No Way Out
You can stop or start, it’s your choice. So much time spent, lots of time wasted, and as always, there’s never enough time to go around to save or spend money. It’s a matter of how you view it. You can have all the time in the world, or no time left to save for a rainy day. You may have unlimited wealth and no time, or you may have time and be completely broke. It’s all tainted leftovers in a warm refrigerator of redundancies. Meatloaf again? You know the routine. This isn’t a drill. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal for the afterlife.
There’s no escape plan for living in a premade prison cell for days. A private hell or public restroom is only one of those uncomfortable domiciles. Hell could be cozy if you’re always cold. There’s only one option. Overcrowded shelters, living under a bridge, or hiding under a rock. There are predetermined ways to go, where chance and fate walk along the garden path to the end of an imaginary line drawn in the sand you must cross. Story over. Sorry, mate. A series of events and mishaps, filled with costly mistakes and expensive expenses, must overcome disappointments. It’s okay for most, but some may choose a shortcut. The easy-egress exit of choice. You could call it the cowardly way to go—an act of suicide. Some call it brave; others say noble. To take yourself out of the equation. Maybe something less permanent, like dropping out of society. Turning your back on humanity.
Either way, it’s a dead giveaway to cop out of your own life. No profiles in courage. There must be a better way or reason for living life on your own terms. Survival of the stingiest millionaire in a bankrupt place. Holding on inside a soul container. Remove the middleman and increase your profits. Who are they anyway? Nobody I know. These bodies we carry around like accessories are dead weight.
Perhaps you feel trapped in a no-win situation where everything is rigged to fail, and everyone is in on the same sucker-punch staged canned laugh strategic scenario. A technical knockout. A small smattering of applause and some name-calling hecklers. You could lose it all in a game of chance or win big in life’s lottery. I’ll see your bet and raise the stakes, double, or nothing. The eternal fight or flight love fest between mortal enemies. Somebody has to win, and the odds are stacked against perpetual losers. You always end up at the top of the heap or buried underneath it. Moldy bread.
To begin at the bitter end, without a chance at winning the prize. We’re just beginning. A brass ring or a gem-encrusted diamond studded with doodads, what a surprise. The costume jewelry of a tarnished rhinestone legacy of cheap imitations. It sparkles in the sunlight and shines on in the night under those incandescent streetlights. The naked eye can’t see any way of escaping. A loophole in the rigged system is in lockstep with a knee-jerk goose-stepping reaction. Still trapped inside an empty head and a broken heart.
You can cry your eyes out while wringing your hands until they’re sore and raw. Bemoan the facts in your fiction. A fickle little nobody is foolish enough to think they know what’ll happen in the next few minutes, the next year or the one after that. What’s happening? Some kind of psychic or psychotic fortune-teller. It can seem like forever, but it’s not the same thing. Every time you have a laugh over a funny story about how you’re the butt of your own tired joke. Nobody’s laughing. Maybe a little chuckle. Put on your muck boots. Wave a farewell salute to the feckless leader. Shallow and pretty petty, if you ask me, but nobody ever does. Nothing makes sense anymore. I'm just now wondering if it ever did.