The hens roosting between the roofs of my house share with myself and the impressionable younger brother of my best friend and former gang leader the view overlooking the prairie to the mountains whose peaks collapse to gentle slopes' eroded beds that twist and gnarl.
I recall to this audience the last time I was in Atlanta, to try and make sense of it all, maybe just for my own understanding, as for him it may already be too late to use anything of value from my telling, and these hens won't be around for long to share their side of the story, if we want to eat tonight that is...
To awaken on the wrong side of some racially historic interstate in day old dusty pajamas and white undershirt with a dried out brain of spent wine and dim memories of the night before... Beneath the hot sun I may as well just strip bare and walk to the nearest thrift store forsaking my bike in nearby storage to push this mickey mouse baby carriage along instead. Its necessity would not be reveled until later.
Making my way beneath the curtains and the beads of gypsy moth spotted assorted colors, fabrics, appliances and attitudes I pick up these fluttering shards of plastic clinging about my ankles and pull them up over my bare skin to cover at least enough though I doubt the old woman watching things would care.
Drifting further through the chambered, layered, dimensions of this grubby retailer I find clothes tight and fashionable better suited to my own purposes. Walking forth clad in plastic precious few pockets exist in which to store any currency. However I have conveniently hidden away some change inside my socks. It must have been mid day before I arose or else the nearby fusion reactor in the sky would not have had enough time to motivate me protect my bare soles from this sidewalk scotching heat.
Spare change of 50 cents or less nickled, dimed, etc., for my 35 cent bill... which is presented to me as a credit card receipt for $35.00, which I do sign, instinctively, as all unquestioned, undebated, unforeseen service charges of late. Some wise mechanic's recommendations...
Upon realizing my mistaken naiveté at the hands of this chained, pierced, tattooed vendor I stare at the receipt for what I knew not. The off green skin and impenetrable maze of fashionably cropped black hair stared back at me while I wondered if whatever x-ray vision the eyes on the other side of that barrier had evolved in order to see out were observing now as well.
Coming away from that argument, wheeling these many boxes of bulk and nasty clothing through the streets on my baby carriage, my corner eye's disconcertion pulls me from the two AM switchblade degrees of shifty to a whole new level of deepest fear. Not of passing social phenomenon, but unavoidable self destruction whose timing in no way could I control. No one quick dodge, or well placed blow, or effective argument from my own tried and tested repertoire is going to work out here. Nothing it seemed could gaurentee my or anyone's safety anymore.
The first of these women of endearing or not faces and proportions that I spotted in a pink pig suit complete with nose piece and hot pink shoes coming at me, not in panorama or stampede, but slowly and unendingly; a wall advancing breaking up to sack the aisles of torn consignments, my own as well perhaps...
Out on the street well on my way I abandoned all thought of retrieving my bicycle from storage, which given my load could not have been ridden while carrying all this anyway.
The stream continued but was no longer uniform, of any one color or design. A vested, collared, black tie hat and mustache predominately female contingent appeared next, followed by other, happy, laughing, mostly clad in old halloween costumes, or their own designs which copied the same with better, more durable, street tested fabrics and armour. Green lizards, firemen, white ghost facepaint long since marooned patiently behind some dumpster of passing goth hyperbole on tour through the late 90s...
The jovial nature of those surroundings qualified by concealed weaponry marched calm and uniform through the streets and laughing indeed. But in that touch of sea green beneath the clouds blowing in off the coast the water always turns to soup; the fish to toxic, tentacled, beasts; and the foul to shitting, diving, menace...
A shot may have rang. Or the weaker of one tribe, surrounded by his own- and beyond them- the indifference of others' say. Too late, all too late, in the eyes of his or her comrades having tasted the blood of their own for the first time. Overcome. These beasts are unable to stop themselves until each had drunk their fill, which afforded me the diversion needed to extract myself.
* * *
I think your better judgment might take away something of the positive from this recent confrontation. I hope and pray- with all the fearful, cynical, hope (against hope!) that was taught to me by those I have come to know who served on U-boats, were bombed and divided, spied for by the cold war, and finally scattered away at once too weary to defend anything anymore...
My guilt, years ago, in advocacy of such behavior, which you yourself, and your peers, seem to have imitated, innovated, and perverted since then...
When we founded the _______ punk rock street gang no one else was in a punk rock street gang. No one cared. People still believed that street gangs were violent, murderous, and bad. Our rehabilitation of the mentality was always inspired by a desire to appropriate the organizational form for something more positive, meaningful, and politically responsible. It was not dozens, but hundreds, of flags we burned that autumn of black, throat slitting, jingoism. It was the pillage of Native American lands, recounting the interventions abroad of this nation across two centuries of puppet republics' never ending appetite. We read Malcom X and Howard Zinn beside the train tracks in their summer shade of overpasses, breeze, and burritos. Or up all night @ the Innovox down beneath the Ford Factory lofts; where everything I hoped and thought was revealed, and was denied. By the farce, historical, determination of things...
I hear the reports today on the radio of what you're doing now. Cocaine, killing each other, automatic weapons modification, turf war in your clown suits- as regular and predictable as the full moon or a Friday night.
Scared young bodies, serrated, buried...
The organizational form, imitated, put in motion, without the application of conscious political leadership, eventually and inevitably disintegrated back into its basest, primordial, level. In less than six years of absence... Was it inevitable? Should I be blamed for the final result of naive, youthful, gang advocacy?
In the desert man has a way of hiding from things. It takes a lot for a cause or a reason to drag itself across everything and over here to make itself felt. We're looking at the sky on fire twice a day with the rise and setting of every sun.
I don't think the way you came here really has much chance of any better answer getting weaseled out of me.
Are you going back?
If you do, bring me news of the ones who were everything, but who today do not return my texting or myspace messages.
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