Borrowing for Favors Alike

"There are times I don't feel like going,"

I remember OBSIDIAN saying about the SHOUT OUT. I get up this morning and that's exactly how I feel. I want to crawl back into bed and call it a month. I'm not interested in moving, I sleep on, and get up at 11:30. That's alright, I stayed up until 4:00 the night before, not good for getting up early in the morning. I get online, answer emails and write my blog.

I drink strong coffee until 2:00pm and then hop into the shower, letting the water screw my head on right. Paula is home, playing her television at an obnoxious volume. I can hear it clearly through her door as I walk past, although once I get through my solid door I hear it no more. I dress quickly, get back online and write more before it's time to pack up and leave. I leave at 3:00PM on the nose and head for the Way. Soon, I'm at First Avenue, with a half hour to go. It's not the greatest day in the world so I stay in the subway, reading a book, waiting until 4:00 before going to Otto's.

Once there, I turn up the stage, set up the mikes, and make ready to start. I cop a beer from Cyndi Lauper and it's on. I start the show, which as my personality dictates, no matter how hard I try, stays pretty sedate. The audience is large, and the feature does an excellent job. Still, I can't get a rise out of the audience. One of the more boisterous poets tries also, and finds them to be a limp noodle today. I'm not feeling bad now. At the closing I read a dirty limerick:

There once was a man from Spire
with his dick he could put out a fire
When the firemen came
they would sing out his name
and now he's a firetruck for hire

This went over well, the audience laughed heartily and applauded, and I used this rousing chorus to close the show, thank the audience and thank the Feature. Everyone cheered. It was the end of the show and everyone claimed that they had a great time. I was just grateful to get a rise out of everyone before the end. I only wish that I could keep up that level of intensity through the entire SHOUT OUT. Maybe I should read a naughty limerick before and after each show. I usually read one of my poems before, why not just throw in a limerick.

OR maybe even a dirty poem. Well, my poems are not dirty, they're rude. I don't think rude goes over as well as dirty. They are similar, but different in delivery and intent. I talk to a few people, break down the stage and say my goodnight, rushing headlong to Kennedy's Fried chicken and getting 15 chicken wings. This is not for one night but hopefully for three meals. I hop the trains back uptown and stuff and pack into trains and crowded corridors, expecially at 96th street, where the construction gentlemen feel that the people are best served traversing through tighter and narrower passageways.

I make it home, set up my computer, take my clothes off, make a plate of chicken covered with hot sauce and watered down kool-aid. Just in case you are wondering, the reason why I drink watered down kool-aid, and let me explain this too. The kool-aid is straight from the packet WITHOUT sugar. So many of you may think that Kool-aid is packed with sugar, you could not be farther from the truth. Straight from the little packet there is no sugar, so it's as bitter as brine. To counteract the bitterness of the taste, I put it in a quart container, even though it's designed only to flavor half that, thus diluting the Kool-aid and removing much, but not all, of it's bitterness. The reason why I drink watered down Kool-aid? I hate the taste of plain water after awhile. And I'm always drinking water because I'm a borderline diabetic. So why not drink water that has a little flavor to it.

It's not that I'm too poor for sugar, or sugar kool-aid, although with sugar we're talking about three times than the cost of the little packets which are at best three for a dollar. Not bad when you drink as much water as I. So I eat and drink and retire to my computer. I fall asleep early, around midnight and wake up at 3:00AM. I get the Sunday New York Times, which has an interesting article in it.

"MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs. Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare."

Well finally someone has the guts to admit it.

"With most of his co-workers laid off, Greg Dawson, a third-generation electrician in rural Martinsville, considers himself lucky to still have a job. He works the night shift for a contracting firm, installing freezer lights in a chain of grocery stores. But when his overtime income vanished and his expenses went up, Mr. Dawson started skimping on meals to feed his wife and five children. He tried to fill up on cereal and eggs. He ate a lot of SPAM. Then he went to work with a grumbling stomach to shine lights on food he could not afford. When an outreach worker appeared at his son’s Head Start program, Mr. Dawson gave in."

I see others have resorted to SPAM for survival. Not a bad turn if you ask me. It kept the soldiers in WWII going, so why not families in the great recession of 2009?

"Unemployment insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless (and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid many people can get — the safety net’s safety net."

I just wanted to share that. It's just putting in print what I could have reported my damn self. Social Services is the lowest rung on the ladder, and those rising from the gutter will reach up for it first, and those falling down the ladder, it's the last rung before the streets. Here is our transition place. Here is where we cross paths. I just hope I'm rising out of this, finally going up this damn ladder and not down.

I've been below the last rung. I'm tired of that shit.

Hobobob