Thin Walls
When I listen to the old lady sing, about her past and present and future hopes, I wonder if she can hear me sing in my shower early in the mornings? Will she want to listen to my songs, off key, and out of tune, with lyrics that make no sense, and sounds that never existed before I made them up. Sometimes I hear the old man play his saxophone a little too loudly at odd times, usually when I'm trying to fall asleep, or when I busy trying to write. It's never at a welcomed time, because the old man... he's blind now after several years of sedative abuse, both visual and liquid. After his chapped lips touched the rim of his morning beer, it's just a matter of time before he consumed a six-pack, then a twelver, and he'd be off his rocker, banging into walls and butchering Charlie Parker standards to death with his obnoxious rowdy inebriated horn blowing.
I looked for pennies on the ground one frigid afternoon when I grew infuriated with the old blind man. I walked for three hours and kept my head down as I wandered all over the city. I collected $1.05 that day. Not too bad for loose change I discovered laying on dirty sidewalks in plain view.
Under a romantic multi-colored sunset, I imagined what a summer breeze would feel like if it gently hit her hair just at the right moment and pungent aromas of her freshly washed hair, a combination of sunflowers and peaches, wafted my way and got me high for a few minutes while she smiled and I watched the reflection in her eyes of the sun dart behind the last few buildings and steal with it the last sprinkles of light before the sky fell under a murky night sky, while she joked how she wished she had a cool nickname.
When the old lady sang about her sad and ironic life, I wondered if I could out drink her. Could I hold my own against six decades of gloom? No way. The crowded streets were no match for my aimlessness. Not London, nor Belfast. Not Kansas City, nor New Orleans. Not Eguene, nor Hong Kong.
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