The Sun and Man’s Labor force
When people are no
longer just possible metaphors,
countable hours of
work to be capitalized on, punched on a card or recorded on a badge at the end
of a day.
When God really
stays up all night like my mom when I had my first teenage parties intoxicated
only by the indelible instincts of Youth.
Yes when Be’elzebub
shits his pants and really becomes the Lord of the Flies
when bugs pest
around his face tortured by the infinite hole of doubt,
when I stare again at the infinite hole of
the girl I love and dive into her…whole again;
then I’ll have
something inspired to write.
But for now it just
seems logical that a young man waiting for the bus
can’t beat the end
of a cold afternoon, staring at the curb of the sidewalk
with glazed sad
eyes and his patient limbs anchored in the cold,
his back against
the stone that ain’t really stone but building blocks of Man,
it just seems
logical that construction workers in the old mall’s dust eat with hunger out of
non-recyclable plastic bags, their feet firmly fixed on the damp ground where
their steel-toed shoes broke the thin ice.
They talk loud over
the noises of engines and excavators.
Logical that
when I choose to lay down words in a quiet place my ears won’t stop buzzing
from tinnitus and some 14 years of punk rock and other rocks,
logical that
destitute men and women wait for the bus, that an old unshaven man
holding a plastic
bag that he’s had for 10 years –says the logo– also holds craziness and
sickness in both of his eyes. I let him stare, why should I mind? It’s
attention given, free, reckless and unchained and he gives it unlike
all the young
chicks I try to get with, he breaks some sort of silence here, makes some sort
of pact here, for me to share his misery. For me to share
at
least
something.
A gorgeous black
chick and her friend giggle and make me forget the stare of the old man,
logical that nerdy teenagers waddle like birds, that their heads oscillate at every step taken in immaculate tennis shoes,
logical that nerdy teenagers waddle like birds, that their heads oscillate at every step taken in immaculate tennis shoes,
that young girls
get rowdy waiting for the bus that also goes to the projects,
that a dude who
joined us here in Duct-taped shoes sits on the plastic bench, spits on the
black ground, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, combs his greasy red
hair with short beat-up fingers, bitten nails, scratches his tired neck, looks
in my direction but not at me.
A longhaired
scruffy man pisses behind the bus stop, bent back like he’s gonna fall. He
defies me with his chin.
A couple of young
alcoholics walk by. At first, I thought the women had a limp leg but when they
come back with more beer from the corner store, I notice they’re drunk as hell
and also their smell.
It’s logical that she has scars on
her face, a big one on her eyebrow; she’s probably fallen in the stairs…
The young dude’s
still riveted here, still waiting with quiet innocent eyes still cemented to
the curb.
He looks at
nothing
at the thawed frost with thawed irises.
He looks
worried and alert in the buzz of the city streets, like a swan’s spine, now
slightly bent
He looks
perfect
but I don’t think I
ever believed so strongly in Man’s destruction of Man’s World.
I see Manuel, he
greets me, tells me the bus drivers are on strike today so we decide to walk
together leaving the young dude standing there, waiting some more for the buses
but the buses won’t come.
We talk about painting, dark-haired
girls, he tells that he likes how I radiate passion when I try to explain
something. I change the subject and compliment him on some of his silk
screening but he continues :
“How can you maintain this confident
walk even in this cold?”
“That’s only cause I got
hemorrhoids…”
