Mythical Philadelphia

OU TURN UP YOUR NOSE at garbage you created when you were younger—when you listened to rock through the speakers of your powder blue Chevy ’69. Now you’re smoking cigarettes while you drive so you can watch the vapors disappear into the air rushing past the window that won’t roll up.

You laugh when the fly-looking honies turn up their noses at your hollars. Whatever; you got your own sitting in pink lace whenever you want her. She calls you baby when you wake up in the middle of the night ‘cause you drank too much caffeine and the pot you smoked an hour before has given you nightmares. She gives you another blunt and you end up sitting by the window until the sun makes the brick across the way glow like the sign at Ronny’s down the street.

Best damn bar in the city.

You can go there on Tuesday nights to find old men wearing defunct fedoras and losing themselves to some fantasy in bottle after bottle of domestic shit.

Sometimes when you pass by the bar in daylight, it looks like time froze and everyone is gone, as though the Apocalypse happened while you slept. But that’s what it always looks like. And you can walk around all day thinking you’re a superman worth a damn, and no one will tell you otherwise because they’re chasing their own fucking unicorns in their heads, make-believing they see stars on the sidewalk.

You all get cut-down to size when the smog fills the air around your heads. But you’re the only one laughing, thinking you’re James Dean and immune to fading into nothing. You got the jacket and you still carry cigarettes rolled up in your sleeves.

You got an attitude when you talk, but it’s not because you’re a jackass (though you’ve been prone to dickish tendencies), it’s because you don’t know how to create something new with your memories. It’s okay because we all see illuminated projections of somewhere better when we’re trying to make Heaven out of concrete. We all see magnificence in mosquito puddles and wish we could make boats to sail across them.

You take a breath, inhale carcinogens and smile. You remember the five bucks in your pocket, change the radio station, and head to the second-hand shops. You hope there are some mystics around because you could really use a fedora.