It's 6:12 AM And I Don't Know Who I am

Do you know what it's like to wake up on a one-size-fits-all cot beneath the sterile glow of a futureless room of impersonable fluorescent lights beaming down expectantly to start your day to be processed as human cattle?

War is hell, yes. But casualties of the class wars are only derided, not hailed as heroes dying for a worthy cause.

Of course, money has never been a worthy cause for anything, much less dying.

I don't think I can feel anymore. What was I put here to do? My life means nothing more than spending the night next to a man who farts his way to sleep and doesn't think twice about it. In a movie it's funny. In real life it's suicide inducing.

Who am I?

It's 6:12 AM and my life has ended. What is there to life in the American gulag but to do your body's time and die? God's purpose for you means nothing in this world. Takes a truly deceived human to declare being human impractical - but I hear it claimed every day.

I know lifers without hope who can sleep like a baby in this rot hole. They don't track the daily news nor inform their worldly views. They never see beyond the present moment. I envy them but they snore like hell.

And then there's the guy in the cot next to me last night: Frankenfarter. Jesus fucking Christ you know your life is over when that guy is stinking up your personal space like a bean-fed pig farm. "It helps me relax." It helps me relax, big fucking deal! Stuffing you in the nearest janitor's closet would help me relax. You people who get to sleep in your own bed and own room at night have it made.

My chest wakes up racing as always, tight and clenched. From past experience I know to hide the look of terror on my face lest I get a barrage of questions that no one can answer.

My head is like a radio in continual scan mode, constantly changing the frequencies. "I wonder, wonder who wrote the Book of Love?" Just one random snippet after another squelching out my true thoughts. Radio gaga.

Last night I hear a car salesman engaging a customer while I was mopping the dealership floor just before close. I don't want to be nice and friendly to every fucker I meet, I think to myself. Can I sell cars for a living? I don't know. I don't know! It's 6:18 AM and I still don't know who the hell I am.

If any of my thoughts bleed through the radio interference I can't play the game. I can no longer pretend to be interested in words that don't pertain to my life. Who does my life benefit? I see rumblings of life in the room around me as we all prepare for the daily dance. The dance of death.

The dream partner on the dance card is a dead end job I graciously greet as a glorious gift. This pleases our host, the god of lies. The class warlords pretend to give us a gift, we pretend to be happy about it - and Jesus weeps.

Cops pretend to enforce the laws of nature, arresting Adam for vagrancy. Papal politicians pretend piety perpetrated on perfidious people. All the true believers have been killed, shot by self-appointed cops doing the lying god's bidding.

I am the devil's marionette. Which string will be pulled next on my dance of death? Soulless beasts come down from the mountain looking for prey. They have no song in them and tolerate none in others. These instruments no longer fight the strings' pull - the fate of all who fail to cut them.

The class warlords get angry if you show you're hurt. Really angry. Junk yard dog angry. Killing angry. Start-a-war-to-end-the-world angry. I brush my teeth to put on my game face. I leave my killer face under the pillow, hoping no one finds it.

It's 6:38. I still don't know who I am.

I feel the morning knife in my back and wonder how long it will be before it wounds me in a way I cannot ignore. In the battlefield of open war life is so much easier. When you get wounded there no one asks you for an insurance card or despises you for "sponging off the system" or tells you how your life could never be more important than money. On the battlefield of class warfare they spit on the wounded and pray for them to conveniently die.

That's why you can always spot the hunter-killers by just saying two words: "I'm hurting." They go all crazy saying how they aren't responsible, denying they caused any part of your pain. All that when you haven't even accused them of anything.

So who am I? Successful janitor of the night? The "super smart guy" Julie says I am? The "good pupil" in therapy who flunks in real life? A dreamer who never chose to live? An enemy of the state? A prophet of love? A broken child in a world of wolves? Is there a career in any of this shit?

I've tried on all the shoes - none of them fit.

Looking around the room I see decrepit bodies unwelcome in the halls of power and beautiful people. The state of their being brings too much news of the world. (The State Of The Union should always be held in a homeless shelter). Today I will laugh in wry observation at the forced socialization of my fellow man. Many will happily say it's raining as the powers that be piss on them. And then they in turn will "help" others by pissing on them.

It's all about the lies we can sell ourselves isn't it?

The facade of normalcy takes hold as the smell of morning brew spreads across the stale air of worn blankets and soiled sheets. What a sad dance as we pretend our lives are like any other. Soldier boy wears his backpack like he's hitchhiking across Europe. Mrs. Johnstone puts on makeup for the charity ball she once attended. Some think homelessness is my career but it's just my situation.

Each of us denies the night's nightmares as we wake to find reality's horror unchanged by our grasping dreams of hope. Some deny it, some wrestle with it, a few embrace it. But we're all looking for the times where we don't have to lie, and the devil's strings are cut forever more.