Bitter Rich Fool

                                       Part 3.5

                             ****   9   ******  lucky me again

___Brent woke up to a scream in the night.  A howl of some creature disturbed and flitters of burning light outside danced in the windowpane as Brent's dreary mind sprung alive lazily.
"I'll kill everyone of you sons of bitches! Get the law called on me, I'll burn your carcasses and leave the bones for strays!"
 ___ This burst obviously came from Mr. Stevens.  Jill even caught a bit of the rant as she stirred in bed.  Brent went to the window and there was Mr. Stevens in his house coat and boots drinking whiskey from the bottle while holding a burning Maltav cocktail.  Brent could hear the raccoons scatter from the garbage in the back of the house.  Mr. Stevens took a stumbling run and threw the cocktail into a group of retreating animals.  They scurried quickly away and it didn't seem that any were injured.  Brent watched the old man as he collapsed and knelt down on the ground watching the fire burn up scortching the lively lawn and dying out in the cool night.  Brent felt like he understood the man a little more in seeing his sad nature quietly.
____We all die.  It doesn't matter if your worth a million dollars, have a thousand kids, invent the most amazing thing ever, you are expendable. 
____Mr. Stevens stared blankly into the advertising box in his living room.  He rolled around thoughts inspecting loopholes and options. He did this process frequently with no avail.  He eventually forgot what he was doing in the first place.  This kept him sharp, but his information was all mixed up.  He couldn't differentiate reality from fiction.  He didn't know the difference between the truth and fiction, most of which he had made up without  recalling his true meaning.  This left him uneasy and often afraid of everything outside of himself and outside of his control, because with all this time checking facts and separating created meaning from true meaning had robbed him of most organizational ability.  He drove himself mad when deciding on dinner for the evening.  The proper placement of silverware and a thousand thoughts on ettiquite, dining, and entertainment filled his head, beckoning him to make everything perfect.  In reality he was surrounded in a mess.  Yes it was often tidy, but no place of comfort.  He often sat in his room enjoying a book, because the insanity would die down behind the words.  He would often not even absorb what he had read, but just sit there calmly running his eyes over the words and mouthing or humming a slight tune as he did so to balance with the piercing silence of his lonely dark hollow.
___look out

Filter The Breath You Expel, Diverge In Altruism

=====5===== Next To Nothing

It will all even out he thought as he rubbed his sweaty hands on his pants.  He was inside the station looking through aisles avoiding eye contact with the stocky droog at the checkout window.  The colors and the lights were making his head hurt, he quickly looked out to make sure the car was in the same place he had left it moments ago.  He grabbed a bag of gummy worms and a large energy drink, opening and consuming them at the counter.  The attendant looked at him with twinges of disgust and said
"That all for ya partner." blandly. 
"Yeah that's it." the man replied with a choking slurping speech. 
Life is made up of these awkward encounters.
He reached for the door as a strange electrical feeling rose from his feet to his spine.   fear, instinctual, habitual.  Everything was quiet after his foot squeaked in it's place.  He looked down into his drink, and red on the label "caffine-free".  He turned to look at the attendant
"I..."
The beast stood there in the ripped flesh of the attendant.  The entire window was splattered with blood.  The skeletal remains twitched and  bounced blue in the dimmed light.  The man stared into the darkness underneath the flesh, and saw a glimmer of a black  eye.  He saw teeth and twitching body parts, nerve endings flipping around with stripped muscle tissue.  As the man pulled the door open the thing started scraping at the glass with a mix of broken finger bone and what could only be a claw.  Out the door he could hear a shriek.  He looked back to see the mashed attendants head poking through a spider webbed opening in the bulletproof glass.
   He ran.   it wasn't the first time he had to.

$$$$$$6$$$$$$ You Bought And Sold Your Love.

Sadly enough nothing is ever enough.  Looking through the library for a few books to read.  Read them on the train.  Get home and don't help but think that it's oddly disabling.  It's critically sedating.  Rub eyes, rub face, be alive.  Maybe shave.  Likely to misbehave without haste. 

Hail to the Chief

I watched Obama speak at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina today. It made me wonder what my service would have been like if I had the confidence that soldiers now must have in our government. I felt like a weapon being used by tyrants during my service. I do not support Obama but I think I would feel a lot better about what I was doing with him as my commander in chief. Something about a businessman from Texas with multiple failed ventures and hazy military service history makes you doubt the intentions and direction of the government.
When they said there was going to be a pullout in Aug. 2010, I was momentarily excited. Then they said 50,000 troops would remain and forces are still being increased in Afghanistan. Somehow I do not feel that these soldiers need to remain. Islamic extremism and terrorism are cancerous, and contagious. It is bound to spread, but our gone friends and family can never be replaced. You can not stabalize that which has no flat surface for stabalization. There is a reason we have a seperation of church and state here, and it is because religion is not bound to reality. When you have a society that only has religion to believe in you are doomed to never have true liberty.
John McCain tells us that we need to take care not to withdrawal too soon as our acheivements will be reversed. I don't believe the things we have done in either country will stand regardless if we were there for a hundred more years. Until the people have real schools seperated from religion, honest people coming forth to take the reigns of responsibility, and an Army with a sense of dignity and pride, there is no chance of progeress. American has no morals for any other country to follow anymore. We teach greed, we teach egotism. In this country we can't even take care of ourselves. Our government runs rampant with no guidance from the people. The system is corrupt, the people have become docile, and our hearts are broken as we walk down the streets in the shrouds of media, and life. We don't care anymore. Nature offers no guidance to the rapers of the planet. I don't even think evolution can instill us with a sense of self worth in a world that does not need us.

In Other News
I created a Contemporary sculpture today. I filled bland clothes with sheets and towels and made it look like a homeless person. I placed it outside of a subway stop in downtown. I made a sign and it was a poem called Solitude:

Solitude

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

LAUGH, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

It was a good time and I actually talked with a few homeless fellows who were some of the few that read the whole thing. I'm working on a blog about combating PTSD naturally so look for it very soon, also on Wednesday Chicago NPR will be playing a portion of my songs from the vet art project in a story on the event. Be sure to check it out here.