Out the ***** double-paned window one would first notice that it's unbearably hot.
The metal box in my window is humming a metallic symphony as it blows
cold, electric salvation into my greenish-brownish, moldy, moth-eaten room.
A white van drives down the street. I know this guy, I've seen him before.
Well, maybe not him but the van.
He's peddling poison, not the prescription ****,
but the **** that makes you need to self-medicate
with more.
Upon close inspection one may see the used ******
and two ***** needles
lying in the gutter.
Across the street, in the "yard" in front of the projects
there's kids playing tag.
At the end of the street there's a corner store where the toothless
and their pimps shout at passers by
a guy storms out the door, ticked off that he didn't win enough
quarters on the "arcade game" inside for a tall boy.
One of the pimps shouts at a girl across the street
as a coke (crack?) dealer slowly cruises by on a bike,
his flag hanging out of his back pocket so there's no
confusion
about how he affiliates himself.
The kids are running through the stream of a hose and
laughing and
laughing.
The have no idea where they are.

I get up to open the window,
trying to create some kind of breeze,
any kind of breeze.
I raise my beer to the neighbor, waving from his lawn.
As I sit back down a procession of sirens passes our street.
as they pass I hear the children laugh and somebody at the corner store shouting.
Hustling.
everybody but the kids is hustling and the sirens are wailing and it is
so
****
hot.