Wrath of Grapes I

It's just after midnight on a Monday morning and I haven't been drinking. But maybe I should have been. You read the news? You seen the talking heads, the pundits, the oracles of doom? You been turnin' the stock pages or hangin' with Dow Jones at a Wall Street bar with his financial buddy CEOs holdin' court on their own greed and malfeasance, drinking a last whiskey sour before G-Men with warrants slap cuffs on 'em like they been bootlegging bathtub gin? We're goin' back, back into that Great Depression. And I don't mean the cascading emotion types with its deprived childhoods and onerous shrinks pumping your blood with serotonin boosters and talking sunshine rote about positive emotions and a gratitude for a happy attitude. No. I'm talking economic ruination. Countries falling like dominoes. Continents sucked into a sinkhole of unclimbable walls of dirty debt. Crooked politicians hiding in opulent castles with high tech lasers shooting down the rabble of hardscrabble babbling losers who with waining strength try to reclaim and resecure what's theirs with swinging bindle sticks and Woody Guthrie songs of revolt singing inside their heads. I'm talking about lonely dark streets with swarms of wavering humanity: the walkin' starvin', the waifs sleeping amidst piles of garbage, the young spawning like sockeye salmon in wet alleys, the babies born on shards of shiny glass. I'm talking about big shot financier's still in their Brooks Brothers pima cotton shirts ladling gruel at a soup kitchen cuz' that's all the job they can get when their CVs ain't worth the mega pixels they're printed on.

But I'll make it. I got a good pair of leather shoes and strong legs, and I'll walk and walk and if the opportunity is there I'll hop that train and ride that rail, because the last destination is hope. And if there ain't no hope, then I'll work in the government.