Читать книгу The East Side of it All - Joseph Dandurand - Страница 9

In the crooks and corners of the city you see humans bend over, or they are already bent. They walk that way down the alley and some look like snakes slithering in and out searching for a white powder or a piece of black tar. They search and search, come up for air then dive back down and bend their spines to the point of snapping. They do this all day until they fall over. If we were to look down from the sky we would see them left behind, fallen, as the snake that embodied them found them no longer worth eating.

There are those who talk to themselves and we listen to these great forgotten prophets as they speak the truth about this and that and they sometimes scream to make sure we are listening. Then they stop for a drink and continue on as the people walk by and the prophets smile— as they know, yes, they know.

We walk on to our lives and we move in and out from the hordes who live at each corner as some sleep and some trade and deal what they have. We ignore them and they ignore us as the streetlight changes from red to green and we cross over to another paradise and a new group and then they bend and preach and hustle. We ignore them as we become the snake and we slither back and forth as we avoid the dead and the dying as we search for a better place, as we search for a better meal.