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Wake up. 5am. Tired. I stumbled over to the bathroom to expel the liquid sins of the previous night, and came to the conclusion that being sober is grossly overrated. My mouth was dry as a bone, my head hurt, I was nauseous, grumpy, and very hungry; but for those 6 or so hours last night, the voices in my head stopped. I had spent most of the day napping and eating, but only when I drank did I really get some rest. I walked over to the window and peered outside as the nighthawks made their way about town, dancing and yelling on the streets without a care in the world. Maybe in another life I could’ve been one of them, could’ve done the same things, felt the same way, maybe even have known them. My eyes drifted across the desolate scenery of the concrete abutments when I happened to see homeless man holding a banana yelling at anything that stepped into his peripheral vision. I could see his mouth moving and faintly heard some words seep through the windows, so I let some air in along with what seemed like a lost rhyme in one of the beat generation’s forgotten writers’ overlooked novels…
“…along the city streets roam rampant and repugnant bodies of the earth, beautiful and ugly, confused and wise, yet their true colours do not shine. Televangelists pray on our misguided souls in hopes that we one day buy into their monastery of lies, but they don’t know the truth either. They kill the learned and knowledgeable to further their own cause, and no one is exempt. They do not recognize the pure sublimity of aesthetic experience and wish pain and suffering upon our brothers and sisters…” he trailed off, but I got the point. I threw on some clothes and ran down to catch him before he passed out behind a dumpster.
“Hey brother, what’s goin’ on?” I yelled at him as I crossed the street, trying to open an imported beer with my hands.
“…through the eyes of the young lay the true forgotten spirit of the…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I just came to talk man… you want this beer?” I handed him the bottle and he graciously accepted. I looked down at his overturned hat on the sidewalk, which contained nothing but a single dime in it.
“…and that’s what you get for tellin’ the truth… damn people these days, they walk around out here, but none of them are really awake, and they don’t even know it…”
“Yeah tell me about it… I heard what you said before though, up in my apartment up there…” as I motioned up to my second story shithole.
more to come soon as always
appreciate the reads and comments
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