Futile escape out clutches of penury

finds yours truly groveling along
February third 2022,

never linkedin - analogous to stray animal
without being befriended,

thus I don't belong

survival instincts taught yours truly
the necessity acting

courageous and headstrong

 

even if necessary

to stare down King Kong,
who actually shows me respect

such that every now and again
we play a game of ping pong

and on a crisp night
roast marshmallows kindle campfire
and sing Kumbaya song.

This tramp (which stereotyped
caricature familiarly epitomized
in countless Chaplinesque productions,
Dickensian tales,
oil paintings from
artistic hands of great masters
and others anonymous

exquisite painters, et cetera)
remembers practically nothing
of me nine-month stay in utero
birth, childhood nor early adulthood.

My amorphous gauzy,
hazy fractal memories
solely comprise fractured,
fragmented and splintered collection
of miserable experiences,
which characterize living
a hellacious hand to mouth
hard scrapple existence.

Past wispy vestiges of wretchedness
and now present woebegone existence
seems a worse fate than death.

The overpowering urge to survive
and summon up one barely audible
l’chaim utterance against the depredations
of the grim reaper only found
nothing but defeat.

That daily dismal
grinding away of last shreds
of a purpose driven life fending off real
and imagined threats sought salvation
in a vividly encased jammed
preserve of mine imagination
an existence awash with ample
trappings of comfort.

Yours truly dug deep with bony strength
in tandem with fantasy notions know
king around in figurative heady
toboggan noggin like cranial carapace
to muster every ounce of strength
in an effort to escape chronic confrontation
with endless streak of bleakness.

Although cursed with brutish,
nasty, and short nefarious fate
as a measly looking human
varmint, this grimy,
grungy, mangy, rangy, et cetera
looking besotted being
clung with all the might

within his five foot ten inch
or so tall and one hundred
and sixty five pound body
to transcend sigh grimly
twerking terrestrial travesty
that tweeted n tweaked laugh-in
fickle finger of fate in my favor.

I tapped into atavistic survival skills
summoned willpower to stay alive
drinking butter bear while heavy cross
of dirty poor poverty borne.

No matter a hard-core skeptic at heart,
this cynic plaintively called
for divine intervention
to help one nondescript human piece
of flotsam and jetsam
to cope - living like
doleful junkyard dog.

In essence, this abandoned, ignored
and shunned vagrant frequently
raged against the Deus ex machine
found figurative amidst
literal lovely bones
slim pick hens with demons
that tormented psyche.

While traipsing along litter strewn
condemned boulevard of broken dreams,
torn and well-worn shoe kicked
a couple of long discarded items.

These weather beaten hands
reflexively bent to retrieve accouterments.

One comprised colorful jagged shard,
in a previous lifetime
housed cheap fermented liquor.

Nothing but crud
filled remnant of dog gone
booze hounds’ favorite drink.