740. A FEW THUGS BEATING ON A GIMP

A FEW THUGS
BEATING ON A GIMP

(509 e11th st.)
I don't always have the time for great panes of glass;
the city-streets soldered with glamor and taste. It's
all I can do to stay slow, walk without haste, understand
what's before me, and stay - in my way - in place.
-
The doodle-meister paintman, running between garages,
I've seen him before - with his murderously sullen girlfriend
laughing about something while she put on her high
black boots. They were sitting at a bench in front of
some old parking lot. Behind it, a row of tenements
showed their nasty backsides. Sneakers on a clothesline,
thrown over it, as if for spite. Someone once told me
that was a signal meaning drugs are traded there, dealt,
sold, whatever. 'The Trade', in street lingo.
-
Things like that are beyond me. Graffiti, spray paint,
dealing drugs in tenement yards, under clothes of grime
and basements of filth. Wherever we go, it seems, there's
a story line that follows : regimented gruffness, power-play
in the alley, a few thugs beating on a gimp.