Objects Outlive Us

I incline myself to space There was no ghost on the moor No open window No monkey's paw There in the mist, you asked me "Did you forget I exist?" I said, "Yes" 'Cause you played too hard to get The Buddha of the modern age Is barely paid minimum wage To dole out truth and healthy karma The same he gave to our forefathers When once we reached to touch the sky Now we have no need to try The blurred photos of ghosts of men Such permanence, we don't comprehend Slaughter the sacred cow To stuff our stupid mouths Already fit to burst through the insatiable thirst To kill over and over We interlopers, the inferior species Wallow in our own feces Gazing down at our navels And no longer able To find some kind of perspective Amongst all the invective glory In pathways of dopamine, until time intervenes Rabble struck down, dementia or overcome Stampeding, but we have no need to try Her shopping bag broke, sending eggs and flour crashing Down to the ground, just like star clusters smashing But no one will give her a glance They just shuffle on home in a trance The tiniest lives fill their hives up with worry To make it to church, well, she'll need to hurry When late, she will bow down contrite While a meteor turns out the light And there, in an ordinary street A car isn't where it would normally be The driver in tears, 'bout his payment arrears Still, nobody hears, when a sun disappears in a galaxy afar First day of the new job, and he was so nervous The suit and the platitude, "Can I be of service?" His boss made him clean all the cars While he wondered, "Is there life on Mars?" And meanwhile, the stars line themselves up in order While we bicker on with our fences and borders But best not to think about that It's better to live without facts And now in her old wedding bed A lady will dream that her husband is dead Of course he's alive, he'll be home around five Still, silence arrives, when a nebula dives into our Milky Way The thunder and rain start, the paving stones melt And oddly the first spots make Orion's Belt As you queue at the bank for an hour 'Cause a solar flare blew out the power The nurse in the care home now empties a bathtub The water will spiral, a galaxy's vast hub Is draining away as we speak But she loses her job there next week And there with his first telescope A teenager stands full of hormones and hope As he squints at the night, like a painting of light He doesn't suppose that a black hole implodes In a trillion tears from now Back then in time, we spoke up for the Earth The truth, the proof, but in our hearts, the words We used were not to break or kill this spell Only to warn, to track the dark that fell And now, here we be the few that survive The ones who knew, look back in our hindsight Knowing always there would, should be an end Knowing it was just a question of when Each of these souls, just one in a billion Each of the stars, just one in a trillion We move on through so dead, so black the void And still back there in dust, the Earth destroyed Back then in time, we spoke up for the Earth The truth, the proof, but in our hearts, the words We used were not to break or kill this spell Only to warn, to track the dark that fell And now, here we be the few that survive The ones who knew, look back in our hindsight Knowing always there would, should be an end Knowing it was just a question of when Each of these souls, just one in a billion Each of the stars, just one in a trillion We move on through so dead, so black the void And still back there in dust, the Earth destroyed I incline myself to space There was no ghost on the moor No open window No monkey's paw There in the mist, you asked me "Did you forget I exist?" I said, "Yes" 'Cause you played too hard to get