The sIDESwalks of MARCH

The nights are easier than the days, which start out with such steep expectations. Each and every morning, the sun comes up and the light hits like a wall impenetrable.

Are you suicidal?

Tyler: Only in the mornings.

I never got that till now but today I found myself in the bathtub just thinking about holding myself under. Looking at the man in the mirror holding a razor and thinking the kind of thought a man doesn’t need to act on more than once for it to take permanent effect.

This morning I contemplated taking those few regrettable steps that all men eventually go towards. To the kitchen, of course, to forage in the fridge. I didn’t. Ain’t shit to eat in this house and I’m starving and I had a better plan anyway.

Black kids stepping up but going nowhere on an abandoned Stairmaster. A box of teardrop dew dotted VHS tapes left out on the street corner.

I’ve gone out for a walk.

It’s easier for me to stay in the basement these days, and that’s not entirely a metaphor. The newspaper read by noon, I feel like all the world has gone into a minor key. My clothes lying all around the floor like the empty dead, snake husks, everything collapsing in on itself. Time to go out for a walk.

Synapses starting to misfire like skipping CDs. Broken records strewn along the penny pavement. The truest judge of a civilization is the condition of her sidewalks. I’m going to get lost tonight.

"masked faces

and sleek heads the outward souls of many

acting as one."

-John Allman

I can fit in anywhere. We’re all trying to. I can. The Masked Man. Even those who stand out are still just slight pigments in the broader spectrum. Pigments of my imagination. I am Brutus and Caesar. I am the bum and the man in the suit. The fireman and the smoking hot.

"Hello, how are you doin? Nice mask yer wearing," and I turn. Roses for sale. Strange sort of release a man gets just a few blocks outside of his norm. The nothingness of not working, not eating, not sleeping life. It’s impressive what nothing can do to a man.

Men driving trucks

men in all night diners

men loosening ties at the end of the week

men ordering another beer

A met a man with a pack and a rolled up sleep bundle trying to catch a train up to Oregon.

"My freight made a wrong turn," he told me, dry hands holding out his sign to drunk kids smoking out of bars. TOO UGLY FOR PROSTITUTION it said. "If I can get six more bucks I can make it up to Oregon by tomorrow." Everybody’s trying to get out of this city. Take a few more steps away from The Projects. Fancy cars cruising. Tourists standing outside hotels talking loud sports and stories. Further. Streetlights are a marvelous invention. The nights are easier than the days. I just walk and walk.

Shuffling steps and thousand yard stares. Mendicant Filthniks and a vagrant who I gave three coins to so she can catch a bus down to San Mateo.

"Sparenchange mang?"

"Which way headed?" I ask, "North or South?"

"South," she says, pointing, "if I’n g’jus a dollar more I’m goodta go ta San Mateo."

Women who never got over "everywhere you go there you are"

women who find ’Deal or No Deal’ the most apt metaphor for life yet.

women who see colors but not much else in the way of shape or substance.

women who dig men if only because society has informed them that gauging reactions from the mirror alone is unacceptable.

We the vagrant masses in an unsatisfying lover’s parade. Waddle while you reek. Determined meat fists and angry lost refugees of the day drifting past crane necks and drug addled miscommunications. There are no days, at night. There are no jobs. No sit-down meals. No impenetrables. We clutch the darkness and roll with it and no one sees our lives catapulting after sunset while the world sleeps devoted to its hungers and thirsts and discount warehouse possessions.

The nights are easier than the days. Voices ring out in the shadows and the moon comes out from behind its cloudy bed to take a look, and then its gone. I feel good. Have a few drinks and siphon away my self control into the inevitable black vacuum. There it is, crawling drunkenly across the floor. Self-sabotage, carving away at the roughest of the remaining edges and shattered expectations until all that’s left is a hope.

A pretty girl just around the corner.

A smile.

A gentle brush of dawn.

A sunrise that’ll probably just lead to regret.

In a few hours.

Let’s just let it be night for a while.

It’s easier this way.

Come out. Let’s go for a walk.

Step away and disappear and let it all become another memory.

Because at least this is something we can do.