Times have changed, and people have changed. I see wee suckling babes that can't hardly hold their head up with a cell phone cradled glowing their arms. I see a plate of political midwest pasta steaming, where a man can not be taken seriously in town without a pink mohawk & an attitude. You can't feed the homeless without them trying to sock it to you for more, more, more- and the bells of the church towers scream that everything is OK! Don't worry- everything is AOK!
The computers scan my open source genome and quietly develop the land to stasis twelve thousand years at a time, any time. How long have I been bare in these harlequin's rags, the emperor's new wardrobe of the pre defeated stragglers- ermine and day-glo and antlers and foam crocs with semi-ironic shoe jewelry hatefully poking fun at the jaunty angles of their too-sincere ugliness. I want to weep, but instead I'm vomiting junk food. I am rotting to the jaw bone, marrow brown, the gray sets in, my glasses inch thicker, and I hate every word I've ever said save HALLELUJAH and I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU ALL!
I can't even imagine the shadowy puppets in my keepsake memory vault are even remotely like the living liquid crystals that used to bridge the networks of my own heart and the wild wind scarred worlds beyond between. I see gnarled trees, and for the first time in my life have had my eyes pried open just enough to see anything, anything but splintered clangorous roulette of hell. This is the cross of the starved survivor, these are the living cobwebs of some dull and throbbing mind slow motion magneto tempest mistaken for prayers twisting egg drop to heaven on electrical frankincense.
Where have all my old friends gone away? To suicide, heart failure, blood clots, turned into precious fuzzy kittens sleeping quietly purring under impenetrable glass, comfortable forever with precious little toes all safe and clean. What do they dream of where nobody knows? Do they dream of me at all? I'm not dreaming, fevered and slack jawed in the endless rain.