Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Personal Poem by Stan Apps

I'm happy today because I got up at 8:00 and said to myself, "I'm gonna get a damn job." And then I got one by 10:30. God bless America, a country where if you hustle hard you CAN get a chance to be exploited. So now I have the damn job, and I'll have to actually do it, and the details of that are not so appealing. But I don't want to think about what the job is; I want to think "I have job-getting power." Not like those other poor fuckers. In this recessionary environment, I won just by getting the same kind of lousy job I took for granted before. I like how the recession lowers the bar for what I consider "victory." It opens a vista in which I can achieve many remarkable accomplishments, just by getting those same old jobs. The recession redefines a stagnant career as a superb on-going avoidance of total economic defeat and unthinkable poverty. Thank you Wall Street, for making it dramatic again. I am a hustla, and I'm going to win, merely by continuing to make the same unimpressive amount of money. It's an adventure. . . until you actually go to work in the morning. But I've got to not focus on that. . . I want to enjoy the manipulation of my expectations, while I can.