What Have We Lost?

It all really happened.
And we are still reeling with it
Almost a year later.
The unthinkable, after 30 years,
Hard work. . .
Pointless in the end.
Nobody told us
Enough about the Great Depression.

So the bank took nearly all,
most of the rest we had to leave behind
In the scramble to try and salvage our life
Lost life savings, so much of what we used
To furnish our minds and hearts.

"Your home is so warm," meaning filled with love.
Some friend once said.
But then love was embedded in the thingness,
And that cannot stand forever.
Now all is gone.
Did love still travel with us?

Thankful to family who allowed us to stay
In a new room, room-a-tomb, room with a view
of grass and birds, anyway.
And kindness.
At last.

When I meet someone
And they like me
I now ask
"Why would anyone like ME?
There must be some mistake."
Thanks to Freud, my mother, life.
The toys I left out in the rain,
I am suspicious.
Who would love
A worthless hole like me?
Pretty sure nobody.
I am a jerk.
What am I saying.
Not true,
But I feel it
every day.

Thank you economy,
That brought me down to nothing.

Thank you culture
who has no time for eternity
or more than a single phrase,
three minutes of music and done
On to the next distraction that leaves no trace
on life but goes quickly
and so the better as product
in its need. You do not need me or anyone
in the end.
We
are
alone
and
you do not
care. Why?

Thank you life
that dispenses love
like there is not
enough to go around...
One bite per decade.

What is a spotless human?
It is a state of consciousness.
Otherwise we are all bacteria and stink,
Shit, piss, and an empty stomach
We fill each day.
Pheromones and feces
Saliva and salty blood,
The flies find it all exciting.
Pointless, really.
But central to our existence.
We must be the animal,
It is in us.
The script is written,
We follow, willy nilly.


Who us? Clean, clear.
Mostly good habits.
Just folks I guess.

More, there is more,
We are what else is inside, after all,
And what IS inside us?
Other than the animal?
What is worth bringing outside?
What drama do we bring to our lives?
And what is underneath it all?
Something?
I cannot say.

But those last days are hard to forget
and that ten year period of
The economics of a not-so-steady state
As a not-so-open system
Closed its grip on us and rightfully
took back all that we never really owned
While the ultra-rich got a bailout
Friends scattered, alienated, dead
Everything gone, all of it
Suddenly old and in the way
Though we are not old yet
Saturday nights of lonely despair
Not minding the poverty so much as the total isolation
Music in a vacuum
TV belching out political scandal
What to say beyond it all?

Is this our life?
Help, somebody
Left to contemplate a past that now seems without sense
Dreams only of more economic failure
Remembering state apparatus and no heat, temps in the 20s
Black toes from frostbite
What felt like a stroke and no doubt was
Fallen to the floor in my own piss,
Unable to stand,
And even that was not the low point
Court appearance with no pants to wear
In essentially my underpants?
Maybe that back door knock late at night
We are here to help intimidate you
To leave with no money and no hope
Rejected even by the homeless shelter
Ten year waiting list for subsidized housing
God please kill us!

Dreaming: Crazy, hopeless jobs that are doomed to be temporary from the start
"$200 for production? That's too much."
"We've gotta move these boxes out!"
Impossible to live in those inhospitable dreams

Cold. Ice. Rejection.
State. Nothing human.
All in a passing panorama.
And can we still live?

I can't tell the difference anymore.

Desire is dream.
It leads to the good dream?
Or is desire an illusion,
for an illusion,
In an illusionary bubble of your own making?

The good feelings
Guide me.
But I do not understand what the night sky tells me
Because I was mistaken before.

Yet you pick yourself up anyway
Huge dead snake on the path to the mailbox
An omen
of what?
Maybe not.
Something wonderful ahead, really? Suppose.
But yes, the signs, watch the skies.
Wait for it.
It what?
No, never mind.
Was it only the ringing of my ears,
A little like the ocean
Hearing gone beyond to inner nerves.

Life cannot be one
If that one is yourself.
You need others
You cannot dream alone anymore