Struggle to Breath in an America I Made

Struggle to breath in an America I made. Walls close in and I choke on the shit from my own ass, pumped out at three thousand rotations per minute. I wade through the sewers so that I might make an end meet another end and the connection between us and those who would have us die in their servitude might never be broken. I consume. I am the consumer. I am the thing most valuable to our lives. I drive the economy; an 18 Wheeler Big rig barreling down I-80, ripping through the heart of our land like so many poisons headed through my body day in and day out. I am that piece of … shit that was created off the Jersey turnpike in the fast food chemical alley where we call it chicken but it’s made from some kind of beef broth and a thousand other things. Julia Childs with her test tubes and Bunsen burners cooking my evening meal, and maybe even cooking my soon to be had family.

“Yes, can I have a small boy and a loving wife, with an annual income of somewhere between 50 and 60 thousand with a house too big for us somewhere in the suburbs…. Yes, SuperSize the house. Also, can I have a Biggie Sized SUV. Great! Thanks.”

I am the devil and I blame it all on me. I am the Messiah and I rescue me. I am waging a war raging on a battlefield that only I can see and the medicine I take makes it go away. It makes the war soft, dull, in the background like a painting that follows me from room to room.

I am your youth, your future, your destiny. I am your legacy. Are you proud? Not so many hands this time, eh? I am the reflection of the ugly side of life that you have tried over and over again to pay to have taken away from the curb. I am your trash, but today isn’t garbage day and neither is tomorrow. So you had better think of something and something quick because the neighbors are beginning to suspect something and I am not going away on my own. You just might want to think about me for a few minutes before you turn the key in your over luxurious car and turn on the seat warmers so the shit up your ass cooks slowly… perhaps dinner tonight? No, I’m not going away. I am here and I am going with you. Ahhhhhh…. You thought that when you drove away from your KingSized life and SuperSized house in your BiggieSized small creature killer that I would stay on the curb and you wouldn’t have to smell me any more.

Sorry buddy, I’m not like you when your dad left your mother and you in 1956 when you were 10 years old and your mother was afraid of what the neighbors would think and you just wanted to fight in school because you didn’t have a daddy. I do. I have you. You are my daddy… you made me and you can’t get away from me. I am everything you’ve thrown out and tossed aside. I am the lack of ethics you’ve lived by, I’m the office slut that you fucked and then asked to have transferred when she got too attached to you. I am the asshole in church just in front of you that has the bigger house and the better behaved children who don’t have drug problems. I am your friend.

It’s time you took a lesson son, because I’m deep and full of wisdom. I have seen your life and your times and you, my friend, are abysmally depressing. You have shit your life right down the tubes for the car and the house and the crap inside. Is a TV in every room enough to distract you from the hell that is this world? Is it? I didn’t think so. Sooner or later you wake up from the coma you’ve lived in to realize what it was that you should have done. Eventually you know what you need to do. It’s time.

Get up and go down and stake your place in the annals of history. It’s there that people will get up another day and think of you as the thing they should be. NOW! Now I am the thing I’ve always wanted to be… is it enough?

Soapbox Artist: collecting art & literature of the worst kind