Concrete hallways teeming with balding, placated men, in brown trenchcoats, adjusting their horn-rimmed glasses and humming sonatas. White-trash women nursing the broken heel of a burgundy pump; gravely voices, like the sweeping of a chimney, echoing from the bowels of the trailer park. Cross eyed virgin street corners � changing traffic lights create temple throbbing hangovers � holding hostage the peanut vendors. The cracking sienna skin of an Oldsmobile dashboard in the sun. An unshaven, homeless Casanova dreaming of deodorants, milkshakes, and women so beautiful you fall in love. Frozen beatnik poems, no stanzas, thawing on bongo heated stages. (drum break) Tuesday -- 1:30 am � chips and dip � local 7-11 � alone. Gray faced men riding the 6:30 Metro and muttering a solemn Rosary behind the lettered shield of the Post. Shoulder lane joggers in Crayola flavored silk shorts battening down the hatches of a cubicle. A lone flag standing motionless on the moon. Bare-chested black boys stamping scattered fragments of ancient dances in the coursing river of a fire hydrant. The bone gnawing sounds of America devouring its young. |
| half-life |