How Much Longer Can This Go On?

"Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall."

Over and over I kept rolling that thought though my bruised head.

The donated divan I lie upon was like us: neglected, abused and unwanted. The ripped leather had assumed the properties of dry plastic, making a godawful squeaking noise every time you moved. I guess it was the couch's revenge for being used long past its rightful usefulness. Violating the rules of protocol I stretched across the length of it because that's what I needed, political police be damned.

Goddam, I hate this world, huddled in this shelter like a bunch of unruly children to be kept out of sight. There's nothing even to fight against - or for. We're persona non grata to an ungrateful world. The harder you fight to be seen the more they look away. I've never felt so low or lonely before.

Last few months I've had the best paying job in years but there's always a price from the robbing barons. This mid-level manager psychopath makes the rounds peeing on people's heads and they have to pretend it's raining - or else. Everyone has an excuse: too old to fight, must feed family, it's the way of the world - I've heard them all. I was the only one who refused to be peed on. I'll be spending an isolated weekend wondering my fate like a feather in the wind.

Who invented this hell? I knew that manager was corporate to a fault - always a telltale of one's self-knowledge of misdeeds - and did the same thing to his children at home. How they must hate him. He'd explain that same twisted tale of the "morality" of lying, of that's how you make good in the world; the politics of a successful predator. They've taken over the world. Is this really all there is?

It's shit, shit and more shit. I wish I could drown the sorrows that drown me. All I got is this damn noisy couch that betrays my uneasiness to all the world. When nature finds a vacuum it fills it with pain. Right now I was hoovering it by the bucket loads, dreaming of a way out at last. Two nights ago the fever hits me thinking of a woman I once knew. I rushed inside this small abandoned warehouse I know and whacked off in the corner.

I remembered Vincent once got caught whacking off in the woods by a teenage boy who tormented him.

I stumbled away from the scene of the crime quickly as I could feeling same as the trash that littered the floor. I thought of couples in the plush urban apartments across the street, making love in their safe warm beds when the fever hits them. Guess the rhythms of life go on with or without a home - no mercy allowed.

"Either you become shit or get shot, ain't nothin' in between."

Russell used to say that. Even I was afraid of what his eyes had seen. In his grey sixties, he never spoke - that I know of - of what drove him to ruin. There are those who say art doesn't save lives but in these intense moments of danger art and Russell's truth was all I had. Art is the opposite of war. It's the glue that brings us together. But in every culture that dies art is the undeclared enemy. Who would let Shakespeare live to reflect his truths today?

To the outside world I was just a lazy bum lying on the shelter's divan but on the inside I was in agony like a pig on a spit roasting over an open flame. Sheer fucking torture. Scream and you'll be directed outside. I knew my left shoe was untied and the need to address it hung over me like a ton of bricks. Always, always one more goddam thing to do. Can't I have any fucking time to myself?

Naturally, at my most vulnerable, Esmeralda picks this time to come fuck with me feeling vindicated by my illegal hogging of the entire couch. I'm in too much pain to move and she's in too much pain to resist.

"Harry, what you doing taking up that whole couch? You know other people need places to sit too!"

Briefly I thought of that Georgian town I read about where everyone is required to own a gun. The guilt of my pain forced me to play into her hands.

"This couch is just a piece of junk."

Esmeralda loved that. "Don't you be talking like that. Somebody donated that couch to us and you should be grateful!"

Esmeralda is a notorious tsk-tsker and I wanted to wring her fucking neck. Just this side of a physical assault I replied back, "You should be grateful I don't have my foot up your ass."

It took all my remaining energy to reply and if she didn't back off I was toast. Luckily, she got my drift and went away in a huff. That's the thing about riding around on your high horse: it's a long fall to the ground. Like all evil dead, she was probably going to get reinforcements so I'd be forced to do the "responsible" thing.

No homeless person is considered responsible, you know.

Welcome to my world

My head hazy and throbbing I see Lisa across the room. Daring the grief of human contact I make my way over to her. We used to have something in common in that we both kept journals of our hells. But I think she did it for the wrong reasons. She wanted to wake up the world and expose our plight and blah, blah, blah. She didn't know they already knew. And I figured she got frustrated and that's why I hadn't seen her write anymore.

I asked how she was.

"Moderately stable - but worse."

"I don't see you write anymore, Lisa," I gently broached. She was eager to explain.

"It became one burden too many."

I cracked a smile in hell's darkness of a feeling I recognized so well. "Waiting for the laughter but the laughter never comes?"

She gave me this look I'd just given her water in the desert. Later, I thought about it and cried when no one could see. "Yes..." she confirmed, glad she didn't need to explain.

"There's no sin in laying down what you can't carry. Even cocksucker God has to pitch in at some point."

Then she allowed herself to feel the guilt that nagged her. "I just got tired of feeling exposed. I was  putting myself out there just so people could take shots at me. I need to feel safe."

Lisa was looking at me dead on - something I usually have a problem with but not this time. She's in her mid 30's and I saw her fear of hardening before her time. I was in the moment, and the words that came out were a revelation even to me.

"The danger is in not exposing yourself."

She straightened a little as the boulder lifted from her shoulders. She needed a license to write but had allowed hers to expire. I too forget it's futile to hide what's already known. She wanted love. I wanted loved. The peeing manager wanted love. The workers wanted love. Asshole Esmeralda wanted love (I was still pissed I had to move off the divan). But nobody dare say it. Art is love but art is dead. No wonder we're so very, very lonely.

"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."