I Call Home (first draft)

Give me your money! Just in three blocks, how many worlds can I walk past? All the trash so early on Sunday, litter, and scents, scents of the street, evidence of consideration. Into the Starbucks, a world of its own, where every drink you had before, at some small ma and pa, independent, a word coined from corporate takeovers of what we once knew, small counters seating and food, bagels and eggs, all morning all day, college kids, rocker kids, art kids, bum kids, kid kids, whirling milk into beans with made names, midnight earth, breakfast blast, something blue, and the french and house brew and don't forget the hazel nut, all in the years before we cared about the treatment of the beans. But our conscious , our democracy which seems to never work out at the polls has shifted, changed its scope and direction from changing the world, one person, one vote to the ever so pressing one bean. Mr. Bean, Ms. Bean, did you grow in the shade, were there chemicals around you, did you sell at a fair price that most of us don't know, but some how we believe you to have come to us in fair treatment of he who brought you to fruition. If your pa, Mr.Ethiopian farmer man, Mr. Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombian, MR. Blend, Jamaican Blue Mountain, did he get what he earned from the fruits of his labor? Is he living not in squallier as the stamp suggests, as we sneak our way in, all hip and cool behind our dark sunglasses, early on a Sunday morning.
"DID I SEE YOU IN FRONT OF THE UB STARBUCKS" She screams the question to me waiting for no answer as I sit at my table in the back of one of those indie shops, but not just any indie shop, the one I once supposedly owned, was a partner in operation, until BI-POLAR BEAR, the superhero of " everyonesfaultbutminelookatmeIamavictimegivemeattentionIHATEYOUwhydontyoulikeme" turned me away, but I sit there in the late nights when super heroes should be sleeping and all that is left is me, the artist amongst the lost, those of us who know no bedtime, and haven't much in the way of being ok alone, my drawing out in front of my, it and I and the table I sit at squeezed in between the stairs and the wall, and a pencil sharpener, my pencil sharpener, screwed to the back of the stairs, within reach, my flag, the tree I have peed on,peon and waiting for no answer I know, as I answer her anyway, under her screams of "trader, trader, trader" yet there I am helping an idea with my two dollars, one that will find the fate of many before, and I am, at that moment, not traitorously , pitching my two dollars into the pool, the hands of the corporate takeover, no at that moment, I am giving one man hope with my two dollars, helping in a lie, a mirage of a boat as Mr. indie, ain't no Starbucks man stands on the roof swearing the waters not rising. I defend my actions " ofcourseilovestarbuckstheygivedentalattwentyhours", falls on deaf ears, ears not listening, a mouth just moving because we have chatted before and she thinks I am cute, shes cute to but I am allergic, 401k,benefits, vacation, a whole community getting a wage higher than all those who came before them with their darkdustymidnightmoonmorningblendstacybean.
Leaned up against the concrete, the bottom concrete of concrete I've never looked up to see just how high it goes, it just floats in my peripheral vision, as I smoke, and sip on my coffee, in a size I never said before the take over, before some San Franciscan, forced us all to have dental with our frappalatteciono (comes in a can too), i lean smelling scratch and sniff pickles among the debris in this war torn Baltimore, I can't even smell fresh air, a smell I know from mornings in years past before I threw it all away, on Sunday mornings like this, with my cup in my hand, a wedding gift I'm sure. No! I am a liar, while spending, yes spending, my wife and I spending to make our world a little better, she felt we needed a shelf, there in the box with a dot, the good box, not the blue one with yellow smiles, that evil yellow smile, they should have made it red then it would have been ok, on sale in the red dotted box, I found a pink dotted cup, a cup that I held in my hand on so many mornings when she was still there, short and cute, with the craziest hair, in my hand on mornings after she left, me and the pink dotted mug walked out of the yard and into the park that over looked the mountain, as i sipped and guilted myself for smoking "iamamarriedmannowicannotdothisiwilldieandwhatwillhappentomywife", in between puffs I smelled air, not pickles, not the scent of trash overwhelmed by natural gas, but air blowing in the biggest sky ever made as I gazed to that mountain in aw, each day in aw, as if I had not seen it the day before, in aw. And now I am leaned against the concrete that goes so high, I don't know how high, an elevator to the moon so high maybe, I have never looked up and I don't know. Now over the city scents, the trash, that gas leak that can't be good, I look on sans the feeling of aw, I look on to a fat lady in her universe as I stand in mine and I am passed by some hip cutey and her big dog as she slides into the corporate takeover on a Sunday morning, looking as if it's all just to much " sheknowsshescuteandshecantbebotheredbecauseimustbenoone". And the fat lady and another lady and another man, all white and older, but with a younger man who's black (odd since most blacks and whites don't mix in this town, they are in different universes that do as little as possible to intermingle, unless of course they are stuck working together at Starbucks as they are. And the white people, the fat lady who must be retarded and the other two odd older, almost theymusthavebeenhippieorbohemianonce looking all have the same shirt on but the odd couple seems annoyed with the retard as the fat lady asks for money and says she's going to church and the male of the odd couple says that yes the Basilica must be beautiful and the young black man, not hostile, not hopper, just black, just younger, younger then them and younger then me stands waiting, and the retard has a beard, a goatee, and the couple and the black man leave for there church they say, which is not the basilica, and the retard panhandles, wishing everyone a happy fathers day (her name is Vivian ). I have no cash to give her but others do because she is white and maybe because she is retarded. And even one man pulls out his wallet, digs around in the bills, to give her money in the wafting gas and scents, that, if you don't know, is because she is white, and maybe 'cause she's a retard, who claims to want a drink and some food from the corporate takeover before going to the basilica , the passing black man, panhandling, going to church for all we know, he gets nothing from no one, not even an audible response just shrugs, and I give Vivian a cigarette and walk up the street, questioning my moments of gratitude that I am not her, that I am not a panhandler, a retard, a homeless, but that's just right now, as I know i have no job, as I know I spent so much money last week i don't know how I did it and I didn't even pay rent, and as I know that I may be her if I can't get the courage to go back in that Starbucks and ask for a job, which I can't and I don't and I just walk on through the trash and pass a man headed for a port-o-pot, because he has no bathroom of his own and I approach what looks like a laundry bag on a bench, but it's a man, hiding in his shirt from all the sounds and sun that would keep me from sleeping and I head down the hill, through even more trash, towards the Transvestites as the barkeep, an angry macho biker in another life, but just a fat gay one in this life, leans out the door "ifyouguyscomeinandbuyafewmoredrinkydrinkswe'llstayopenalittlelongerifyoudon't-
we'llcloseiwasn'ttalkingtojustyouiwasspeaktothecrowdingenral". And I think of the man in the big S.U.V who so proudly announced he was going to church in that way that said he had done it every Sunday since he was born, and how much I want to go to church, how much I want to know god, how much I want to have faith, how much I want to be grateful I am not homeless, but really I just want to be dead. I walk through the trash knowing I am an artist, knowing my purpose, regretting the money I spent, fearing my unemployment, and hating that she left. I want top be grateful, as I think I should be from all the lessons I've learned so early on a Sunday after begging god to intervene in my life, to take my problems, to save me from myself, but really I just want to die, I hate that she left, I hate that I left, I hate the life I have been left with, I miss that mountain, the quality of my life, I am already the fat retard begging for change on a Baltimore corner. I get through the days rationalizing the lies, telling myself " allthesebadthingsaregoodandhereswhyitsgod", when i know it's a lie, it's really not good, I had it good once for a while and as with most things I blew it and it's just getting worse. How long, not long until I am a bag of laundry on a bench along a trash filled street in Baltimore, the town I call home.