the desperate
people can smell desperation.
being social animals,
they pass the desperate by
sniffing in fear
instinctively knowing
this one has been cut off for some reason
a rotting limb
a toxic trash.
the desperate can be found
in the heart of the city
the pulsing downtown.
wherever people collect
so the desperate are drawn
driven to suck what they crave.
what society will not give freely
they parasitize.
in the center of things,
yet humanity flows around them,
unwilling to touch.
in the center of things,
forever on the fringe.
excluded
for fear of exclusion.
because everyone knows
the stink of desperation
is catching.
Fresh Hell 
The power of your words to make me see, feel and immerse in that scene is amazing. I wish the scent of beneficence were as catching.
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I think it is, really. If something nice gets done for you, you want to pass it on
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This is amazing, Sarah! Love how vivid and real you’ve portrayed desperation 🙂
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Thank you, Tom! 🙂
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just yesterday i was telling a friend that i cannot go into my hometown because they can smell my strangeness. to quote adam & the ants, i am “desperate, but not serious.”
❤
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haha, anything is tolerable, as long as we don’t take it seriously
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Sarah, You know how I’m terrible with technology and I can write a comment, especially on my phone, and I think I’ve posted it and then it’s disappeared never to be seen from again? Yea, that happened. It was a good comment, too. I won’t try and recreate because it was about bullshit social constructs and humans trying to compete in a heirarchical system–in at least one other culture, it’s called a caste system, is it not? I believe the word progeny was in there as well. All to say, that people are often afraid, weary, suspicious, etc., of others not like them. Those on top of the dog pile do okay. Then there are those who aren’t asked to play, don’t want to play, can’t play. God and I have to have a long, hard talk whenever we get together one of these millenia. If he’s willing. Anyway, yes…desperation. Suffering, too. No one gets to the heart of the matter, paints that picture, quite like you can! Mona
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Wow, Mona. What an intelligent, scathing, insightful comment you deleted. I am appropriately impressed and agree wholeheartedly with the things you must have said!
Yeah, but life isn’t fair, is it? And sometimes we do cruel things for really silly reasons. Ah well. Be the change you want to see, I guess. I’ll start… next week. Maybe.
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