ONE OF THOSE PLACES
(sullivan street, 1968)
The oldest man in the world, I swear, sucking a
filthy cigar, was motioning o'er the landscape about
how things used to be : 'This was the island, out there,
y'see, where they'd bury the unclaimed dead. I knew
a few of them but I never owned up - all they'd want
then was some money with which to pay the straggling
crew of gravediggers. They'd already stoled everything
they could find on the body and the pockets and and
the coat - they'd even go to the address, if the person
even had one, first, and steal whatever was there - a
total crew of lousy bastards anyway; and I knew 'em all.'
-
Trading stories like thread on a new-knit sweater, rolling
with the yarn like a kitten on the floor, I just listened. Tired
as all hell I was, and probably a little drunk too. Just a few :
one of those Sunday trash-days when nothing goes on,
and some clown from the streets finds you waiting. Next it's
this and then it's that. You wind up drinking in the half-dark
at some shithole dive like a Harry Platt's.
-
Some old girl comes over, looking to make some money,
looking to get laid - and then you tell her you can't even
pay for these beers after this and she flees like her you-know
is on fire. It's all over in a second and this crazy-crank
asshole he just a keeps on a'talking. 'Was one time my
friend Henry, he's dead now, he took a pole down and
went to the river looking for pike, t'weren't none I guess
and just thing next, they found him day after floating
face up in the river and they carted him away. And
just like that too. I never said nothing; didn't know.'
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