Strife

    I pride myself on being a proud man, but of that, I am no longer sure. I act as though I have no shame with both my hands wide open in constant beseeching as I parade through the path of mortification and am stripped and beaten and chained and chopped by the beast of humiliation termed poverty.

   It's more than a term... I-I-It's a sickness, a terminal one, a disgraceful one. Its strokes are heavy and fast and cut the deepest past the skin, the mind, the heart, and the will. I have endured its strokes, but that's all I have done, endured. I have not found or created an antidote to ward off my persecutor. I have only made tiny elixirs that dial down the pain for a few several hours. But its strength has weakened and the flu grows stronger as the strength of the elixir's effect has climbed down the stairs, from several hours to a few, to minutes and to pointless seconds.

    I want to take a walk, one so long that I forget my name, my pain, my shame, one that I might never return from. But I know I do not exist for myself alone, and that my trek of no return would strike an implant of combustive exhaustion in the hearts of my hearts. I have been fighting this sickness, and clearly, I am not winning, I have redrawn strategy so many times and they rarely show any effects.

     This is a war I've been fighting for so long, an enemy I have combated for an age. One I have done battle against till battle became my epithet. I want to crush my oppressor so that he couldn't even raise his head again if he thinks to dare. I want to annihilate every trace of its existence until memory forgets that there was such a time. I want to be a baller.