NIGHT IN THE CITY

3:00AM - I walk the street unable to sleep. I duck into an alley for personal inspiration. The snapping ring of my Zippo, and the remaining inch of my Top Secret botany project crackling in the silence attract no attention but my own. Crosswise the boulevard and two blocks down, a police helicopter circles like a buzzard overhead, waiting for something new to expire; the spotlight prying brightly into random moments of anonymous human existence, like some giant peeping beast with a phallus engorged with garish white light. It maintains a tight orbit on this neighbor-less-hood, and leaves me with a deep seated cosmic katzenjammer that eclipses my present eudemonia. I half expected to see someone get sucked up through the spotlight, like an abduction. It happens more often around here than you think.
I was thirsty, and so made for the nearest U Dumb Fucker. Once inside the premises, I was obliged to wait for what seemed like hours behind a bookend of acidheads paying for oatmeal cream pies with dryer lint and pocket change; giggling Bobbsey Twins adrift on some dangerous and far gone supernaut mission, propelled into the celestial by a tiny fragment of paper soaked in fuck knows what. I exchanged nummary pleasantries for a bottle of water and left.
A patrol car-- a Black Mariah-- glides past, on the prowl for food. She slows at the corner, and I could see the driver’s head vibrating and shuddering at the molecular level, formed only by crosshatches and happenstance. The lone occupant in the back screamed hard and beat on the glass with the flat of his fists, leaving desperate bloody prints across the glass. I knew better than to stare or even ask. I heard from a friend of a friend about the voracious appetites of squad cars in this city. More than likely, the car was chewing him from the feet up.
This representative of Law and Order was looking at me now, staring me down. Challenging me. “Nothing to see here, move along.” I could only guess where his eyes were meant to reside; his ocular cavities were but smears of vibrating gray, through which the interior lights of the car were nearly visible. He pulled away, bound for the downtown ossuary, and I hastened my step in order to be far from here before his next round. That could be me next time-- the passenger-cum-meal now slumped motionless against the window, empty eyes focusing on nothing, head lolling like a well loved rag doll. Passive. Compliant.
Cops grow on trees, by the way. But that\'s a tale for another day.