haskalmighty

A slim
young fascist
fresh from the Hole
slid into me
murdered me
with his eyes
and said, "Man,
why ain't you
doing something?"

All night
I sat up
All night
Wrote 5,000 words
explaining how
I
was doing something

but the slim cat--
beautiful fascist
didn't buy
it--nor
did I
completely.

-- 'On The Yard', Etheridge Knight


So these two ex-coworkers came in tonight, kind of hangers-on, kind of looking for free food, kind of just hanging out. Ladies, young. One of them is the sort that talks siempre about how much she loves sex, how she would have sex with just about any guy on the planet as far as i can tell, all the different sorts of sex acts she enjoys - then wonders why people call her a slut and disrespect her. The other is kinda sweet but they're both awfully caught up in the whole cocaine scene and of course they're always hurting for cash and love and whatnot.

So they sit with me for a while. And i listen to them bitch about this and that for about a half-hour, then we go out to smoke. And i listen to them bitch some more and talk about all the problems they've brought upon themselves and eventually i start reciting the above cited poem as they're still going. And i'm about two-thirds of the way done and they're like, "Hask, what are you doing? Rapping?" And i say, "No. I'm asking what you're doing." And the one girl says, "We're waiting for our food." And i say, "No, what are you doing? You seem like you have all this shit going on around you, all this...business, but you're not doing anything."

Changed the whole fuckin' conversation, let me tell you. And of course they're too caught up in the coke thing to really change any time soon, but maybe one of these days they'll remember that somebody thought they were better than that. Once they started to answer the question, i realized these are some pretty alright gals, who just have no idea what the fuck they're doing. Get that a lot at my work, it seems.

Fuckin' pattern interrupts. I gotta remember that one.