to be deleted.

I'd been sleeping in a small building by the train station,  where I could keep a few toiletries and such,  and I had some money from social services,  and I was writing on a daily or near-daily basis.  There was a McDonald's less than a mile away  that I'd walk to in the morning, get some  breakfast, coffee, and watch the early  talkshows and scribble a few things  in my notebook.  After that, I could walk around the town,  moving, being, the grimy hassle of other places  behind me. And by nightfall I'd have nowhere  to go besides the all-night gas station, where  the staff accommodated my drinking coffee  and writing in the notebook for several  fulfilling hours.  And that's where I met Gene.  He was a goblin of a man, terribly old,  and life had taught him little besides  a slimy, pretentious hospitality and  a passionate disdain for alcohol.  But he offered me a place to stay,...

 It was the same year as that giant oil spill  in the Gulf of Mexico, when Obama was still  in his first term as President.  I had just returned from living in Georgia,  where I'd meant to reside on a farm indefinitely  but  my employer sent me away  after two un-controversial weeks.  My friend Jeff let me stay in his  rented cottage and I resumed  in helping to pay the rent.  Shortly after, my high school crush,  a shy, sexy blonde by the name  of Jessica, started making advances  in what they refer to nowadays  as breadcrumbing.  I lusted for her, and my lust was full of hope,  yet time after time, on the brink of intimacy,  she cancelled the deal with some lame excuse.  It took three or four months of that shit,  a suffering largely to my credit, until I'd  finally just flirt with any other woman  who'd struck me as receptive.  Well, in short enough order,  the...

Off and on, I've spent  about 3 of the last seven  years as homeless:  waiting in line for  meals and shelter,  waiting in line for  showers, clothing, caseworkers.  Looking for jobs, a better class of  friends,  warmth and privacy and silence.  It cuts and withers the soul  to a barely functioning distortion,  often staying out of the hospital  the only thing I could achieve...  Yet this morning I stood on my porch,  smoking an American Spirit cigarette,  barefoot in a gentle sun,  and my biggest concern was  picking something on Netflix.  **** 

 I'll be watching some video  on YouTube or Netflix, about,  say, the virtues of atheism,  the absurdity in human behavior,  the music of the Sixties counterculture...  and this caustic buzzing  will stutter, strangle the moment  like one lepper tugging another's sleeve.  This is what 2022  has brought in its luggage.  Along with: the persistence of Trump Supporters,  discovery of sound on Mars,  relief of the Covid Virus,  the evasive thirst of virgins,  and the long plateau of the future.  ****