They literally told me this was "life"
Dear God,
You've never been there for me before, why should You start now? But I got nowhere else to turn. Do all roads lead to death? I can't see what You're good for, God. I really just can't. Is there something I'm supposed to figure out that my brain just can't know? I've been working on it me whole life and it ain't come to me yet. Maybe I just can't figure out this puzzle. Maybe this has all been a waste of time. Truth be told, I don't think it would be right to call it anything but that.
Pop said I had to get a job even if it "kills ya". He said he wouldn't stand for having any bums in the family and if I died in the street then that's what I deserved. Can't be no other way, he always said. So I always had me a job even though the job was never me. And funny thing is, now I look back on it, Pop always hated his jobs too. He just passed that on like all parents do.
I've always been a working man cuz of my Pop. If I had tried something else and it failed, he'd a killed me and not thought twice about it. And when I look around me, I sees more people like me Pop than I see otherwise. First time I really settled into a job was when I was sweeping out the newspaper building. I bought me a beautiful car with that money, finest kind. But when I found out my boss was lying to me and stealing money from me and I went to get it back, well, I didn't have a job no more. See, that boss man was just like Pop, he knew I had to have that job, and I was just supposed to look the other way cuz the job is king.
I don't believe in Beetles
Where was You then, God? Should I have let that man cheat me? Is it really a sin to stand up for yourself? Tell You the truth, God, it sure do seem that way. I lost my car and had to buy this old Beetle with no heat or air. I found another cleaning job at night and when I drove home on those cold winter mornings I had no way to stop the ice forming on my windshield going down the road. I had to drive with me head out the window. Pop and the boss man and God all wanted it that way. You'd think one out of those three would like me.
I did everything after that. Bussing tables, throwing papers, cooking breakfast, back to cleaning again, driving a cab till I got robbed. See God, they told me that's what You wanted. That we got this world all set up just like God wants and if you don't tow the line you deserve to die then die again. I don't have no way of proving them wrong. I couldn't see no way of living without a job, either. Do You want me to die on the street, God? Is that Your plan? That's a mighty tough one. But it's the only one I can see You got for me iffen You want to disagree with Pop and everybody else.
I was hoping something somewhere along the way would happen. Now I think about it, I don't know why. There's just nothing here and never will be, will there? Just me and my fellow man and the hell we make. So I doubled down, stuffing down all my feelings like never before cuz I got to seeing they weren't of no use anyhow. I took one of them factory jobs, something I always fear'd cuz they steal the soul and put your mind in an iron cage with no hope of freedom ever again. But then, I figured, God ain't gonna give me freedom anyways so it must not be of any import.
An Auschwitz by any other name
Now it's nine years later. I got me those factory benefits and they gave me an official number they could call me by and I tried to represent myself as an upstanding citizen Pop and God could be proud of even though I was dying on the inside. Seems to me at that point, life was just about picking how you wanna die. But I made a good go of me act. Even latched onto a girl and we was gonna build our lives on my factory job and I had to pretend like I could keep on plucking them factory chickens till I die. None of any of that was real. The harder you try to do the right thing, the worse things get.
Lost my girl when gas shot up to $4 a gallon. We didn't have no extra money any more and we got to fightin' and hatin' each other so off she goes. That $4 gas changed me life. It let me know they can kill ya anytime they sees fit. Landlord at the apartment started billing me for his water. Insurance guy said he wanted more money and showed me how the city gonna take my car forever if I don't pay up. I hear everyone around me bitching about this, saying it ain't right, but then they get just like Pop saying this the way it gotta be. God don't love none of us.
But I'm at the end of me rope now, God. You be the most hardest ass person in the universe! Me hands are broken from all them years plucking chickens, making them birds so other peoples can eat 'em. My hands ain't no good for nothing now. The factory lawyer said I'm a bad man for trying to take money for my hands. The deciders just looked at the car he was driving and the car I was driving and just knew he was right. I can't hold no job now. I'm more tired than I ever been before. I tried hard. Harder than You ever did, God! Harder than Pop ever did too!
There's a reason why "lawyer" and "liar" sound so much alike
I don't want to die like this. Me hands all mangled up and never knowing love. I can't live doing what they say. Can't live doin' otherwise either. I don't get this. Round and round it goes in me head, never stops, trying to figure out what this is all about. If You gonna talk to me, God, now's the time to do it. I don't expect You will. You ain't seen no cause to do it before and Lord knows I needed You then too. There's never been a crumb of meaning in anything I done. All I wanted was just to be left alone, to breathe and feel like a person. But I don't know how to make money at that. And money is the real god ain't it?
This girl told me once the reason a person suffers a meaningless life is cuz he was one of the soldiers that put a nail in Jesus. So if You just put me here to suffer, God, all this makes sense. But if You tell me You wanted me to live, I don't get it. I don't get how You can say You wanted anyone to live...
God is a concept by which we measure our pain
No comments:
Post a Comment