Walking along the ready concrete shores of this subterranean ocean of flowing rotting howling automotive power and history. Watching the Rivera’s, Cutlasses, Monte Carlos, Gremlins and Hondas rattle across the pock-marked pot-holed old brick Chicago streets. CLUNK BAM SLAM, pieces fall off and echo like snare drums.
Garbage flies around my head in filthy albino batwing newsprint. The sudden onslaught of black night during the brightest daylight.
Hit those horns monster boy. Hit those brakes mom and dad, as the kids are yelling, then it all goes black suddenly, like the end of an era. The old mummy in a brand new Lincoln slams on the brakes as she dips into a patch of rotten street, missing bricks. The horns become a symphony of the startled, a fugue of the default stunt driver.
The two lanes turn into one and a half, but they manage to squeeze through the smallest spaces like greasy cobras slipping through a sewer-pipe, materializing to your left or right, as big and solid as a cocaine bull and you with two inches of space on either side. A wimperous yelp cutting your throat. Sweat pop-rivets your greasy forehead. Jackhammer heartbeat.
The walkway passes malignantly under my twelve year-old feet. Overhead sarcophagus running-lights. A rat racetrack urinal, blank canvas for the full-bladdered monosyllabic street-artists.
Spinning head over my shoulder to check for real-life boy monsters in trench coats, grimy-faced, hard-dicked, wild-eyed…
Was the bully going to follow me home today? Both hands in my coat pockets, firmly grasping the manna and mother’s-milk of mace and brass knuckles. The subzero wind howling fat-lady opera. But it is over.
The light breaks at the end of the tunnel, both birthing a new world and playing sunshine taps to the old.
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