Smiley face pancakes, or like the first drag of the morning, or maybe more like Russian roulette. This city, it’s awful for you – that kind of awful that takes its time, not hitting you right away, but eventually it gives you a heart condition, or takes a lung, or blows a big ruddy hole between your eyes, clean into your carved-out brain. It’s such a rush – almost makes it all worth it.
…except when it rains.
The sky turns a dank kind of charcoal grey that chews at the tips of all the skyscraper fingers pointing judgmentally upward, grasping at some lost manifest destiny. The asphalt turns slick and reflects all the decisions that brought you to the back seat of a taxi, or a gutted out van, or some screaming cruiser. All the brick facades go dark, and the glass storefronts glisten in the little sparks of sunlight that crack through the clouds, smacking light against the caged-in trees guarding their midget mailbox minutemen. And the city turns to whispers of wet radials, all those outside people ducking for refuge in mid-morning cafés, afternoon sandwich shops, midnight taverns. Nobody watches the rain trickle down tagged-up alley walls, wash away last night’s bloodstains through an opened manhole grate. They all started out lost, and got stuck on the way out.
Eventually, though, the rain starts to break, and the humid air beckons all the misplaced misfits out into the washed down streets; no rest for the wicked, innocent, or confirmed witnesses. They wander out, scavenging isolated nods, impolite smiles, spare change for the bus. The rain washes away any scent of home, and leaves them all between a rock and a heart attack. Some start thumbing west, others jump into the harbor, the rest are rain dogs - just a stray gang of vanished vagabonds that lost their way home.
…except when it rains.
The sky turns a dank kind of charcoal grey that chews at the tips of all the skyscraper fingers pointing judgmentally upward, grasping at some lost manifest destiny. The asphalt turns slick and reflects all the decisions that brought you to the back seat of a taxi, or a gutted out van, or some screaming cruiser. All the brick facades go dark, and the glass storefronts glisten in the little sparks of sunlight that crack through the clouds, smacking light against the caged-in trees guarding their midget mailbox minutemen. And the city turns to whispers of wet radials, all those outside people ducking for refuge in mid-morning cafés, afternoon sandwich shops, midnight taverns. Nobody watches the rain trickle down tagged-up alley walls, wash away last night’s bloodstains through an opened manhole grate. They all started out lost, and got stuck on the way out.
Eventually, though, the rain starts to break, and the humid air beckons all the misplaced misfits out into the washed down streets; no rest for the wicked, innocent, or confirmed witnesses. They wander out, scavenging isolated nods, impolite smiles, spare change for the bus. The rain washes away any scent of home, and leaves them all between a rock and a heart attack. Some start thumbing west, others jump into the harbor, the rest are rain dogs - just a stray gang of vanished vagabonds that lost their way home.
