Posted by Atticus on July 21, 2004, at 18:41:28
Crocs, 1987
Reptile-headed hipsters
Clenched unfiltered Camels
In smug and cruel
Crocodile smiles.
Smoke crawled along scaly snouts
Under the pitiless white glare
Of sodium-arc street lamps
Arrayed along a curb
Littered with discarded
Hypodermics and condoms.I exhaled smoke
Into the damp night air,
Slouched against a wall of bricks
Stacked and mortared
Like the discolored, discarded teeth of giants,
Before crushing the spent cartridge
Of nicotine
Under a steel-toed motorcycle boot.
Acid-Addled Walter still kneeled unsteadily
Amid the puddles
On the alley's asphalt stage,
The vomit on his shirt
And jeans already dried and caked.
I lit another Marlboro to mask the stink
Of decay that seemed to emerge
With every labored breath he took.Random beads of jewel-like water
Clung to my black leather Buffalo jacket,
Tiny rainbow-hued prisms
That seemed out of place
Amid the scuffed sleeves
And unraveling seams.
A faint spray of ash
Tumbled from the glowing ember
At the end of my cigarette,
Dusting my Dead Kennedys t-shirt
With a fine coat of tainted snow.
Tendrils of smoke explored
The spaces among the eruption
Of spiked brown hair atop my head.
The music from the club
Throbbed lazily in my ears
As it made its escape
Through the fire exit.In the distance
A shriveled figure approached,
Appearing and vanishing,
Vanishing and appearing,
As she moved along the sidewalk
From one pool of light to the next.
Her five-foot frame
Inched slowly past
The glowing predator eyes
Of the herd down the street
With the palsied, leaden tread
Of doomed prey.
The flickering orange of their cigs
Moved to follow her progress
Like a swarm
Of choreographed fireflies.She glanced up into my face,
Her skin gray and stretched
Too tightly over her
Tiny skull,
Her arms bruised, purple,
Punctuated with the Morse code markings
Of too many needles.
I met her gaze
With the practiced jaded indifference
So prized by teenagers.
No more than 15, I mused,
She's no more than 15.A clatter from the alley
As Acid-Addled Walter
Tottered to his feet,
Toppling the lid of a garbage can
Onto the ground
During his uncertain ascent
Back into consciousness.
She jumped, startled, hollow eyes wide,
Pleading.
I held out my box of Marlboro reds,
Striking a match as she drew
The cigarette to her lips
With quivering hands, old woman's hands.She took a drag,
Then continued her tenuous pilgrimage
Past me and into the night.
What did we each see? I wondered.
Her past? My future?
I nodded to Acid-Addled Walter
That it was time to go
And we slid away
From the other crocs
On the concrete riverbank,
Saying nothing, thinking everything.
-- Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:368742
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040320/msgs/368742.html