Grandma Bertha: Everybody's poop stinks

   
   "Grandma Bertha:  Everybody's poop stinks"
    
   Big Bertha.  Bert.  The Air Force.  Wide Track.  She went by many names; plus, Bag Lady, as her husband, my Pap used to playfully say.
   I used to drive cross country during the beginning of my 16th year.  A stormy adolescence.  The mental weirdness started however, way before adolescence.  At the spawn of my consciousness I was fully aware of pubic hairs on toilet seats, Sleep Paralysis, and Social Phobia.
   Anyway, they all said I didn't try.  Hell, I did more than try, was on the road before Kerouac dropped out of college.  Been on every part of 40--both West and East.  California to Virginia, by the time I was 18.  Saw plenty of bizarre stuff.  
   So, when I drove the approximate 1,000 miles from Little Rock to Richmond, anchoring down on Grandma Bertha's pseudo-suburbia, she'd hug me like no other, saying:  "Lift your head up Mark; everybody's SHIT stinks."  
   Now I know--she was right.  But people with money cloak their shit.  Or are given a freebie.  Hey, it's a fruitcake America, and no longer a free country.  You can even get arrested for writing poetry with no clear and present danger, no fighting words, even if it's ambiguous.  
   So, when the vivid imagery arrives to me, or hallucinations, or possibly mysticism, and I see Saint Raphael marching boldly, blonde hair blowing in the breeze--yup, hold your head up my man, for everybody's shit stinks.  And mostly, more than yours, unless you're them.