It’s that time of year

with a Labour Day birthday coming up

after 50, I stopped counting

the years but the times that I am an afterthought are quickly growing.

Back to school again, I am not in school again

and I am barely sleeping

so at least I am always learning or

feeling disenfranchised alone under the moonlight.

It’s important for me to have options

the list of pros and cons say drop out and go for something bigger

I haven’t crossed out the line I drew with a Sharpee for the Fall 2016,

there is a grassroots campaign

sweet grass in my mind,

to do my Doctorate in Bioethics.

That’s my superfecta!

I pull it together then I get unpulled apart like pork in my sandwich

there’s a part of me, still a part of me that tries to hold it together

because that hardest thing is to stop believing.

I’m looking for a job

or natural substitutes that give me the flavour of grassroots, change and revolution

and

I believe that a change is going to come

and things will get better.

Yet it moved towards a song instead of works that are spoken.

I care for my Mom

the stay at home career choice for the new millennium.

Underpaid, I think I’ll start taking Valium

vacuuming the floor and the curtains

and serving cocktail wieners.

People say they like me

they want me to do well

like everyone else

so they forget me.

I am falling so far behind the others

like quarters in the sofa cushions

and crudités in the compost.

I can hear their voice

they can see my voice

but like two tin cans tied with twine  I am senseless.

Unemployed, living with your Mom a disease HIV

which I survived through it all

and where people have tried to erase us

it feels like my victories never happened,

the point of being for me is no longer senseless.

I have what it counts

but didn’t make it to the census.

I belive in hope

I am losing hoping

I am the undeground part of the GDP

it’s up to you to decide

am I really any value in this economy?