Umbrella 2001

UMBRELLA 2001



I need a new umbrella, not one of those $3 umbrellas they sell on the street that you can only use twice and it breaks, but a really good umbrella for when that hard rain finally falls.

WHERE’S MY FIREPROOF UMBRELLA!!?

Its the New Normalcy.
Nothing has changed and everything has changed.
We get over it, calm down, let down our guard,
and wait for the next attack.

Where do you hide?
Can’t hide under the flag,
stars and stripes are not forever, because
Instant Blowback’s gonna get us.
So be careful on the bus.
But you looked so cute
in your Hazmat suit -
Xanax and Paxil and Prozac and Valium
smallpox and anthrax and sarin and cholera -
wait a minute Mr. Postman!
Wait a minute, wait a minute.

You look for a little homeland security in the midst of a war with no boundaries and no soldiers - just scapegoats, refugees, and collateral garbage.
The real war is invisible - the TV replays the same images over and over - but the real war is invisible, in your head.
World War, but not World War 3 -perpetual world war from now on.
And who can say where it is or when it is or who it is or what it is and
why is it?
Its because it was. Its because an eye must be paid for an eye that was taken,
and 6,000 eyes for 6,000 eyes, and you took too many eyes
and now you owe me eyes,
and soon we’re all blind like that Hindu guy said, the blind killing the blind,
and anyone with vision put in prison.
Where do you hide in an invisible war fought by blind people?
There is no place to hide from a war in your mind.
There is no place to hide in an invisible war.

America, you are paranoid.
America wants to build a big umbrella in the sky
made of satellites and lasers and missiles.
America wants to be safe to attack everyone else.
America wants to be Boss of the World.
AMERICA, CHANGE YOUR OWN REGIME.
America, change your mind.


No Place is my hiding place.
I’m only safe in my place with no place.
Its outside of me, far away
and its inside of me, always near.
So I’m careful to not forget it.
I’m careful not to lose it.
I won’t leave it in a restaurant or on the subway.

My umbrella is a mobile tent,
a tabernacle in the wilderness.
40 days and nights the rain comes down, the flood goes up.
Under my umbrella - dry land,
approximate utopia.

GOD BLESS APPROXIMATE UTOPIA,
global city of peace,
approximately nowhere,
on the best planet
in the best solar system
in the best galaxy
in the most beautiful of all possible universes

Do not fear the Last Day,
it may be billions of years away
before our sun dies
and don’t cry over a spilled Milky Way
The Universe is still my Universe.
My Universe right or wrong, but my Universe.