The sun had set; the entire city had been cast off into the black hands of night. Cars still raced along the street, traffic was still rampant, and people still walked the sidewalks. But this was not because there was no threat out there, in the concrete veins and arteries of the city, there were still viruses and antibodies racing and dashing, one chasing the other, destroying, creating, up and down, all into the waning hours of the morning.
The man on the street corner was leaning under a lamppost, letting the cascading yellow shine over him and create wandering and brooding shadows along the sidewalk. He fished in his pocket for a few moments, then, finding what he was looking for, pulled out a black handle, with a death bringer attached.
'Excuse me sir, what are you doing?'� came the authority, the voice of a police officer from black and white car with a cherry on top.
The man looked up. First at the street light, just long enough to start seeing stars other than the few in the sky, and then at the officer. His vision sufficiently obfuscated, the man could answer the police officer.
'Nothing officer, just loitering I guess, is that a problem?'� he asked.
'No, no, just keep your nose clean, a lot of bad elements out tonight,'� the cop drove off with the man nodding as he left. Fingering the gun in his pocket, the man pulled it out just a bit, just to see it and feel it in front of his eyes, making sure it was really a physical tangible thing he could touch and control within his universe.
The man set to walking beneath the street lamps and the awnings of whatever houses were kind enough to offer. The biting, sharp wind of the fall night cut at the man's skin, he shifted and adjusted his coat, even going so far as to turn up his collar, but to no avail. It was a bitter night, but the scent of possibility and opportunity was on the air, along with the stink of whatever else modern cities could produce.
'You're late,'� his cousin, the drug dealer said as the man walked in.
'I know, I'm sorry,'� he responded.
'Do you have a piece?'� his cousin asked, smoking off his joint and letting the rings float and climb through the evening air inside his messy, ramshackle living room.
'Don't I always?'� the man responded. Just to show his honesty, the man withdrew his pistol and showed it to his cousin. The cousin gave a slight nod in approval and the man put the gun away.
'You know what you have to do, right, you know how I hate repeating myself,'�
'Yeah, I know, it gets done tonight,'�
The man left his cousin in his home just as company was arriving. A woman, the man noted, and a couple of guys, the man wondered if any sex would be involved. For a brief flash he was jealous, then gloating, then angry, then after the roller coaster ride ended, the man settled for being focused on what needed to be done.
Walking further and further down the filthy holy roads of the city, the man tried to imagine himself as a pilgrim on a journey, set on a path chosen by God and the stars. He didn't want to focus on what this journey was, rather for what it wasn't.
Fingering his gun, the man turned up his collar again as his eyes travelled over the street signs and locked doors taunting and tantalizing him as he walked. A severe screeching noise, the man jumped with a yelp. He had been walking in the street without even knowing it and a passing car had gently reminded him. What a city, the man thought to himself.
The night got darker. On and on he walked. The man had lost his car quite some time ago, a bust of a kind. A body in the back seat, fires set and people dying in the street. This was the poetry of his life. The man felt a chill. Feeling his wrists, the man could identify by memory the tattoos that had once been there. The words, the meanings, what it truly meant to be a part of something underneath the grandest sky, with God as witness and time as the only judge.
After the tattoo, the man looked at his watch; it wasn't his father's watch. His father would've stolen a watch like that. The man had learned a good deal from his father, far more than any book or school could've taught him. His mother learned too, about men, or what men could be, from a man like his father. He hated his family, yet the man also understood that without them, he really has nothing left to return to. Not that the man had had any plans for returning anywhere. His life was set in motion like a well made pocket watch, all things inevitable, all times immemorial.
'What do you want?'� the man behind the door yelled. The man had crossed a sea of garbage and filth, down alleys and back ways. Finally the man had come to a door, and knocked on it hard. One hand balled up in a fist on the door, the other coiled like a snake around the handle of his death bringer.
'My cousin says hello,'� the man said, unloading his gun into the thin plaster wood of the door. For that moment, the man had pride in his family and in his blood, he was a holy angel of vengeance raining fire upon the unworthy. But once the thrill faded and the chemicals in his blood dissipated, the man kicked the door in and found that his quarry was not in the crowd. Two men dead, three up in arms. The man dove behind a nearby couch with a woman out cold on it. The weather was rain, bullets and shotgun blasts raining from every direction. The man didn't pray, he wouldn't pray, his father never taught him that, especially in the heat of the moment. The man called on the devil and the stars, his savior was in his hand, he dove out from behind the sofa and unloaded into the two men, dropped them both with two bullets in each.
The man looked over his destruction. Rushing up the stairs, the man huffed and puffed, too many heavy afternoons of smoking and drinking with friends and women. Strange thoughts as he bolted up the stairs. Women, he had wanted to sleep with so many of them in his life time, yet only a paltry few could actually say he bedded. Was he less of a man because of this, what about the men he had killed, life taking life, surely he had showed his superiority in this cage of bones.
Kicking down a few more doors, the man found his target, his prey. For a flash of a moment he felt as a knight with a sword or a reaper with a scythe. The man's target was cornered and scared against a window, the smell of sex and death was all over him. Another creature popped out from the closet, baring a set of claws to match the mans, but the man was quicker. It was done. The surprise interloper, an unsuccessful pimp, was dead on the floor, three bullets in the throat and head.
The man looked up and found his quarry had leapt into death with wide open arms. Through the window and down into the alleys and metal fences below, a devouring mouth of urban squalor.
Glancing through the window, the man looked down to what his target had been carrying. Paper money, but really just green crinkled paper, sprinkled with white magic dust collecting like a soft fairy tale from a popped plastic bag.
The man began walking from the building, leaving the graveyard he created behind him. He looked up at the moon and grinned.

-2007

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