Thursday, July 8 - 1999
Tom Miller's
POEM OF THE WEEK
fuzzy
he was the nappy headed crack street person who used to hang around the
nappy headed little black girl missing all her teeth.
they had something like true love, even though he beat her like a rug on the
line, and occasionally, she beat him. with all their drugs and lack of
education and streetside manner, they had something i wouldn't hesitate to
call true love between them. you'd have to know them like i did in order to
understand this. and me, always giving up a dollar or two so fuzzy and his
girl could score a beer or a burger or maybe just a high; discussing
politics with him... "it's all fucked up, tom. da shit be all fucked up!";
discussing life on the streets... "it's all fucked up, tom. da shit be all
fucked up!"; discussing philosophy... "it's all fucked up, tom. da shit be
all fucked up!"; and yet, there was some tiny speck of humanity in him, and
there is also in her... especially now, in her sad brown haunted eyes.
it seems, according to rumor, that he was going to hit her during an
arguement, and instead, decided to hit a window. as his mad fist broke
through the glass, his wrist was severed open and he bled to death, too dumb
or too fucked up to be able to call for help.
same for her. i heard she just watched. probably talked for hours at his
corpse, not even realising there was nothing left. "get up you damn fool,"
maybe she said to the thing in the dirt. "why you not gettin' up?"
"he lay there, dead in his own damn blood," she told me tonight at the
common grounds coffee house. "he done try to beat me and the stupid
motherfucker lay there in he own blood. why he do that? why he do that, tom?
why he do that?"
she didn't spend a tear. too many gone the way of nowhere, i guess.
"it's okay," i offered, trying to comfort her. i put my arm around her. she,
so different from me; so black; so fucked in america; so wrong. "but he's
free now," i said. "no more jails. no more sadness. no more pain."
"he not free," she said. "he dead."
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