the Jesus factor
comes to mind: what would that guy
do with debts 20 years
moldy, second mortgages
long forgotten, a loan
sometimes to save a family
now creeping up like a ferryman
in arrears, foreclosures like tsunamis
Zombies in the night
that giant sucking sound
of evictions
the beaches here are spotted
with tents . . . guys cooking
Campbell’s, listening
to Guns ‘n Roses, not
a Hooverville, shared
pots of stew, but loners
with smart phones, toothless
smiles
rotgut then, Depression era blindness
rum now called Kraken,
for slavers and their stories
of giant squids taking down
dark as hell rum in barrels
floating in Caribbean waters
natives got free booze destined
for England
now there’s twenty-ounce
IPAs, cough syrup mixes
no ginger Jake to splay
hands and feet into paralysis
we use vapes today, THC
CBD mixed with meth
some I see in parking lots
tipping close to sixty
women who work the linens
$140 a night hotels, $500
a day B & B’s, bedding down
in old sagging
Ford explorers, one woman
with arthritic heavy golden
lab said good night
as she sardine-stuffed herself
into 1998 Honda Accord
smell the roses, rotting
politicians, all you creatives
counting millions, stashing
fancy cuts of Kobe in third
commercial freezers, your palaces
rigged with solar panels, churning
turbines replacing peacocks
then my mother’s country
I see “peaceful assisted death”
plied more and more, people
in poverty, reality of loneliness
chronic isolation look forward to
pentobarbital approved by the state
Justin Trudeau jet-setting
photo-op frat boy
as his citizens – brethren not —
can’t get shelter, bodies battered
death by assistance, covered in
warm blanket on gurney, hypodermic
loaded with barbitals last act of
kindness . . . eugenics Canadian
style, on the cheap
social services, one clean shot
better than a house and a clinic
these guys in Oregon
have it like kings compared
to the Canadians, even get
free bicycles, and at least
they live like boy scouts
scurrying to find tarps
for another king tide
+–+
• Some data in regarding this: “Euthanasia Used in Canada to Get Rid of Poorest People.”
Paul Haeder, Author 