Author: Rolando Rosario

The crowd roared for answers.The people, the people finally stood up for something.They finally stopped being stepped on and spit at. This dictatorial of democracy was nothing more than a reign of corruption.They all knew that their politics, their state, city, and town representatives where all BS. Hungry rabid dogs who ate from the hands of bribery and shit the remains on the people.Tax hikes, pay cut’s, job losses, all plagued which was once such a profitable and happy community.
At one time the people of this land held their heads high. They looked upon one another as a friend working towards the same goal. But those days have long deceased and the back handing from the government, the congress, the city, and state has left the once humble streets a war zone.
Families blunder and kill, not for riches or from insanity. But for food and water. The average man now travels to one of the few jobs available no longer with a briefcase and coffee cup, but a prayer and firearm. I have witnessed the changes in our community first hand. A downwards spiral that suppresses us and continues to do so. A man is only limited by his vision, and ours is dimming. The whole world is becoming the dim dark place that I always perceived it was, it is just that now every one else can see it. I guess at one time a world like this will be of the norm. The babies of now will have babies of then that will be raised in unforgiving times.For the next generation that inherits the bull shit of this one.Please, let me be the first to apologize.

A man fallen from the edge of humanity. A speck in the food chain that’s too small to feed the smallest of mice or the petites of birds. A man left in mere nothingness, but surrounded by everything.

The mail man smiles and gives him a nod as he stuffs his box with more unplayable bills. The interest rates seem to eat at any payment he tries to make and the late charges are the venom that kills hope, kills progress. Sometimes he wonders how he got in this financial debt. How he found himself in this lake of bills and low credit scores. He thinks back on the purchases. The swipe of the card and that mental plan he made to pay it off. The self accountant, rounding up his expected pay stubs in his head and determining the pay off date.

The plan seemed solid until another swipe and another swipe made the plan a little more complicated but still manageable. The whisper of no interest for eighteen months brought in another fiasco. His home became false stated with all these lavish gifts.

He thinks deeper and catches the repetition. He has seen this before, practically all his life he lived in false wealth. An illusion his mother started as far as he could remember. He watched her, infatuated with her material things. Always living lavish ignoring the telephone as it rang off the hook with the bill collectors calls.

A home full of items she truly did not need. Four TV’s, three lap tops, enough gym equipment to open a Bally’s, DVD players, CD players, mp3 players, video game systems. Things she never used but always claimed she needed. The telephone continued to ring. Not becoming silenced until the nine o’clock dead line. He use to look at her, pay check to pay check, that was a life he was going to avoid, a life he looked down on. But many years later, as he sits on the porch of a house in foreclosure, watching as the repo men remove that 52″ inch TV. He takes a deep breath, and suddenly the phone rings.