Let me take this time
To remind the audience
I’m just a talking head
I have no new ideas
But you have no idea
What I’ve just said
I’m shaking hands with strangers
Because that’s all that I can get
The metaphors are lost
In translation once again
You’ll not do very well
Down in the coal mines
In fact you’ll be
The canary in the cage
So just sit tight and
Wait around for your time
So when you die
Your contribution can be made
Somewhere in a coffee shop
On downtown’s Grand avenue
There’s some tears in the cup of coffee
Of a man sketching a note
And he’s apologizing
For the wrongs that he has done
He left the noise in the streets of Chicago
Just to die in the cold
Or so it goes
And tonight when he goes home
And tries to reconnect with his lost love
He’ll find moral ambiguity
And the taste of another man’s blood
It turns out the abandoned can abandon
Even the hand that feeds
Even energy needs consumption
Like another man’s dreams
Or so it goes
(Lyrics. A Prohibition Riot.)
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Never one to complain about the long walk home, he’ll grab a beer from his six pack, but life support can only last so long.
He’ll stagger into a new idea of what is bliss, accompanied by blurred vision and a total lack of inhibitions.
He knows no shame. He’d ask Bill Gates for spare change. He’d say “It’s for the bus,” but in reality I think we all know just what that money’s for. You can tell by the tracks on his arms. And I’m not one to judge but in this case I’d say that it’s fair to suggest that the only way to go is down, from here.
And if we’re speaking in honest terms I think I’d rather watch him burn than to literally know what kind of pain he’s in. I’d hate to hear his dying words. They might be “I care.” Not to mention he’s human and he could actually feel.
(Lyrics. “Loose Change”. A Prohibition Riot)
Population: 5,375
a short story
a not quite final draft…
You don’t get a second chance. That’s a trivial fact, I’m aware. But it’s funny, well maybe not funny. It’s curious that this is a fact that I don’t recognize frequently. I think that, had I recognized this fact a little more religiously in my youth, I wouldn’t be in a situation to think about it today.
Today, by the way, is September 11, 1968. It’s my twenty-seventh birthday and I’m sitting in an empty dining room in central Illinois. I don’t own the keys to this house. I don’t own the keys to any house. The air conditioning is broken and an oscillating fan dries the sweat on my forehead. The phone won’t ring today. Nobody will knock on the front door to wish me a happy birthday. I’ll be lucky to find enough change in my dirty jeans pockets to acquire another six-pack of beer.
And I usually am just that lucky.