There is a fever in my head, in my nose, in my brain.
It changes everything. The way I taste the world.
What I want to chew up. What I spit out.
There is a furry bundle on my bed.
He is so small yet he fills up the room with his presence.
I want to live like that. In the present.
Not caring about the outside, the growing confusion.
I want to put my fingers in my ears and jam them in up to my elbows,
to drown out the constant intolerable buzzing humdrum of
uncivilization. I am aware I am not in compliance.
There is a fever in my head, my nose, my brain.
It is making me want to change.
I could start with something simple like
putting on clothes that deliberately mismatch.
Talking to myself on public transportation
and then answering back.
Licking the fronts and backs of my hands after
finishing a meal in a cafe.
Why not? Why not? Why not?
Who's looking, who's doesn't have their phone on? Who really cares?
I DON'T BELIEVE IN TECHNOLOGY. I BELIEVED IN THE PEOPLE ONCE.
They told a homeless man on Hawthorne, No Sir, you cannot
own a dog, "no more." They shot his other dog.
They tell renters, we will inflate your rent
until you must go live in a tent somewhere, but not here.
On 60 minutes, 25% of Floridians have no homes,
10% of them make their homes
in their automobiles.
Banks close on reverse mortgages made to 90 year old seniors
then resell their home for a quarter of its value
to pouncing real estate poachers with wads of ready cash.
They tell the Occupiers, your tent
cities will be razed...no hobos allowed in this town,
not with the profitable holidays coming 'round.
The Middle Class are an endangered feces. They mean nothing
to the political poop machine they foolishly elected.
The Middle Class need to lobby Congress, but we have no dinero.
Something is woefully wrong when 99 percent of the population
is disenfranchised.
We should be penning outraged poems like those of Pinero.
Most people would be
grateful to have something
of anything these days.
Some dignity. Some respect. Some health insurance.
Some person hood. (How did corporations finagle that one?)
Vegans have become Freegans.
Dinner out is the food kitchen.
Dinner in is mac n' cheese surprise.
All politics is lies.
Obfuscation. Bull-stinky.
The little ball of fur, at the foot of my bed is his own person.
He snores and is contented with a tattered blanket,
a lumpy bed and two world-weary souls to keep him nested.
He is not so completely life-tested. He depends on us.
Does he know how much we depend upon him? His warm
furry-ness. His alternating totalitarian acceptance and polite
indifference. This puss, golden-eyed and brimming with
expectation when really his needs do not amount to a princely sum.
I expect for some it takes a miracle nearly every day just to get through it.
Shouldn't have to be this way.
So many suffering. While the few gorge on an endless banquet.
There is a fever in my head, my nose, my brain.
It will not change.
The fury and the fire will not die out.
Test the resolve of one, he might give in, he might not.
Test the persistence of many, and you will have a battle on your hands.
We have a fever in our heads, our noses, our brains.
Look out. Watch out. It will not change.
November 28, 2011 All Rights Reserved By the Author
work in progress, more prose than poetry
Melissa A Howells /Meloo of Tilt-a-World