economic_pattern_baldness
unhinged they say the recession is over
i don't feel it
my hair is falling out
the mayor raised the minimum wage to $15
in 20fucking17 assholes
but in the past three years
my rent has gone up 40%
my hair is falling out
climate change causes drought on the west coast
the price of food soars
my hair is falling out
they say i should just work harder
work more
work longer
my hair is falling out
151004
...
unhinged there's no help coming
i try to find herbal replacements for
the pharma i can't afford
there's no help coming
the herbs don't stop the hair from falling
with the tears
there's no help coming

god bless
the land of the free oligarchs
and the home of the brave wage slaves

when your family is almost killed by an infection
there's no help coming
when you have to use a credit card to buy food
there's no help coming
when the rent goes up year after year
there's no help coming

'all the american people want is a little relief'
brought tears to my eyes
to hear one politician that finally got it
there's no help coming
'where i come from no body ask for nothing we just take it'
don't wait for it cause
there's no help coming
170901
...
unhinged 'go downstairs and get me a can of peas for dinner nick'

my heart thudded against my chest. there was no arguing with grandma but i hated going down in that basement all alone.


my grandparents lived through the great depression. the basement was a mute testimony to the years of desperate want. things piled up so high i felt they might topple on me. pathways to separate his from hers. sometimes i found my grandma far back in the dark recesses near the washing machine doing laundry. sometimes i found my grandpa at his tool bench by the sliding glass door to the back yard drinking the beer he couldn't have upstairs (both my grandparents were alcoholics but my grandma quit first and held it over his head, banished his drinking to the dark dirty basement where it belonged.)

he snickered at me as i gingerly inched towards the canned goods looking for whatever grandma had sent me downstairs for so she wouldn't have to climb the steep stairs. the mounted deer on the wall scared me. everything about that basement scared me.



after my grandpa died, my dad was searching through his half of the great horde. that was when i noticed the rabbit warren-like pathways through all that stuff. piles, mountains of musty cardboard and things that i felt like i shouldn't look too closely at, like an open wound. my dad had found my grandpa's trunk from world war ii and at the bottom of it were movie reel shaped metal containers.

rations from his military service
from sixty years before





now
i understand this instinct more intimately than i ever thought i would
200328
...
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what's it to you?
who go
blather
from