Poor, mentally ill, addict/writer the future looks grim.
If/when I die homeless & broke I’ll leave behind a piece of me
In every book, every scribbled note, every speech I gave.
Isolation is a blessing to embrace
To pump out as many thoughts as possible.
Feed the hunger of the blank pages
Crusted with old blood.
Spend days on end in the maw of drugged sleep.
Rudely awakened by people checking to see if I am still alive.
What happened to our unscarred bodies, floating eyes & actual noses?
Grey skin, blank stared, pinned or dilated pupils, deviated septum crowd.
Skeletal forms living off of meal replacements, milk & granola bars.
Or as someone once wryly noted, “salt & amphetamines”
Even then living, seeing shows, organizing party busses,
Performing poems, songs & speeches.
Recording intoxicated first takes for fun.
Ironically it wasn’t drugs that tore us apart at all.
Work ethic is something CEOs invented
To keep the poor in their pockets
Offering less while they do nothing
And get filthy rich from it.
Attach work ethic to masculinity & intrinsic personal value
Men fall in line without a word.
Hands instinctively covering their threatened, shrivelled cocks.
The mainstream world & I see ethics differently.
Capitalism is a series of scams.
Can’t cure cancer, addiction, or depression
Money’s true worth is still severely limited.
Too limited to gamble four decades or more on.
Money is useful to keep people alive & in shelter,
To buy experiences you can’t usually get for free.
A means, never the ends.
It never ends.
Life is about collecting memories & experiences, in the end it’s all we got.
I have collected far more than the thirteen year old self that tried to
Slit his wrists the wrong way with a kitchen knife.
I have known countless pains & pleasures since.
Shooting coke, seeing spectres, spilling secrets that didn’t need to be hidden.
Time distortion, dilation, constant states of confusion & delusion.
Sometimes the key to keeping sane is just not to think about it.
It doesn’t matter what was real or not.
Reality is perception.
–Jack Blare 2023
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