The sun is dim. Another gray morning. Newspaper pages blow around the street. Wrap around lamp posts or blow out to the boardwalk where they skip up into the air for the seagulls to decipher w/beady eyes. Scary Mary’s out early today. Same old high hair. Same old short skirt. Needs cigaret money probably. Her legs are still good. But drunk again when she put on her lipstick this morning.
My feet are heavy. Great blocks of iron I can barely lift. The closer I get to my destination the heavier they get. Each step becomes a struggle to pick one foot up & put the other down. Sweating. Exhausted. Cars fly by my ears w/out their color or make registering to me. Just feel the wind of them, warm, & the stink of the exhaust. Concentrate. Clamp down my eyes. One foot, the other, on and on, keep going, repetition leads to result. & finally get there.
Narrow alley between the liquor store & pawn shop off Kingsley Avenue. Hank’s laid out on the sidewalk, blood coming out of his ear, eyes open like a mannequin. Hok’s crying against a brick wall, police issue pistol still warm in his hand, going over & over, I am NOT my father. I am NOT my father. Drooling. Twitching, twitching. Snarl crawling once across his lips & then down the street like a scorpion. & here comes Dool just turned thirty sliding up the street from the other way. That old horn, the murder weapon, cradled in his arms like a baby. The big eyes in his head closed. & blowin real cool & sad & throwin one foot out in front of the other. & it’s always one dead body for another. A body’s a body. It’s not always who you think it’ll be or should be. So long as the scale balances out at the end of the day. Tony or Hank or George or Dool , never matters what face they scotch-tape to it, sooner or later they all blow away when the wind kicks up.
