POETRY & ARTWORK

germs is peoples

well its nearly 10 am on a thursday and i’ve done nothing this week but work too much, sleep too little and eat strange things in strange bouts of frustration and fatigue. i’m writing this on a computer at CNM and my stomach hurts. i got here to the the free volunteer tax help place at 8.30 am… it was already packed with 43 people in line ahead of me and they hadn’t even opened yet. by 9, one of the head hanchos announced that it would be hours before they could get to anyone who wasn’t on the first sign in sheet and to go have breakfast, take a nap, make sure you have the documents needed and come back later. if i go home i won’t want to come back. i waited in the horrible little brown room for maybe 45 minutes to an hour before deciding that, for my physical as well as mental health, i had to leave. the dinginess was characterized well with the horrible stench of people - unhygentic bodies that embodied misfortune, illness and lack of monetary security. babies crying, mothers coughing, men yelling, slurring, laughing. it was like being in the terrible mucus filled lungs of america and we all made up one collective lunge. a huge whooping comsuptive hack running with the truest diligence for handouts and breaks. we deserve it, the working class. but not this way… back to the grind and slow steady ache of waiting waiting… take a number, sign the sheet and have a seat… waiting waiting.