Saturday, November 09, 2013
The Wasted Life
Help Within the Bunch
Hoke wasted his life. No one could convince him
otherwise.
We brought up Lucy. How they met, etc. The early
stages, not the later storms.
His foot slipped on his pedal one Sunday morning,
and shin badly scraped, bleeding. She had jogged past,
but then returned. Walked the bike home for him.
Then insisting on searching the messy studio for
bandaging and disinfectant, but finally had to ask
the neighbors.
"Your reputation is ruined," he told her after
she got stuff from the master gossip.
"I'm used to that. Never being a chapter and verse gal."
It helped to invoke her now, since she had died of
breast cancer, and we could get Moke into the
walk against it that weekend.
But he resumed being totally down afterwards, sobbing
about his Lost Angel.
Rip finally suggested he move to a nicer place.
The rest of the bunch concurred, but Lefty, as always,
injected politics.
"Wanted: shitty apartment near shitty job.
Try landofree.com. They got all the answers, especially
the one keeping billionaires’ whores in butter creams".
The shitty job part was right. His third time
working for Old Andrews, who'd give you the
sleeves out of his vest.
Lefty, the activist who stayed active, brought
Moke to the soup kitchen at the Presbyterians.
Though mechanical with the mashed potato scoop,
and completely wooden-faced, he seemed to
enjoy himself.
Rest of us tried various other things. Though
Bernice couldn’t rope him into her weekly group
of major depressives.
Anyway, all to no avail.
Got more and more, as time slogged on, to look like
Moke had trapped himself into the final, fatal funk.
Well...you eventually pull out of one of these yourself,
or you don't.
He did. Took a whole morning to de-stink with bath, etc.
Put on his best suit, combed his snaggy hair.
You don’t really have to be clean to murder the totally
purple funk, but it helps.
Labels: depression, friends, funk, wasted life
