strawberry

go tell lacy at the lake that all is lost.  the 'l's roll like beads of sweat down my back.  i've lost my place in line somehow and am now behind a little boy who has never had a real strawberry.  i worry that i'll collapse before this place does.  what more can i do?  how is it that you must earn more than 50,000 a year to taste a strawberry?  surely there are places in the jungle where they live without HDTV, where one might be able to hustle up a strawberry?  Lacy doesn't mind that i've lost everything, everything including my mind.  it's an empty cell here, crumbling walls with starving rats that will scurry away with any food i might have had for thought.

it's not all that bad when you forget what a day was like.  i vaguely remember the sunshine perfectly meditating with the clouds.  but the sun is gone and the days are set, perfectly, calibrated to promote the longest life possible.  but all is lost and lacy knows it.  we don't wear sunscreen anymore because we all have cancer.  it's good to start at the same place i suppose, no one ahead of anyone else.  except inequality hasn't changed much.  the boy has never had a real strawberry.  it is a foreign concept.  it's not the light pink he thought it was, and not as sweet.  he doesn't want the true essence.  he wants the distilled essence.  but it's not his fault, lacy will tell you, it's not his fault that he was born into a world already starving itself.  starving ourselves of true essence.  go tell lacy at the lake that all is lost.  i'm withdrawing my last American dollars.  i will find a park somewhere, because that's all that's left, little green squares of lawn we call parks and i will set myself on fire.  i will hold the dollars in my teeth.  i pray to whoever is listening that someone will give him a strawberry.