During lucid moments he wondered out loud to all his former buddies, many of whom would not come back, asking them what had it been all about seeing their so-called leaders folding their country into a hand basket before throwing it over the Grand Canyon?

He asked them how a person who stacked the deck once and would again could possibly be reelected when he had alienated eighty-five percent of illegible voters: People who truly believed in the American principles of equality and freedom, families of reservists and guardsmen who in actuality were being drafted, Green People, legal immigrants, fiscal conservatives, airlines going bankrupt in having to pay the increases of fuel, parents and grandparents of children left behind, seniors on fixed incomes, those paying for health care costs for millions that did not have any insurance from Hand Money Over corporations ... and yet the corporate owned media was saying their leader was going to win in a landslide. Hitler had only eleven or so percent and led the Germen people to near doom.

"Talk about stacking the deck!"

"Biagi, who were you talking to? Do you need more water?" she asked this husband she still loved deeply despite his running around on her trying to imitate his father's animalistic womanizing behavior because Biagi told him he could not come to live with him, his wife and their two children - never having forgotten his beatings trying to make him and his younger brother Tonto into good Americans.

He was melting away each day a little bit more. He recalled one of his many dates telling him original sin was mankind's bodily functions - not the eating of a stupid apple or fig. That made him wonder if this was why humanity killed each other off so easily?

"Just to memories. No sweetheart, I'll just go to sleep for awhile," he said wondering who the pretty in his bedrrom was; trying to get away from the gripping pain of the cancer spreading throughout his body. Then, he would dream of being a young man again in The East Bronx playing stick ball on Arthur Avenue; turning on johnny pumps for all the young children so they could go swimming toward the Atlantic Ocean that lay beyond The Sound. He closed his eyes forever.

END 7-29-11