Alley-way wisdom

Everyone I know always talks noir and cigarettes. It’s a beautiful thing how they let the words curl slow out o’ their cracked lips. Sometimes their tongues swell up with the ways of their hearts and its enough to leave me misty, but I’ll never be that brand of whiskey. 

I could try to drink like a fish, but it only makes me swim. It could be that cheap stuff that tastes like olives or the expensive shit that makes you want to marry Bacchus. I can’t double fist—my hand won’t close up. It beckons and pulls or just hangs loose. I drop things constantly in a way that makes the hardened types roll their eyes at me. In response, I sit back and pull on my hookah, doing impersonations of the blue caterpillar. 

I can be silent, but when the time comes for a line I’m stumped. The moment hangs in the air until someone coughs. When I get home, it’s clear to me what I should have said. I eat a bowl of cereal by the sink, convincing myself that it was no great loss. 

I own a trench coat, but most times it just refuses to rain. I bought the trench coat so I wouldn’t have to buy an umbrella—I like the rain to splash on my head and patter against my turned up collar. But most of the people I know don’t smile when it rains. 

It’s a beautiful thing, the tragedy that owns some people. The wisdom that comes from that tragedy—though if anyone said that to them, that person would get their teeth knocked out. That’s kind of beautiful too. The swift, confident, line drawn from the shoulder to the knuckle makes for an alright set of guidelines.

I have no talent for these things, for this kind of living. Which isn’t so bad, because there are plenty of people who are, and I can appreciate it from a booth at the back.