STREET LIFE

The sun goes down. We 'pack' and hit our turf.
Our dramas unfold every night in Englewood, Marquette, or Humboldt Parks.
In Chicago.
The blue, flashing spy cameras are on us, like flies on shit.
We're hip to them though...a waste of taxpayer dollars...Don't they know?
A bottle of 'hootch', a joint passed around...
Somebody always playin' the clown.
This is street life.
There are bucks to be made.
Ho's to be played like a fine violin.
This is my life.
Newspaper vendors and various folk, huddle around a fire blazing...
In a wire mesh trash receptacle...
Songs are sung...violence is done.
Pop!...Pop!...Pop!...This is street life.
Storefront churches, laundromats, nail emporiums, chicken-'n-fish restaurants, taverns and social clubs, funeral homes...this is the 'hood'.
That I know.
Ain't no Walmart here...just people like me.
You don't want to come here after dark.
We sit on bar stools, listening to the same stories told a million times.
They go around and around like a broken record...
Talk of deaths, illnesses, assassinations, jail incarcerations, hot women, babies, welfare checks...
Unemployment compensation, jobs...but mostly the lack of them.
Desperate laughs-or-tears for desperate times...
This is the street life that I know.
Three double-cheese, an order of fries, a bottle of cheap bourbon and some 'blow'...Makes every night a Saturday, you know.
Someday I'll get out of here...
Get that big job...I won't have to hustle with the hustling mob.
I'll be righteous with a fine lookin' bitch.
Get wheels under me.
Won't be no glitch.
But, I'll never give up the street life.
This is my life.