Hell's Kitchen

"Who are you? The end of the world?"

Guess I've heard that question one too many times because it seems to be coming true. I couldn't make it out of bed this morning. The pull to stay in was too great. Why get up? Why get out? Why even breathe? I just don't see the point of it.

They tell us to work hard but then they don't value hard work. It's all a fix. If Mom and Dad tell you to get a job, tell them to suck your dick. If anyone tells you to get a job, tell them to suck your dick. It's none of their goddam business. They're just angry their work is not valued either and want you stuck in that same fucking quagmire - no matter how much anyone pontificates to the contrary. We're all stuck playing the game, that's why they rigged it. Who says the Nazis are dead?

When I turn on the TV I don't recognize the world I see. Out of sight, out of mind we are. Apartments like mine are only a backdrop for escape. But let me tell you, there is no escape. Ten bucks an hour is what I was making in the 90s when gas was fucking cheap. Now it's less than a living wage. The life of a wage slave is the worst of all worlds. Idiot Oprah tells me to start my own business. Sociopaths deny there even is such a thing as a wage slave. One thing I do know: no one's doing a damn thing about it.

Sitting here I feel like the world has moved on and I've been left behind. Maybe it's because of these 50s style apartments with their faded steel blue doors hiding glorified motel rooms. There's some ornamental railing to tell me the builders meant for this to be hip - 60 years ago. That just makes it even more depressing. Yes, indeed, when I look at the ads of the world I'm looking through my prison bars into a place I can never reach. You may not understand the way we 47% act but I sure do. You can take your conservative hate and liberal guilt and stick it up your ass.

From Beatnik paradise to hell's kitchen

It's like an endless wandering in an endless desert, trapped in a universe of banality. No direction home. I'm floating in a black void bereft of humanity and understanding. Through my window I hear angry music emanating from an over-rimmed car. Blythe children scream and chase one another. How long before their songs turn angry? What will they do when they find out they're being lied to? Will they too in turn become liars like every generation before?

I still debate if I was more alive when I was homeless. I certainly felt more connected. But my suburban soul can't take that kind of chaos anymore. (There's a reason so many war veterans exposed to chaos are homeless. It's the only place they can breathe.) While I can't go back to that kind of insecurity am I really doing any better ungainfully employed? I've yet to find a way to deal with the lying. I had hoped the price wouldn't be so high. Apparently my soul doesn't understand I need to live indoors - or even eat.

Nothing has gotten any better from the first time I wrote about this.

Politics is rarely spoken here. There's no point. We're yesterday's news, used Kleenex. There's no profit to be gained from our voices. Like abused children, we speak only of good news to our abusers lest we receive another beating. For to hear us is to look into a mirror, we must be silent to survive. After all, who dares to listen to what their maid truly thinks of them?

What little political we do hear doesn't make sense. Few here know what the party line is much less how to tote it. Slick semantics, clever coddling, framed phrases - all that garbage goes right out the window. The pain drives it out. Still, politics is another mirror and I always listen in to the rare foray I might come across. I had happened to see the same thing on TV as Mrs. Simpson and found her take hilarious - and cut straight to the heart.

The wildly self-important Paul Begala

A man on TV claimed that with the new health plan coming out when a kid wrecks himself on his motorcycle it won't cost anything anymore. That got Mrs. Simpson up in arms. "Those doctors not working for free! Those nurses, neither. What is that fool talking about? Ain't there no shame anymore? People just say anything!" Ah, if only I could get her on TV! She'd be the only one without a pre-arranged script. And I'm sure the reason this got to her is because she works in a hospital.

Mrs. Simpson - like the rest of us - sees the shit firsthand. Policy wonk chatter only matters to the deliberately out of touch. They don't feel our pain - they fear it. We are the foot soldiers paying the price while the generals debate our fate. They keep telling us how we are doing. Fucking outrageous - but it continues every day.

Sometimes I think I'm the only one here angry about our predicament. But if you prick the surface you'll find a LOT of anger. People know what's going on even if they aren't free to speak. There are some who have succumbed to fear, clinging to the idea there are those in power who will "save" us. They hope to be spared evil by speaking well of evil. But that only enables it to go on. Challenge that idea and you risk hysterics in return - trust me. On the other end are those who do nothing but complain, anger is all they know. The only ones truly unconcerned are the gullible and the dead.

As I feared, I've become trapped by my false face. Sometimes I forget I'm even wearing it and that people are speaking to an illusion of me. I scraped and made it a point to get a decent car (Have you ever been towed in from a hundred miles outside of Dallas? I fucking have.) The payments strain my budget and I'm sweating blood every month but on the outside they see only the possession. Their talk of admiration only beats me down further, isolating me. At the end of the day I'm alone, going nowhere, with bills coming due.

I feel I'm lost in an alternate time and place, that none of this is real - or can be real. There's no reason to it, no sense. I don't know if there's a heaven but there sure as shit is a hell - right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. How did we get this far out of whack? The oppressors like to say there are no conspiracies but the only way the world can die is by mutual consent. I don't know how much more I can take. Life is slipping through my fingers.