I can feel my leg still,
cut off still,
bleeding still.

My leg looks like a cabin,
a dark shingle, logs rotting
from being loved.

Phantom cabin pounding
my frontal lobe, I hear the hammer
pounding still to build.

Foiled at every turn
some say this as cliche,
for me it is true.

Every love affair spoils,
each chance at wealth stolen,
any opportunity to get ahead blocked.

Flower petals fall when
the bee refuses it's kiss, or
light reserves its brilliance.

I can hear him laughing from his grave,
he found a way to take back the cabin.
He sent an emissary from Hell
to conspire,
a ***** Demon riding on the same fiery wind
the Hells Angels fly upon.

God called him home,
I can hear the violence in the house of the Lord.
He refused to go through the gates,
Instead, sailed into the flames,
swan diving into the raucous-
heat, sweat, blood, and laughter.

A throne awaited him.
While he sat in the high backed seat,
gorging on the sights of sensuous agony,
red devils dancing like gypsies upon his lap,
he laid his plan. He sent a dark messenger
to whisper in the ear of the demon soldier,
animating his eyes until he found me.

Out to plunder me. Devour me.
Trap me. Convince me. Surround me.
Bait me. Test me. Sample me.

How many of them were there? How long
had they been watching me?
Sniffing me, digging around,
until they heard the words "the cabin".  

The ***** Demon had the job of waiting.
Of seducing, tempting, arousing, convincing.
And steadily, with solid consistency, with daily reliability,
like the morning train into work,
like a husband who comes home every night,
he sent lyrical promises,
called me "baby",
kept me swooning with his stillborn smile.

Even when I knew he was a lie,
like a fiend scratching the street
for a dollar to buy a hit,
a gambler who can not quit,
I kept asking the sky, "what if he is real?"

But he wasn't, he was sent,
by the other who would not rest,
until he wrestled from my grip,
the cabin.

The land was worth half a million,
with the large log cabin and
the tiny one on the edge of the hill.
He found the property for $10,000 just,
and logged it gaining $11,000 back.

I was worth the potential of half a million,
I had value at last. I had trees, and a home to build
and design, with family history and stories written
along the roadway.

I could have walked that road, carrying my granddaughter
telling the tales of our men,
how they came, saw, conquered for themselves,
and how their women held onto their gold as though they
would have to be killed first before they let someone take it.

Another day, stewing in the lies you told.
My head aches,
Will I ever feel right again?
Why would men and women do this to people?
One pocket is not emptier than the other.

Every moment I feel the gaping hole that is the home I once owned.

The earth under its foundation, the moisture of the air surrounding it's log walls, the history of tiny feet padding over soft mud.

My heart dies when I understand I can never re-earn that wealth.
That I am too old to recover from this loss.

And I know, whatever gain you found from the dollars collected from this cabin can not be equal to its true value on the earth.

I already feel dead,
not because of the virus,
rather because of my grey hair
I refuse to color over to
hide the white of my nature.

I am poor, I wasn't poor
until I was lied to and stolen
from. Now I am pitifully poor.

I need to rebuild, but I am old,
I am weaker, I limp, I sag, I
have no youthful beauty, I have
nothing to attract anyone to care about me.

I am terrible at the job I
choose to attempt as a second career. I
might lose my job and become penniless
and homeless.

There is no one who wants to help me.
You can read the progress of my life here...
I was not always this sad, there have been happy
moments in my life,
when I was young.