Futile Escape Out Clutches of Penury Rattle Tin Can Once

finds yours truly groveling along
February third 2022,
never linkedin - analogous to stray animal  
without being befriended, 
thus I don't belong
survival instincts taught yours truly
the necessity acting 
courageous and headstrong

even if necessary 
to stare down King Kong,
who actually shows me respect
such that every now and again 
we play a game of ping pong
and on a crisp night 
roast marshmallows kindle campfire 
and sing Kumbaya song.

This tramp (which stereotyped
caricature familiarly epitomized 
in countless Chaplinesque productions, 
Dickensian tales, 
oil paintings from 
artistic hands of great masters 
and others anonymous 
exquisite painters, et cetera) 
remembers practically nothing 
of me nine-month stay in utero
birth, childhood nor early adulthood.

My amorphous gauzy, 
hazy fractal memories 
solely comprise fractured, 
fragmented and splintered collection 
of miserable experiences, 
which characterize living 
a hellacious hand to mouth 
hard scrapple existence.

Past wispy vestiges of wretchedness 
and now present woebegone existence 
seems a worse fate than death.

The overpowering urge to survive 
and summon up one barely audible 
l’chaim utterance against the depredations 
of the grim reaper only found 
nothing but defeat.

That daily dismal 
grinding away of last shreds 
of a purpose driven life fending off real 
and imagined threats sought salvation 
in a vividly encased jammed 
preserve of mine imagination 
an existence awash with ample 
trappings of comfort.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2022

Poem

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