Idol moments for a farmer like Maggie stretch into yawning years. When the crops of choice are the chemicals of the brain, idol moments are evident only on the deepest exploration of perception. She was just a simple farmer though, didn’t have any care for looking inward.
Ethereal lighting heads could guide empty sockets through utter blackness, flaring brilliant skin pimples of midnight drool, teasing roiling heavens out of concrete. She’d have to get up in the sick sad morning, through dirt and shit. She’d climb out of the community of happy fungus, unto the stumbling mumbling world of purpose. The streets would be littered with downward eyes, and hers would be the lowest cast, following the lines that perpetually intersected the sidewalk.
The waste the waste
The riches
The distaste of the driven
Treasures to be gathered in the fog-breath dawn
Gluttons hoard of donuts
Cans currency the rock the mighty rock
The game of life and the fire of the rock
Sagging eyes of the decrepit vessel
They came for her this morning, the lonely roving beasts that crawled out of their eyes and scratched at the pavement in sharp shadows. She tried not to shudder as they crawled out of the clean vessels buzzing about, as they sucked the light out of shop windows with a sound like a vacuum slurping. Mom was in her mind, no anxious image just the feeling. There was heat all around trying to stop the creatures from sucking the light out of the city, but the creatures were already inside them all, exploding out of their retinas in animal hunger.
Her body was hoisted, and they were inside her, all she wanted then was her little cot, dirt floor. Her belly rumbled, starved for the rock, her toes were purple, but that was the absence of the energy. The unfulfilled morning made her face crack. Soundless she let them inside her.
When they were finished playing with her carcass they left. And she floated out of the alley like a ghost. The pain was universal, a blanket, and the reality of the world above ground. Her vessel would work for its culmination, lumber needed for the inferno. Her thoughts split in a pious grin.
“Cans in the cart, cans in the cart.” The roving engine of her mind syncopated, and cans were gathered unto her, and built steadily in her belly. The worthless warmth less sun rose on her. She was dangling from it, stuttering across the blocks.
Sometimes a nerve would pinch in her neck, and she’d scream, running in tight circles of agony. Her world would suddenly seem so dark, and her emotion would seep from her then, intestinal ooze leaking out like an arid desert breeze.
“Hey you?” Asante the pusher man said.
“Yesa’ yesa’ you be seeing me soon.” Maggie said boring into his skull with dull sand storm eyes.
“You bess’ get to the depository quick. I aint gonna’ be here much longer.”
“Yesa’ yesa’”
Asante was the pusher man, the loquacious money man. Once a pusher man, always a pusher man, business was decent so he was decent. “Fuck crack addicts. Why can’t they be more like stoners? These worthless rambling half beings are scaring the potential money away, they don’t buy consistently or in large amounts, I wish I was selling weed man, shit.”
“Man it’s the nature of the drug man. You take that shit and not a god damn thing matters anymore. I got respect for that. That’s one way of living.” James said. A buddy of Asante’s who came down to the corner to chat.
“I know the nature of the drug mother fucker, I’ve only been pushing it since I was a lil’ one. I’m just saying weed is the shit. You get them rich boys buying eighths for sixty five, money in the bank. Weed here is like water in the Middle East. People migrate to the places where it flows.”
“Yah, so why don’t you make the conversion, trade in all them vials, get dat smelly green dream.”
“Don’t look at me with them eyes nigga’, like you my fucking accountant, like advice is your territory. You don’t think I’ve thought about it? Listen up young ‘in, you sell weed, you gambling, maybe one day you driving in leather with some woofers, maybe one day you looking out of a cage at the city, carnival screams of madmen behind yo’ ass.”
“Oh and your safe from that out here you ignorant bitch?”
“The city has no beef with me. Look at these haggard bitches, like barnacles on my dick. I’ll cap one of these motherfuckers for fun, and they wouldn’t be any different, the world wouldn’t change in the least bit. The city cares even less about these people, if only everyone could be so unconscious, they could reap an even bigger profit. So they let us feed off of these hollow flesh bag bitches. Weed makes nigga’s more acute to the corruption, and so they crack down on the distribution. It’s all a grind.”
“Yah you like playing all hard and wise and shit, but yous’ a bitch. Way I see it, you afraid of selling that green. You my cousin son, I know your shit. You entertain the dreams of going into the weed game cus’ you feel like a dirty ass nigga’ pushin’ what you pushin’ now. But you aint ever gonna’ get into that slightly less filthy ass profession cus’ you’d have to accept that you’ve fed these haggled nigga’s self perpetuated coma. You’d have to accept you a bad man, in the eyes of any lord, and worse you a bad man to Asante. You’d have to accept it to get out of the game. Lie to yourself nigga’ that’s fine, but don’t think im not gonna’ call you on it.”
“Why you gotta’ come down here and unload that shit on me? College boy, go back to your ghetto loans, leave a man down here to make his way. Fuck off school boy nigga’.”
“Alright man I’m speaking from here though man.” He said pointing to his chest.
“Pshh get yo’ skinny ass out of my face nigga’.”
“Peace man.” And James walked on down the sidewalk. He felt real good whenever he had a talk like that with a brotha’ stuck in the game. Something about it just felt right and courageous. It lent him some type of extraterrestrial energy.
As a kid he’d been obsessed with the old school NWA videos. Real boss guys with big chains and ladies dressed in tight bright neon skirts, crib walking down the sidewalk; spray paint scribbled on the bricks behind them. His brothers sandwiching him on the rickety couch, in front of the 12” TV, smelling like weed and sweat. Rapping was all that shit, mixed with his love for himself, and he let it out:
I breaks it down to the bone gristle
Ill speaking Scud missile heat seeking
Johnny Blazing, nightmares like Wes Craven
Niggaz gunnin, my third eye seen it coming
Before it happen
You know about them fucking Staten
Kids they smashin
Everything huh, in any shape form or fashion
Now everybody talking bout they blastin, hmmm
Is you bustin steel or is you flashin? Hmmm
He was getting into it, accenting the lines with his hands, and dancing. The city unreal, had that card board feel, same as the video, except he was the man now. He was on top of shit.
A black BMW with out of state plates approached him from behind, inside Sam Wadsworth and his wife Betsy Wadsworth, were lost, had taken a wrong turn somewhere by the luxury hotels and had ended up in this place. “This isn’t America is it sweetie?” Betsy proclaimed. “You’d think we were in Botswana, with the shambles, and look at this senseless nigger convulsing about, and talking to himself! My god Sam, get us out of here!”
“Sweetie! Watch your language. What if he heard you?”
“Keep the car away from him, for gods’ sake Sam. He has those big hungry eyes. He wants what we have, oh and he’s seen death look at him, he seems so much older than us.”
“Do you want me to let you out so you can speak with him?”
“Sam, stop it I’m not attracted to him you devil, he just seems so primal, he’d probably tear me to pieces.”
“Oh I’m sure he would babe.” “I’m pulling over.”
“No!” she shrieked in terror.
“Sweetie I wouldn’t ever do that to you!” He chuckled.
“Oh baby, baby, baby” She kissed him repeatedly on the cheek.
The jet skinned monster receded into the pavement behind as they crawled further along under the shade of the towering skyscrapers. Business was waiting to be consecrated in some lurking monument.
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