Act 1: Scene 1
August, 1989, Archer Avenue across from the post office, two doors down from the numbers joint and four doors down from the methadone clinic.
Hot summer. Early morning.
Enter the sunlight. Enter the stage, dead center and in the middle of real life.
This was me and this was life as it was.
This is how everything was back then, of course
The previous night’s demons are scattered in tiny skeletons that proved our deaths with plastic vials, which have all been noted by the news and the media as an earlier epidemic that killed at different speeds.
Crack is crack.
Heroin is heroin.
Narcotics are narcotics and although there were different rides; opiates have their own corner of the market but either way, both directions are shortcuts to an obvious bliss. One comes with different speeds. The other folds in shorter half-lives that whither away and disappear at the end.
The price of admission is far cheaper in the beginning.
Then again, the first hit, the first sip, the first touch or taste of anything tempting is always free.
This is why the devil gives away free samples because, of course, he knows that this will keep you coming back. And this is what keeps people coming back for more and more often, this is why the infections spreads so fast and so wide and yes; the devil knows and this is why the virus kills so slowly and quickly and ominously without causing a stir or raising an eyebrow,
The devil knows us for better than we know ourselves.
This is how he works.
The scene opens to another day above the dirt and me as I was, young and sick; I was dying another day and stepping one foot closer to a grave.
There was a bullet that hit a man in his chest, not too far away in East New York, Brooklyn.
They killed a man named Papool in Far Rockway, somewhere close to B17th Street.
A razorblade cuts the skin.
A knife plunges a gut so that a young, ignorant young kid could run and get away.
A body, a life, a lie, and a con are the ingredients to keep the habits alive and going for another day.
I am young of course.
I am a childhood guppy in a pond of viral terrorists and demonized sharks which are the otherwise bottom-dwellers and dregs and the elsewise dying zombies who are equally infected.
Everyone is an actor in this play and each character comes with their own script and each script has their own taste and each person is dosed with different poisons.
Junkies are junkies and drunks are drunks and either of them will steal your wallet.
Either of them will look to con you.
But ah, the junkie makes this an art form; whereas, either a drunk or junkie might steal your wallet, a drunk will split and maybe hide.
But a junkie?
A junkie will help you look for your losses so this way, the junkie can shear your sheep a thouand times before you catch him stealing and blame someone else.
Either way, sick is sick and the difference between the margins of junk sickness are those who have their cross-addictions are just two different people with otherwise operative terms.
And still, the landmarks are unspecified and yes, this was life before the life I have now.
I saw more than a man three times my age.
I saw more death when I was alive than when I grew older and realize that dying is inevitble.
This was a time before the world was flooded with information. This was before our technology became so aware. This was before all the tech companies turned a trick. This was before the eyes in the sky left every corner with closed circuit cameras and surveillance areas which semi-convicted us because we are all guilty, of course.
Everyone is guilty of something now.
We are all guilty until proven innocent.
I was so young. . . .
Man, how did I survive?
It was . . .
It was like . . .
It was like this –
Red light flashes after the brakeman changes guard last evening. Jamaica Train Station’s nearby sound provides the perfect cover for the otherwise battles between man and poison and poison and man.
Two bags in . . .
I am high and previously collected.
The demons already had me long before the dose took hold.
I was on. I was in.
I was high and I was hip.
I was hooked and stolen and swiped away like a kidnapped soul, too young to realize, too ignorant to understand, and too lost and too far gone to care about the difference between life or death.
Besides, no one ever hears the shot that kills them
Lights out . . .
that’s all.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you realize the quiet sounds or how dying becomes deaf and deaf means there is no sound or heartbeat and therefore; there is nothing but the absence of everything and the quantity of nothing.
All ends at the unfelt heartbeat which is final and unheard.
the game is over.
And all the perfection rests like the prosecution in the courthouse rests after the convict is exposed and the sentence is executed.
Here comes one of the trains now . . .
This is the representation or a metaphor or a symbolic gesture of a plunger moving forward.
The railways are somehow softer along the tracks after the chemical takes hold.
Everything loses its heaviness and all else is as if the emotional padding has allowed me to absorb the shock from the ground beneath me.
“It is accomplished!”
And so, the mind lifts and the body drifts endlessly into a quiet abyss.
Ah, euphoria.
Here come the floods . . .
All is gentle. All is weightless and all is lofty>
All else is soaring the body away and rising like a higher peak from the gods and the votes from the higher ups.
There is no pain nor any discomforting thoughts.
There are no concerns that take away the mind, piece by piece.
There is nothing else, except for a dream of empty fields with tall grass and a gentle stream, running slowly south in my midsummer twilight.
I can hear the subtleties from the cicada bugs and feel the heat rush over my body like a dream, I say . . .
Like a dream of a midsummer’s day, hit as ever, blissful and mournful and lost in the explicit notion that this is it.
This is the mixture between heaven and hell.
Something drastic is about to change.
I was on my way and I didn;t know where.
I could feel the impending doom as it made its way, but ah, the high and ah, the absence of pain and ah the different demons or the different denominations of bliss and euphoria.
The euthanized process of momentary chaos that reverses life into a slow-moving crawl.
The nod took hold of me.
I was bending and folding like a dying leaf.
I was degraded and weak, like broken bridges that turn down and then scatter into dust.
I can feel it coming on too, you know?
I could feel the line between life and death and the glowing presence of some kind of afterlife or an eternal existence, heavenly in some regards and hellish at the same time.
The nod . . .
The absence of all self and all thoughts, all pain, and all aches that tremble the heart
There is no thought.
There is no need for redemption and nor is there a cause to attend the resurrection.
There is nothing. At least, not now.
Not while life is euthanized and crucified like the dying life of the lamb or from The Son of Man because as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever . . .
The Lord is with you
or so I was told
Dying angels fall to their inverted deaths and defy the demons by lighting candles in my viral sanctuary.
All is lost.
All is hopeless.
And not even the devil can inflict pain here.
I see no difference between the here and now, the up or down, or the ins and outs of a so-called life.
I see no difference between dying and living, which is a life that is otherwise destined to die. Therefore, we are all dying. Some die differently.
And I?
I thought that I would die in a long, slow and unbeknown plateau of enlightenment.
I thought I would die high or in a nod, which is altogether gracious and altogether damned and altogether fruitless and altogether wealthy.
I assumed my death would come to me when I was young with a growing chaos that runs like an orgasm through the veins.
There is no rest for the weary and no mercy for the weak.
There is nothing other than the streams of infections which flood the bloodstream and leaves the soul to fall from grace and so . . .
I become either limp or lifeless.
The body folds to half-mass, like a flag surrendering downward and the soul gives way like a dying leaf, which has dropped from the treebranch after gaining color and losing life.
The tracks at the train station and the calls from the brakemen alter the path for the upcoming departure. The trains switch sides and the difference in direction maps the progress of my infection.
Little pinholes poke the skin and tiny vessels nurse the needle for all its mother’s milk.
It will be miles before the next train stops.
It will be lifetimes before the end passes and yes, it will be lifetimes until this train makes its way to a fair and final destination.
I am reminded that I am only a passenger. I am no one.
I was just one of ‘the ones”
I am just a resident and the conductor, the brakeman, and the engineer and the little engine that could were all in this together.
It’s a plot and my symbolism dies, quite the same as my boyhood friends who turned down their right to manhood by dying too young
It is strange how the old holes itch, even now, decades after the tunnels have closed.
Too many crossings took place
Too many crimes needed to be paid for
Too many times another life fell weak
And too many nights when mothers wept over the loss over their little baby loved ones
Why me, God?
“Because maybe you have more to do for me, son.”
But why me?
“Why not you?”
Because I am not worthy . . .
“Who told you so?”
A lot of people.
“Don’t listen to them, son.”
But Father, I suppose this is easier said than done.
“Don’t worry, son.”
“One day, I promise all will be revealed”
I hope so, God
because the tension is a little too incrdible
and these dreams from my past seem real
like someone out there
is trying to kill me . . .
St Dismas,
pray for me
