DAILY DRIZZLE



My walk to the subway is short and usually uneventful. About 15 minutes of bleary-eyed wakefulness and painful motion on the way there, as I struggle to shake my hangover and get my mindset back into docile, working condition. It's the same on the way back, except the weariness is fresh, not from an overnight accumulation. The most exciting aspect of the walk is crossing under the train trestle. I have to run a gauntlet of fat, nesting pigeons that sit overhead in the beams waiting to shit down on me. I have to be quiet as I pass and keep a wary eye overhead to avoid getting shit on in my work clothes. Lately, I've had a chest cold, and the walk has provided me with a mostly private forum within which I can hack up and spit out the contents of my lungs and throat before boarding the train. The exertion from walking usually stirs up my phlegm, and it leads to a nice session. (If you so much as cough on the train people shun you like you have the plague, so it's good to get it all out on the way there. As if nobody on that train has ever coughed before? Bullshit, half of these foul bastards have TB, anyhow.) Those seconds under the train tracks are tense. 15 footsteps of fear and anxiety. 'Cause I know and they know. One day I'm gonna spit out a lung, right under those goddamn pigeons, then it's gonna be bombs away. The little bastards are just biding their time, eating, shitting, screwing and doing that insane head-bobbing thing they do, content knowing that one day they'll get me.
Their moment's gonna come, white, hot and sticky.

© Raymond Abruzzi


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