The Mysteries Of Greendale

There are pockets you have not dug into,
a wallet unopened, a purse untouched.
You haven’t spent a lick of money
since you woke up today, knowing
you were broke and also knowing
you didn’t care that much — you had learned
how little you depended on funds
to get by in life, in living this best life.

Take stock of yourself —
you’ve got a strongish heart, almost
perfect hearing, not terribly bad eyesight;
your hands are numb but they still work,
somewhat; your feet slip and stumble
but they still get you around. Your brain
flirts with your memory and doesn’t understand
a lot of what it tells you, but you try
to keep up.

People you know wring their hands over you;
the guy across the street is done with you;
the folks next door barely spare you a word.
You don’t care. You keep going. There are
mockingbirds everywhere around here
with their tails doing that erratic thump,
thump without making a sound; there are
one hundred thousand squirrels and
about that many mice, too.

Somewhere out there is a secret police
of thugs dressed up in face masks
and a lot of your neighbors think
nothing of them. This whole country
is going to fall soon — and you, you with
your crippling hands and your blankness
of thought, you with your delight born anew
at the wonders of Greendale and beyond?
You just gave up your ghost to the memory
of a past that wasn’t much better than this one
unless you looked at it from the right angle,
and called it good, and felt it in your skin
and bones and somewhere down below them both.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T