I wrote the poem below in the waning hours of 2012. At the time, I was able to work, seeking work, but unable to find suitable work–the Economics 101 definition of Unemployed. Now I’m working full-time and have gallery space in the Village of Oak Creek to boot. I just finished my shift and have an hour and a half to put to some use before I open the doors at the Village Gallery. How this poem suits me now–better than when I wrote it!

if i’m going to be depressed, reaps, i’m taking you with me

i was walking down e. tonto in sedona, solo, but then the grim reaper showed up to walk beside me.

 just a social call, it said.
(you thought the reaper was a he or a she?)

 ok, i said, my voice connoting annoyance.

 yeah, it continued, because you’ve been dwelling on death again lately.

 well, reaps, i rejoined, you would dwell on death too if you had a heart that keeps spontaneously leaping around,
and if, further, you had a history of heart disease in your family,
and you’re in the health insurance donut hole, and the doctors will have little incentive to save you,
and your dad died at the san francisco age of forty-nine of

(fibrillative drumroll please)

massive myocardial infarction,
and you’re fifty-eight and more overweight than your dear old dad was at shuffle-off,
and if you had enough imagination to realize that even a billion-year lifetime
is a mere keratosis on the flesh of eternity,
and ownership of physical flesh is an increasingly losing proposition,
hardly an in fee simple arrangement,
and one unfine day the flesh will either be incinerated, or a feast for lower-order creatures, squatters all,
and…

and i was alone once more. the grim reaper didn’t want to hear any more.

good riddance, i italically thought to the cosmos.

 but i was mocked in italic echoish audio:

you wish.