There was ink in his mouth and it was Monday morning, doomsday morning.
The comparison of both these seemingly random attributes could mean nothing at all
to anybody else but they came hand in hand for a man that always walked with his shoes untied
and while the rest of the world chewed tobacco; he chewed cinnamon sticks that he would grind
to a fine powder in his mouth spitting it out at nearby ant mounds and by the nests of bumblebees.
This nomad’s of nobody’s business would wander the streets of his hated town, the world’s armpit, the city of fire and angels and whatever the hell else.
He would walk Pico Boulevard all the way to Wilshire Ave., towards Venice and then crookedly stumbling to Van Nuys but he didn’t know his bus routes and his mind was always swarmed by imaginary bugs that he picked up from old soda cans.
What he loved most of all was stopping by the bridges of highways and looking all the way down to
the cars below swimming past in a hurry; the sky dark blue and the headlights like light bulbs
almost running out of their batteries. He saw this as cathartic as most people saw sunsets or a pianist
shaking his head violently to his own tune and it was true. This simple man was born, some say, out of dust, car exhaust and the lost ID cards of peoples’ whose wallets were stolen. However intriguing this could be it wasn’t so. He was born in a hospital in Chinatown and his mother had gold teeth that glistened whenever she drank too much and how often they shone.
You see, I knew this man long ago when my hair cascaded down my back in fine strokes and my lungs
weren’t yet tired from the things I chose to inhale. For all my purposes, this was the only person I wanted to talk about, to spit and screech whenever I heard his name and I didn’t even exactly know his name; The poor imbecile. He went by different pseudonyms and I suppose I did too but I had a name that most knew. Carmen and Leopold. They chose to remember it because it rolled off, it clawed at your teeth as you said it.
But Monday mornings were a specialty. It meant that he could go and see his brother who lived across town, the one who sang at fancy pubs and refined restaurants, where people didn’t have to yell to admire you, but slowly clapped, a soft hum in a room where everyone understands and doesn’t have to make up for it in the way they whistle your name. He always shook his head at this profession.
“You’re an animal to these people, an exhibit they can safely see from their auditoriums and then go to sleep without having to take you home. Your last hurrah will come soon and then what will you do?”
He didn’t understand Leopold’s hostility. This art he was drawn to. This voice that could have been
given to anybody but it was given to him. Deep down he knew he would never be a big star, he would never leave the place where he born. He would die close to where he went to elementary school and what a big sham, the whole big world so big and he would never see it. Never unfold, instead slowly
crumble like the crust of cakes he stared at through shopping windows.
