Oh Atlanta, this is the time when I am woozy and crazy with you,  you intoxicate me with your decay,

rolling down the expressway, trees peeking over the barriers like happy puppies ready to burst on the roadway,

Angkor Wat- in the larval stage,  my own personal Conrad, pushing your heart of darkness as the sun sets,

The brothers on the stoops with the sisters loud and happy, I wish to sit with a case of beer in paper baggies and drink on the stoop but a barrier too high too cross in that public space, my skin will betray the interests of the heart even if my tongue can speak the lingo, my face and color prevent the fellowship of the curb.  Even so I can partake behind the safety of 4 inches of steel and glass and wheels.

The oaks as babies line the road in ranks,  so well behaved, but naughty in their thoughts as they contemplate heaving the sidewalks asunder, and in their old age perhaps in their death during a storm having a last hurrah as they demolish a house or kill a driver as they tumble to the ground,  and then are cut up into flooring to be put into new houses.

Sunrise on the hazy curves as the stream mist burns away,  the yellow stink of humanity rises above the city, a brownish yellow miasma, it’s a  visual that I think of as our collective sin,  a burnt offering to our God?  Borne upward to the heavens, how yummy?!  I don’t think carbon grit and monoxide and ozone are a fitting tribute…but its what we got here,  and if there is one thing we are good at here is how to improvise..

A man proclaims himself an urban camper and offers to wash my windows with one of the three liquids he can provide from his own body,  I submit to his ministrations and offer the standard gratuity for such services (1.00)  by my calculations he is getting almost $300.00 a gallon for his saliva.   I wonder when its cool at night and warm days that maybe his perspective on this life is better,  he is only half in this world and what is the other world he inhabits and what does it look like?  I wonder which is the real one..

Confederate Jessamin,  some bastard daughter of the Jasmine but strengthened by scientists and easy to sell pushes its blossoms and perfumes the air,  combined with sweat and the smell of humanity and urine and music drifting from open windows makes my senses alive,  danger lurks but where from?,  it heightens the nerves to a razor’s edge and makes the seconds count.

Atlanta,  You are my lover,  and I love you and hate you,  I cannot leave you,  you draw me back..

I am yours but you are not mine…

PS the pic is near cabbage town with my daughter…it encapsulates every hope I have for her in this world!