Descent

Asthma. Migraines. Skin diseases. Women who cannot p–p. Wrinkles. Rheumatoid arthritis. Weakened tooth enamel. Bad sleep. Limp dicks. Modern day grippe. Grouchy feet. Anxious minds. Fugue and depression. Pimples. Weak knees. Brittle hair. Fractured bones. Rage. Schizophrenia. Excessive fat. Flabby abs. Delusions. 

We are medically-dependent. Prescription-addicted. Mattress-rich. Exercise-obsessed. Chronically unwell.

We are passive patients. 

We are America, home of the six pack-happy, tobacco whores and carnivores. 

We fix our eyes on pixels and scream at talking heads while our neighbors do the same. Children play at target practice. With real guns. 

Adults eat up delusions like they’re the newest candy, the best drug on the street. Yes, America is sick. Body, mind and soul sick. 

If you listen to the pharmaceutical industry and their jingo lingo, happy talk ads, a pill is the answer. 

We cling to lifeboats with our broken nails. Call for our heroes to save us.

Joseph Campbell would say we have lost our way. Or that we are stuck in the first phase of The Journey: overcoming fear and moving forward. Or that we are accepting help from all the wrong people.

We know who they are. The syphilitic king of mendacity. Those hordes of boys and their brass knuckles. Our favorite president, legislator, attorney general, talk show host.  

The state of America is so dark that I can hardly see it some days. It’s beyond irony. It’s insane. No pill can cure the insanity engulfing us. 

Maslow can give us a measure of our ill health. We’ve been swept back to the bottom of his pyramid, obsessed with survival. Covid brought us here. Years of insanity in the White House and years of insanity after have pushed us down the ladder.

We’re in an upside down dystopia. Hope comes like a lightning flash and then vanishes. We listen in shock as truth and reality is casually denied. The craziness is all around us; it’s become the status quo. 

How do we climb our way back to sanity?