I heard the news today, oh boy.
The American lottery is almost one billion dollars.
Six numbers.  Six random, inconsequential numbers
will turn a workin’ man into a quittin’ one
Six numbers will turn dreams into realities
suffering into bliss
Six numbers will change the world.
All I need, all any of us need, is a dollar and a dream
…or so it is said.

But I just overheard someone grumble behind me
“After that damn government has its way,
I’d only get half of that money, if that much”
and as I turn on my mental calculator
the hammer of this society is sledged by
this ignorant’s physical instigator’s next line
“Would be nice to win that billion,
but you’d only see three hundred or so million
when all is said and done.”
And then the punchline…
“How fucked up is that?”
I laugh to myself as I turn to these comedians
only, I do not see smiles on their faces,
only seething frowns of frustration and fury,
“Fucking bullshit if you ask me.”

I don’t move, I don’t breathe
I let these last few sentences settle like the dense
Savannah fog devouring the willow,
damp and heavy, weeping silently

Like a bad trip, like an atom bomb sucking all air and sound
from the earth the moment before thermal pulse;
Like the suction extracting the fibers from my ears,
it all goes mumbly silent around me.
I place down my pen and close my eyes and see
zero zero zero, zero zero zero, zero zero
then like a mutated double-mouthed pac-man,
I see that hovering “three” turn itself sideways,
landing gently on top of this expanse of 0s
and devour them, greedily,
up-righting itself then posturing there, alone;
its two bellies now bloated.
“The dollar ain’t what it used to be.”
It echos as I focus on this number, the number these
two lethargic defeatists focus on rather than the endless
abundance that follows it.
“Why.  Even.  Bother?”

I try to take in any air that is left as I cap my pen,
close my notebook and commence my funeral march for mankind.
As I open the door to leave, I notice a family
wrapped in themselves within a mountain of snow and filth,
their coughing trying to extract the poisoned blood in their
veins from malnourishment and dis-ease, clutching to
their worn-out square of cardboard that reads
One dollar might save the life of my child…
        Won’t you help?
How about three?, I ask as I empty my pocket for them.
“What a waste of money” I hear a ghost whisper as
it passes behind me on the sidewalk, shaking its head
while throwing a candy wrapper and cigarette butt on the
concrete, far too close to the only home this family has.

zero zero zero
    zero zero zero
        zero zero

I am shocked back to reality by the sound of crying, brick by brick,
as a small army of children
stand a block away watching their educational institution
collapse to rubble, their parents and teachers standing
among them understanding with melancholy that they
are now mere witnesses to futures that will never happen.

That is when the centrifugal force begins picking
up its pace, trying to keep down in my gut the disgust I
never realized was festering my dismal opinion of humanity.
I begin seeing the faces of homo sapiens peel away revealing
the avarice of the consuming suidae.
That is when the last chords of the beautiful hallelujah
suddenly become satirized in the mucus of the insatiable,
club and mace destroying the balance of the dancer,
realize nature has been painted rather than preserved,
begin gasping, choking violently on the words that have
now imbued the air of the capitalistic
conjuring of consumption as the holy word and blood of ultimate salvation;

and at that precise moment,
I hear the humble secret of the over-whelming avalanche of
mental incongruity and recalcitrance sear with white hot
agony and desperation, melting my mind to napalm and
conversely obliterating my soul that once believed in
goodness and refused to accept evil as a worldly entity:

“I Could, But I Won’t…Why Should I?”

and in the nothingness that followed, in the
zero zero zero, zero zero zero, zero zero of zero worth,
one last wisp from the pure and hallowed soul:
six numbers could change the world…
    but won’t
and all of existence vanished
as if it were never created.

That is the news of the world…
read all about it.

 

 

 

af

 

 

 

((written with pen on paper in response to the waste of the lottery)