Home > Work > The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse
1 " Hiding is existing in a constant state of alarm, remaining undiscovered, and inferior. "
― Philip Schultz , The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse
2 " Hide long enough from your fear, Mother said, and you too disappear. "
3 " These guys get mean waiting on furloughs, beat the machines up good, insurance replaces three batches a month, but destroying machines aint booze and pussy if you know what I mean. "
4 " For something to occur, something needed to be lived in, approached, repelled by, consumed. The present, to exist, must be remembered, despised, and feared. "
5 " Upstairs, it’s 18th century England, where farming out the poor meant lumping the blind, crippled, insane, epileptic, deaf and dumb in almshouses with criminals because The History of the Poor Laws was designed to discourage mendacity, wherein anyone giving alms to beggars was put in jail . . .” In other words, little has changed—many still believed there’s no distinction between tolerating the suffering of others and causing it. "
6 " An algorithm of infinite symmetry, life serving death by expanding its bounty, furthering its reach. Did the perpetrators appreciate their satire? Yes, it was practical, indignity as revenge, but for what? "
7 " Harrington never worked in a place like this, a system where ‘underbudgeting’ is designed to arbitrarily keep costs down while acting as a defense against public attack. The city and state thus appear magnanimous, politicians fair-minded regulators of the public good . . . until the closed cases lead to starvation, child abuse and suicides at rates so great they arouse the public’s conscience. Then it all starts again— bigger budgets, closer supervision, more MSW programs . . . while the poor are blamed because according to our Puritan tradition of self-reliance those too weak or stupid to contribute get pushed aside, deserve not to survive "
8 " Usually our frankfurter lunches in Union Square Park are a treat, but today Betty isn’t looking at me, saying, “I came out here thinking maybe being so far away would make me feel less inconsequential, but I was wrong. Evil doesn’t keep score.” Today the world is more treacherous, and no longer represented by actual or possible thought, which Ludwig said makes up the whole of reality. "
9 " Ask about these numbers and you hear other numbers. As usual, the fate of the poor hangs upon the decision of those concerned only with what those above them think. An endless cycle of egotism, self-sympathy. You see it everywhere here, those too weak and ashamed to defend themselves are blamed for their own misfortune. Separated and debased, they’re swept deeper under society’s carpet, thus the richest society in the history of the world lacks the will and conscience to end poverty while the poor become the victims of their own spiritual and physical misery . . .” In other words, according to Swigge, our job is to hide from the public’s view the suffering and helplessness of the constituents of our largest minority, and thereby further diminish them in their eyes and in ours. "
10 " . . . once on a German radio in the town square we heard Hitler’s voice, everyone German soldiers our neighbors smiling at the crazy screaming, a sound like fingernails on a blackboard trying to scrape God’s face from our minds . . . conquer our souls as well as our bodies and minds . . . Henryk looked so frightened—a wolf’s howls demanding we see the world the way it did . . . "
11 " Upstairs when someone for any reason is unable to state his particular reasons for existing, or stake a position, say, on the United States vs. Vietnam youthful enthusiasm vs. boredom scathing denunciation vs. racist exploitation the dollar-for-dollar precipitous decline of all sympathy and mercy . . . someone else gives up seeking the difference between things that could’ve been and weren’t and things that didn’t have to be but were. "
12 " None though as bowed, small-boned, as my own peasant legs, which in their backward sway and inward turn, shaped by years of adherence to hostile terrains, possess a history of staying put. "
13 " At times, in order to deaden the ungrammatical logic of a reality based on reimagining the past, both mine and Mother’s, I’ve considered suicide. Believing I’d survived enough already. Believing, Ludwig said, is not thinking. Sitting down one must give no thought to the possibility of a chair collapsing. "
14 " while, across the street, a dark-haired sweet-faced gum-chewing honey is swinging a perfected right ankle in a slow one-two-one-two-three beat, churning, you could say, enough voltage to light every remaining second Thursday "
15 " while, across the street, a dark-haired sweet-faced gum-chewing honey is swinging a perfected right ankle in a slow one-two-one-two-three beat, churning, you could say, enough voltage to light every remaining second Thursday morning in April 1968, "
