negative amount of money in his bank account. Exhausted, for he had woken up too many mornings to really gather a good few hours of sleep, he closed his eye and leaned back against the partially white, roughtextured wall against his bed thinking to himself how easy it would be to just have been a traveling religious fanatic. Shoving papers in people’ s hands, praising Allah or a cross dressing Jesus Christ that allowed the earth to be formed in the matter of a few stroking minutes. Tossing books of ticky-tacky scripture filled with dribble-drabble psalms of Holy Tuesday. Maybe a bomb would be dropped in his name; the others have theirs as well as a spare few parts from their crew team members. They could be poor, no one would say a thing. The Universe was funny that way.
Izzy closed his eyes, listened to the smooth, smooth jazz of the television, the clanking of his phone against the pile of change that lay around on an island of books, paper and other sloppy pilings of forgotten stuff. There was never a moment in his life where the loudness had reached the sanctity of the early morning, but it was a realization that came all too soon. Being broke was never really a way of life, it’ s an anthem that stays with everyone. The unfortunate scar upon the backs, and though most are broken, Izzy hadn’ t reached the empty spots yet. He was full of them, full of bad decisions and empty shells; full of irritable dreams that he still wanted to reach. It was only getting harder to keep them in the darkness. Some nights end up like this morning, sleepless, thinking, solving the problem of achievement against the cold air.
The machine was against him, blocking his view from the visions he’ d hoped to achieve. That’ s what they would all say as they injected bug poison into their veins to cop a fix, compensating because they’ re too broke to get the real, pure white powder. They, the underground hipsters plucking fingernails from the cracks of walls because their friends got caught between the cement stages of the new era that begins each year at midnight when the fires burst through the dark— the ones that forgot to celebrate accordingly. They, hanging out in needle-infested back alleys because the rent was due a month ago, but the addiction burns like a caught cigarette in the backs of their throats. Priorities must be straight in order to make the decision easy for them. They are not the enlightened ones; neither are them, the ones who’ ve sold everything aside from their mother into slavery, coming close several times, to keep their lives in order, straightened out and parallel with the addiction that severs most from the physical world— the world that requires a paycheck. Manna will
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