Looters and Thieves

I am past the mad now, and only the hurt is left.  I came in from watching the lightning tearing up the distant hillsides, but I can still feel the echoes of it ricocheting around inside me looking for a way out like everything else I'm trying to keep locked down.  What's the point of screaming?  What's the point of slamming a fist into a wall? It won't fix the root of the problem.  It won't get back what they took from me.

And so, despite everything else, the looters win, I guess.  I have fought so hard.  I foolishly thought I fought well, too.  I tried to fight nobly, tried to be optimistic.  I held my head up with pride, and I thought they couldn't get to me.  You know what they say.  There's no fool like a damn fool, and my God, I never wore the motley so well, so perfectly, as I am just now.  

I can't win when the deck is stacked.  I can't play when there are no rules, or at least no rules that I understand, rules that change constantly.  It doesn't matter how good I am, how much of my bleeding soul I carve out and give.  It seems, in fact, that this is the very thing that is the wrong thing to give.  It's a terrible thing when your best is worthless, when you are.