826. THOSE ORIGINAL MAFIA TRANSACTIONS

THOSE ORIGINAL
MAFIA TRANSACTIONS
...They kept me from sleeping right, left me
always on edge - the orange powder in
the coffee, the bullets kept in the bottom
of Lorenzo Laurentia's shoe. On the corner
of Baxter or somewhere I'd just as soon
forget - near where Orange Street once
used to be - they gunned down Ace Lombardi
and his butcher and his kid for something three
years back. I could never figure these things out.
-
It's not a man of strength who keeps things
going, I've noticed; it's the strength of Man.
It's not a Living Will you need, it's a
will to live indeed you need.
-
'Gates of Heaven/Eternal Light' was the
cemetery these assholes used. They may
as well have been walking a Disneyland of
Crime, for what it mattered - all that pomp
and circumstance, carloads of flowers, arms
under the elbows of some weak and willowy
widow. For nothing it was, no more than a
Pope's obeisance to the Divine and Death :
something that axiomatic, the circular ramblings
fully reflective only of the true nihilism within.
Dead bodies carpeted with stone.