I Don't Have Faith and I Don"t Need Your Levi's

I just want a little more than survived.

The government cheese came and the canned peanut butter, the consistency of the inside of a peanut butter cup, tasted really good. I even enjoyed the canned pork stuff with the awesome graphic of a pig on the can.  The donuts from St. Vincent De Paul's food pantry were stale and occasionally we would get an entire stale sheet cake, so good. We never had snacks. We were not the poor family with Tommy Hilfiger polo tops and red tag Levi jeans. We were for real. There was not a loss of priorities it was just basic desperation . There was actual pride in the words when my lovely mother said we had survived and a sense of thankfulness that could only be possible through faith.

I don't have faith and I don't need your Levi's.
 I never have considered god to be compassionate and I have a great sense of style that never needed societies markings of a name brand.  I little ego and a lacking in faith goes a long way I guess after all I survived.


There were barrels of broken toys for Christmas...don"t give broken trash to the poor they don't want it and do not have the means to get rid of it once they have it and which leads to the stereotype of poor folks being lazy slobs surrounded by trash. Just guess where all that garbage came from and guess who's car is broken and who doesn't know how to recycle or trash said broken objects. If something no longer has value then it no longer has value and is not magically useful by someone that has less money. If anything it is harder to maintain an object and more expensive it is made poorly or already broken. rehabbing and refurbishing are for the rich really poor folks should only have the best as they do not have the money to maintain crappy goods. Unfortunately, quality is hard to find and impossible to afford.

$15 is better than $12

Starting a new job is hard and the facts are simple $15 per hour is better than $12. Actually "better" is the wrong word. Humane is the correct word. Unfortunately and, much to my dismay and hope for humanity, the amount of money a person makes directly effects how people are valued. Life and living is not a simple protected beauty pageant. People's wealth is worn on their external and internal selves in a way of capital decay.

Missing teeth: I am positive that no one wants to have oral pain or teeth pulled due to not being able to afford a filling. Money is the reason people are missing teeth. It is not cool or fun to be disfigured. People are judged by their smiles.
Disease, cancer, death occurs too soon for impoverished and marginalized folks. Poor people have death marketed to them. Cigarettes and Cheetos

I have been trying to stay at the $15 or better wage for quite a while now and it is next to impossible.  The minimum wage is a joke in this country and the amount of money you want to pay people is a great descriptor of how you view humanity and human worth on a whole. So next time you are in a job interview, just know that the company may or may not be viable but they should not be able to take you through the dirt with them.

Khaki making my ass look that way.

Tight wrong flesh fabric clinging to my thck thighs.
Workin'
Shit this shirt looks bad,
Like a powdered donut all lumpy but blue

Hot grime creepin' out the cement
Flesh clouds of condensation
Why this sticky?
Moist money, need me some gloves

Working for Millionaires

Working for narcisist that pay you so little that ideas about poverty and your personal health permeate your every action.  Putting gas in my car is a financial nessicity but buying fresh vegetables instead of cheaper microwave food is a simple cost analysis done in the isle of every grocery store for every single person making under 35,000 a year.  Making it to the next paycheck is just going to be easier if I get the the frozen nasty.  Every food choice is a health choice while the rich folks I work for subsidizes the soda machine to increase diabetes they fail to pay a living wage.  I think encouraging soda drinking would come after your employees ability to buy real groceries.

BUT I WORK FOR DOCTORS.

I ain't young no more

Making of friends is a joke and I ain't gonna have no children so the party seems like I am faking it,
Maybe I just don't want to fake it.
Human kind will continue despite my constant internal rant against bringing more life into this world.
It is all a selfish thing.... Selfish to think a baby in the genetic likes of you is important,,,
Selfish for me to want my time and not be willing to change diapers and feel guilty

Humanity will continue we are animals after all.  The primal needs to thrust at one another will always over power the rational thinking of failing economics and starvation around the corner. The human genetic pull is important for survival.


When times get tough get to loving.


As you are loving I will be hunkering down trying to figure out what to do with a life that has no real meaning without a love for humanity.  I have created my own emotional paradox, A person has to have some attachment to the young in order to have any hope at all even within their own life span.  I need the youth to have more compassion and hope than I do for my own well being and the cycle of selfishness continues.


My own personal selfishness.


What is a woman to do that is missing the baby clock.  There is not enough sorrow in my life or wanting for humanity, just another mundane existence.  Trying to create as an artist is a funny joke who needs more stuff? The Big Lots shelves are full of rugs why weave any more.  The thrift stores are packed with clothing. There is no need to pretend like fashion is not just being recycled again. When you feel young but the cellulite grows like nasty pockets attached to your thighs.  And the eyes of others are averted, appropriately.  You have become a nasty thing.


Red faced and swelling at the seams.

I, i, me and my

To walk through the world will an ounce of certainty.  I am coming to terms with the idea of my recent introversion is really just insecurity.... So strange to be lost in your own person and feel so confused when attempting decision.  Really simple ideas of choice devide me from my past self and future self.

Should I stop by the river on my way home or just go and take a nap.  Is this what it means to be an adult when we all the sudden finding choice between joy and restlessness.  I have felt old but happy with my almost no risk life.  Not sure what to do when strangers say hello/the walls are too built up and friendliness seems so hard.  It is easier to hide in my new found introversion of myself.  It is all such a terrible lie.

It is so hard not to be a walking lie.  My instincts seem so flawed like being lost in a brown paper bag of myself.  Oh so self absorbed.

It Is Wrong To Be An Artist

The ego swells and spits like the hot molten lava of the sun.  There are demands and no trust in another's handy work.  The hot lava must swallow the project whole.  The entirety of the essence of the idea must be owned completely with no room for compromise from other view points.  The Designer's vision is intergalactic in nature and thus part of everything...there is no suggestion that is not already owned by the designer's vision as the atoms of space are all the same.  The designer is a God.

There is no room for friends just a network of benefit from being in the shadow of the Designer.  Like the planets sole sucking from the sun's glorious rays over their valleys and mountains; all the beauty they have given to them from being in the network of proximity of the sun's gravitational pull.  Thus the lack of choice.  As the designer is God and thus beauty is only allowed through its alignment with the Designers end mission or gravitational pull.

Your ideas are not your own but given through the gravitational suggestion from the ultimate designer.  It is a cause and effect and the the designer dictates your participation.  Throw away your knowledge as an artist and play the political game of admiration towards the dictator of beauty.
-The Designer

That Bus--Not So Scary West of Denver

The face tattoos are plentiful and friendly.
 What happens when all we think of people changes. I became the  bigoted product of my environment. I found the single man that makes me feel like the worst person. The smells in Kansas and the fowl treatment of passengers had little to no effect on me and now the truth of my character slaps me in the face.  I forgot the one rule....Be  nice.
 His name is Mark and I first saw him in Merced, CA.  He must have gotten on the bus at that stop because he seemed to evolve out of the fog in the night.

I was starving as the Grey Hound did not stop for food for 9 hours on my way to Portland from LA.  I got to my transfer spot in Sacramento, CA and headed straight to the grill man.  He informed me with his large mustache and balding head that the grill was down for the night and he was only willing to make deep fried chicken strips and french fries.  I did choose honey mustard and ranch as my dipping choices.
The grill man with no grill.  I could have committed murder for a hamburger but a little chicken would do.

There was a long line behind me so after dropping my large bag in line for the bus I found a seat at a table that held a pile of papers and someone's ID card that had an American flag on it.  I guessed that I would shortly be joined by someone at my table of thick blue wire.  They came in hot and loud.  Mark was professing his battles and shrapnel stories while accepting God all at once.  "God loves infantry men" He was speaking to his buddy that was also once a military man or a follower of God. It was hard to tell.  Mark's face tattoo and loudness I had miss judged immediately.

I avoided eye contact, as any well train Midwesterner that has spent any time in any city would do.  It is funny when a person is rude from conditioning of a hard past.  I did not grow up in the west of Denver, CO climate. I am judgmental  and thus miss out on the good stories in life.  I sat there for a time trying not to seem too eager to leave though my fight or flight instinct was running high.  I wanted to seem cool and collected while starving inside a Greyhound terminal waiting for my flavorless fried grease sticks.  The grill man motioned to me as he had gotten no one's name for their orders.  His motioning happened amongst a line of other hungry passengers; he was a fabulous one man machine.
I happily sat at a new table with a older African American man. I guess I could not handle the idea of Mark asking me about either presented subject, God or War.  My chicken and fries tasted just of hot grease and as I ate I slowly realized that the man I was sitting with might not have eaten in days.  When he told me my food looked good I quickly realized the situation.  I wish I had realized sooner I could have given him more food.  If someone tells you food looks good, that is clearly nasty, they are even hungrier than you.  He was a grandpa traveling to Oregon for the first time to see his grand child.  Times are tough and this country does not take care of the elderly.

On in to the Beauty of a snowy Mountain

That little sweet driver man got us there.  We clapped as we entered the blue stripped buss-port.  Luckily one of  the passengers knew where the grey Hound Station was because our driver's phone had died and no one on the buss that had a working cell phone wanted to let him borrow it for the GPS.  Times are tricky and dreams run high on the Grey hound. Folks tell tales on opening bars in New York City and paying crazy amounts in rent and gentrification.  The poor, we know the plot of the cities and the plans of constant growth that do not include us.

Most folks do not volunteer the information of why they are traveling and others obviously embellish the truth to fit their American Dream. Some are traveling  salesmen while quickly transitioning to manual laborers to different audience.  Heading to San Fransisco from no where that can be mentioned and claiming to have been part of every community that we travel through. Sounds so lovely to me to be part of any community that I let the lie linger in the air as I focus further into my book.

I made my first coffee at the Grey Hound Station in Denver. I mostly wanted to sleep last night and now I want to soak it all in the beautiful peeks and valley of the Rocky Mountains. I honestly can not imagine a more lovely experience that what I am currently enduring.  Wispy little trees littering the mountain side.  Inside of a fresh new buss with a plug for all the technology and I think people cannot be so loud faced with the infinite beauty of mountains. Knowing that we are all part of it and feeling the weight of the great puffy clouds above the mountain peaks how can you be in hurry when we are lucky enough to view this vision.

Pulling into Vail, CO with smell of break dust..and the site of mountain cottages. This view validates the TV watchers idea of Colorado. Thin people going up and down ski lifts and thrusting themselves of lofty mountain tops.  This place must be constant vacation.  How can one be lucky enough to have this be their stop off the Grey Hound. What a culture shock.

When drivers change for the worse

Well, Salina Kansas seemed like a nice stop.  We were mostly on time until the old bus could not properly lift the gentle man in the wheel chair.  He was almost though the door when it became clear that the devise would not work properly and if we could manage to get him on we might not be so lucky in getting him off...which would really be horrible as the ride so far had been so stinky.  I am not sure how that man was getting to his destination but it was not gonna happen on our buss.

The wheel chair incident set us back 40 minutes and I guess the jolly good driver did not clearly inform the next stop of the situation.  Hays, KS we stopped in a dark parking lot I could not tell if there was a quick stop or a laundromat for the parking lot but it was certainly rural and needed a buss out.  A nice Asian man was to be the substitute driver as the intended driver had not yet shown up and most of the folks on the buss had connections to make in Denver, CO. We later learned that the new driver had never driven to CO before and had only been working with the buss line for two weeks...Oh and did not have a route slip for all the stops and was using his phone navigation to guide to our destination. I was appreciative of his courage but some how the majority of the rest of the buss were very huffy about the situation.

I found out as we drove into the night that my new seat companion was a Grandma that makes the buss trip twice a month from Denver to spend time with some  grand babies that live in Wichita.  She was a lovely woman I'm guessing in her 50's but could have easily been older.  She worn three coats in April in Kansas.  The outer layer coat was a lovely faux leopard fur coat with matching fez style hat. It was nice to be sitting by a lady of her own fashion.  A very sweet woman who has a low tolerance for the back of the buss hootin' and hollerin'. I was devoted to my book and successful at blocking out the loudness and disrespect.

I had over heard two other ladies that were on voyages to visit grand children. I had not expected the Grey Hound to actually be a considered form of transport for older woman travelling alone.  The Grey hound seems to be the mostly traveled by independent passengers waiting for the seat mates and hoping for the best.  I have mostly been lucky so far on the seat mates only one person I wished could have smelled a little nicer.  Soon I will also wish that I smelt a little nicer though as I will be on the buss for over two days with no shower and steadily fermenting in a steal box...yum