Days in the Undertow | 11
a philly diary/story, various and plentiful as an empty lot's accrual...
Introduction
I haven’t forgotten you! Just running late is all. Been busy with a new job and getting back into the old pace of things. As always thanks for reading. ♡ Luke
Spur Line Hustle
Part 1 of an ongoing series
flights of steps that lead into dark corners, unknown portals. empty lot trash, lost artifacts assembled by city dwellers who thoughtless discard. it piles up, no one there to reclaim it. somewhere else someone else, a screaming, the emotion, either dying or having fun. you wake up with soot in your mouth, if the window’s open all night. an explosion in the distance, boom in the dark, crying out, an open mouth left open too long, wartime bomb going off, cash machine cracked open for its goodies.
if it was all this, you wouldn’t know where to put yourself. children still play in the street, laugh, run. on the porches, folks wave. you say hi when you walk here. up at the garden, they pull weeds, tending to beds, lush green every summer. same guy with a trash can, broom and shovel, walks the streets, keeps them clean. one man pushes himself in his wheelchair by one leg, everywhere getting around, still says hi. the church on the corner gives out food saturdays. they’re at a table wanting you to get saved.
dirt bikes, atvs, you stop when they come through. let them ride on. they slalom idled cars, drivers confused or paralyzed. spiked helmets, no helmets, mohawk frills. camo jeans and hoodies. inches from cars. swerving, wheelie pops. always one up on a tire. as if about to take flight. icarus. death-defiers. engines bursting into a chorus of thunders. law’s got nothing on a proud crew. tough riders. sometimes 20, 30 of them take over the streets. unsanctioned parade. all anyone can do is wait. sawblade sounds. crackle, pops of a bad muffler. tearing through the streets. fear inverted. courage for thrill. always that looking back as they ride between the cars, making sure everyone’s with them.
the other riders, at the stable, combing horses and feeding them hay. later you pass the animal ridden in the streets, hips sway big and jaunty, lets itself go as it needs, shit’ll wash off the next rain storm. across from this, still more riders, indoor skate park in an old warehouse, classes on the weekends, suburban moms drop off kids for xtreme supports education, keeps them busy, a little wyld in the city, sensing danger because a plastic bag twirled on the road like a dancer, yellowing beds piled in an empty lot, garbage bags the color of the void contained in them, filled with mystery, mounded in a tilting pyramid against a lone standing concrete wall.
a house goes up, new construction, wooden modular frame, soaked through after a storm. you wonder if they’ll close up the moisture with drywall or vinyl siding. the workers look tired. there every night ‘til eight. long hours, little pay. late shifts, working hard for the faceless. neighborhood makeovers on company terms, get out of taxes, schmooze city councils. another ten years passes, cheap construction erases history. home becomes where the memories are. folks shuffling into new spaces, new places. capital gives the window dressing and a false hope. new construction, never like the old stuff. clean facades, but the thing’s rotting from the inside, topple over in a windstorm. warranty runs out before the owners notice faulty foundation or black mold penetrating like a cancer. pretty face, empty guts. you can’t design history. you can’t rush the sense of home. can’t construct a place’s heart. that’s a born thing. not a lab rat community.
found a nine mm bullet in my yard, who knows how it got there, buried in the soil like a treasure. did it fall out of a pocket or someone dropped it reloading? every year new things rise up from the soil. sometimes a few moldy dutches. sometimes it’s dime bags, white silt layer still at their bottoms. always the black bags from the corner store get caught in the corners. chip bags, too, turned inside out, shiny like space debris glinting in orbit. there’s flowers too, growing. virginia creeper next door, creeps over, wants to make new friends. vine interlaces in the fence, bright red berries among the leaves.
//
woke up with a headache, jaw clenched all night. slept mostly, but for the one time. that’s when a guy had half climbed up my neighbor’s porch. his head popped up over the second floor roof, 3am, yelling into Nevy’s window, yelling his name, tryna wake him up. two other times this happened, but then it was a woman throwing little pebbles and stones, whatever she could find, throwing it up at Nevy’s window, stones tapping at the glass, kept calling his name. always late, these callers, weird hours.
several years ago Nevy’s uncle lived there, Taz. chill guy, booming strong voice. house all skunk weeded when he opened the door. kept eye on the street, watched out for everyone, kept my packages. played pinochle on an old card table out front with old friends, old crew. talked about guns, where to get them unregistered, stories from back in the day. heard something about a drive-by, rounds popped off. couldn’t say it was him or someone else. wouldn’t say if i knew. not to kill, but a statement anyways. could hear his crew sometimes whisper if i was cool or not. alternative economy, survivors and strugglers, hustlers and smugglers. i didn’t ask much after his life, not like he was gonna tell me. wished him well when he left in a u-haul. saw him once again at a Target purchasing a bulk of 40 Roku streaming sticks. didn’t recognize me. i kept it that way. see him sometimes still. chill guy, never gave much trouble, knew everyone. kept my packages. promised to keep my housemate safe, look out for him, when he moved in. let me know when another housemate gone street wyld, mental breakdown, not his fault, didn’t know what was happening to himself, drove his car into an empty lot, word salad to strangers and neighbors, wandered around flailing, yelling. let me know how my friend had a gun flashed on him, how a neighbor called the cops. i thanked him, he seemed concerned. chill guy, trusted me enough in the end. but this is all i knew of him, this is all he’d let me know.
for years next door, Nevy had crew over, fifteen, twenty folks in white tees rolling dice outside his house, someone keeping the money wad, tight-fisted, told them they got to teach me to play. i never knew the rules that well, never knew if anyone actually won. they played ‘til 3, 4 in the morning, woke up to the ticking sound of dice against concrete steps, almost like loose teeth or bones bouncing against stone, just that sound and complete silence, as if the dice were rolling on their own and no one was there. then abrupt outburst, someone had won a lot or lost a lot. another time Nevy brought out the widescreen, extension cords running from the house out to the sidewalk, had a Playstation hooked up, everyone crowded around outside playing NBA 2K. i watched for a little, let them be. was only that once, wished it happened more often.
before this, reminded me, decade ago, in south phl, living next to refugees from Cambodia. nice fellows. we talked as much as we could, communication barrier, i didn’t know one thing about khmer, shamefully. they knew some english. sometimes i’d wake up on my inflatable mattress in the sleeping bag i slept in, in my little room with bare dirty white walls, and hear them on guitar in the tight alley between houses playing folk music, singing in what i figured was khmer, singing their heart out, letting it bellow up that tight brick alley. in the back, d-boy slept, in a tiny third room that wasn’t really a room, his bed was in the closet, just a single mattress, no frame. the door to the back of the row had been sealed off by the landlord, Bob, with spray foam in the crack running all the way around the door. we cut it out one day, well after a year or two of being there, and found a little patio with aged cigarette butts piled in a corner. that was when i could see the place next to ours where the guys next door played their guitars. and i wondered about the confined corridor of it, the music barely going up the side of the houses before it went off into the air, wind-swept out past Jersey, Bruceland, past the Pine Barrens, off into the water. i wanted to think some sailor out there, some surfer maybe, some child playing at the shore would’ve heard what they were singing. even just the faintest aura of it, trembling in ears, quaking in bellies, sending waves tumbling over each other, the faintest aura, spirit come down, someone somewhere far away smiling for no reason, unaware the reverberations galloped past their ears, a light that suddenly hit them, dispelling the darkness they never knew they saw. ▨
Coming Up…
Next Release: End of November
As always: If you missed anything or can’t find an email, just visit the website to read through the archives.