Shady dealin’, midnight trippin’  is my way of life.  The dishwater dawn is my time of day. The next toke is my only friend. Total obedience is the price of admission.  A faith born in terror, it ends in the relentless cold.

Tomorrow never comes. Innocence dies by inches as if to the raggedy beat of a breaking heart. Dreams die hard here. The dead are the lucky ones. Life is long but death is for fuckin’ ever.

So bring on the seizures and the shakes, the chest pounding jammers and the flat-out sick fear of shadows, windows, sunlight and the dark. It ain’t a choice to hit the pipe when I can’t stand up, when my heart is outside my body, when I’m  pukin’ blood, even then, because I know the each and every toke takes me right…there.

Sometimes, like tonight, my best friend’s best friend walks through the door and tells me that I am hittin’ it too hard.

“No cuff, no front tonight, only cash. Keeps you honest.” he says. “Savin’ your life,” he says. Grinnin’.

I wonder if he realizes or cares that he is part the chain; that his profit pays for the giveaways in the schoolyards.

It is time to leave Hell well enough alone.

My time of  leavin’ is at hand.

Photograph by  Michael Lebowitz ©2012