Disillusionment

As bad a boy as I can be

Their genes and desire

Attract the honeybees

And many I have lit their fire

Love but a purpose

On their tongue

But in full denial of their true thought

Of the lust that is sought

Life has taught me

If nothing else

That while love is sought

With lust it can be bought

At our essence only animals are we

We claim to be above the beasts

How naïve are we

Providing meat for natures feast

We hide our lust in a thing called love

To provide a rationalization

For the beast within us all

But at what I have written I am appalled

For it is not as I had hoped

But what life has taught

That through lust

Love can be bought

Of true love I know naught

I have given myself to no avail

All of myself to another’s wishes

But in the name of love

My heart has felt nails

So now

How to love and trust

It is only in my inner self

That I deeply believe  I must

What is my purpose upon this earth

To be beast for breeding stock

Or to feel that which I have so long sought

Love that lust has not bought

Pat Betz 2012

Pat, and his brother Michael, are two good friends. Hopefully Mr. Betz will be authoring more entries on this site in the near future!

The signs of disillusionment are everywhere!

In Any town USA, the signs are pretty clear these days; a shop that opens for a few months then closes down, Pay Day Loan operations that spring up and multiply, while the once busy streets that run through those towns begin to look more and more deserted.

Old Ross Perot would be saying that those ‘sucking sounds’ we are hearing of good paying jobs going somewhere else, aught to be haunting us right about now! More and more of our technical people are now heading or have headed overseas. Those who are left behind face a future of low paying, menial and mind numbing work. BA’s fresh out of college can be heard asking ‘will that be for here or to go?’ High School kids working at the end of a grocery checkout counter stuffing bags, not realizing that the job they thought of as transitory is really permanent. “Paper or, plastic… and can I help you to your car, Miss?”

What doesn’t show as easily to the casual observer, are those of us who have given up and just don’t care anymore. Middle aged, proud Americans who have recently lost a job they held for decades and who now face a much younger workforce who are competing for low paying jobs. A growing throng of disenfranchised, disillusioned workers that grow more desperate each day. The lucky ones, those who are close enough to social security benefits, limp towards their sixty-second year the way a man dying of thirst might crawl to an oasis. Other, less fortunate forty and fifty year old wage earners, become a study in desperation as they contemplate major lifestyle changes in order to make ends meet. Welcome, my friends to the new and not so improved, twisted version of the American Dream!