950s.
Mars Needs Women.
Almost makes me want to wave a flag.
See how many people I can blind
With the Stars and Stripes.
Cuz while you're distracted
I'm sure going to be up to something.
"Remember the Maine!"
Mars Needs Women so much easier to handle.
Suicide outboards zooming up Puget Sound,
Crop dusters attacking Yankee Stadium.
Life Magazine World War II
Doomsday scenarios.
Don't believe me? Look it up.
Keep them scared in Kalamazoo,
In Wichita, in Grand Junction.
Mars Needs Women.
China Needs Oil.
We were sold out long ago.
And we all need a place to hide.
Pogo had it right -
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Our blindness makes it so.
Mars Needs Women and So Do I.
John Prine had it right:
"Your Flag Decal Won't Get You into Heaven Any More."
"Jesus don't like killin'
no matter what the reason's for."
