Silky Sexy Mid-Night Air

Around my body,
The air flowed cool & smooth as silk.
Sexy it was and felt as I pulled the hit outta the square into
My grainy lungs released it slowly
Back into the gulf coast twilight waiting for nothing &
Everything to come.
I could only imagine where the rusty trotting boxcars in the distance were heading.
Away from here, that’s for sure.
Away from the ravaged southern coast line between Gulfport and Biloxie.
Away from the stresses of uprooted trees and families.
Away from the hurricane blown homes, hotels, and franchises
Lining the Ave.’s south of the train tracks carrying endless boxcars heading towards
Anywhere but here.
The rails sounds screetched on by but I stayed on base.
No amount of squares could make my mind travel
Further than the steps it took me to leave room 655
Out behind the Air Force Inn,
Looking for an escape.
“Drinking the night away”, she said from Chicago’s South Side but I had no escape.
Ni cerveza, ni yesca, ni mescalito, ni nada.
Only my thoughts to keep me occupied and the autobiography of Miles Davis.
I could picture 52nd Street lit up with
Living-room sized jazz clubs like
The Onyx and Three Deuces,
Hustlers hanging around entrances like second-hand decorances,
And New York City succumbing to the beats bouncing outta every crevice
Blaring from the deep freed souls of the baddest motherfuckers around…
But I wasn’t there and like he prophesized, it would never be like that again.
History is history and every seconds fattens up his belly.
Meanwhile,
I find myself on the wings of the midnight air,
Not quite in despair, but searching for life’s grandeur,
Something beside these two fucken cockroaches chasing each other across this once
Flooded sidewalk.
What a waste of time, at least for me it is. For the moment, at least it is.

by Isboset Gonzalez