Superior Ave. V (Homeless Joe)

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Eviction notice in effect, y'all.  Welcome to life on the outside.  Welcome to using a jacket for a blanket and a duffel bag for a pillow.  Welcome to not having to worry about cleaning your room.  How 'bout no food or showers.  Maybe a bird bath in the back of a gas station bathroom; splashing water onto faces, wiping dirt from foreheads with sleeves of gray hoodies.  Welcome to sleeping in the grass and wood chips.  What about hiding a duffel bag in the wilderness somewhere on the edge of where anyone will hopefully look.  Pulling a different sweatshirt out whenever needed, hoping the bugs don't find their ultimate nesting ground in my cleanest pair of jeans.  That's a good time.  Living out of a duffel bag stashed behind a dumpster on the edge of a city park  Sounds like fun, yes?  Waking up in the bushes down by the river, which is exactly where I was right now.  Hidden under the thick green foliage of a lengthy line of overgrown shrubbery planted along a chain link fence on the east bank of the flats, by the muddy banks of the Cuyahoga River.

The bush I was sleeping under was naturally thatched into a dome from the inside, like a long igloo lined in green leaves.  It would be possible for 6 or 7 people to catch a good night's sleep undetected by the public eye in this shelter.  From the outside it was completely hidden.  On our way back home to the Flats, as we were walking silently by one day a filthy man popped his head and shoulders out, looked around, spotted us and dropped back down into the bush.  Otherwise we'd have never known the spot existed.  One of us mentioned at the time huh, that would be a good place to sleep if we ever end up homeless.  That was only a couple weeks ago.

From the inside, the sunlight was broken into illuminated beams shining in the dusty air through the brush to the wood chips below me.  I was calling those wood chip a mattress.  I had been awake probably about five or six minutes at this point.  Cain Crowley had been sleeping with his head on the other end of my duffel bag last I knew.  He was already gone when I opened my eyes.  Now I'm lying alone in the weeds and brush, trying to decipher what time it is.  Daylight poked through the branches and leaves which only meant it's after sometime after six in the morning.  I could hear the voices of people walking by through a nearby parking lot, which meant it's probably closer to eight or so.  I heard laughing, a woman's voice.  She sounded hot and I wanted to pop my head out to catch a glimpse but I couldn't see myself coming off too smoothly, no matter how the situation worked it's way out... being the creepy guy living in the bushes and all.  So I just laid still with my head on my duffel bag and my feet stretched out before me.

This really wasn't all that bad.  I've had worse in the past several days.  This was actually kind of classy as far as hide-away outdoor flop spots are concerned.  At least it was cool and out of the direct sunlight.  I was able to fix my shots in such privacy as the shade under the naturally thatched roof of leaves of this, my new east bank location.  The last two nights Mr. Crowley and I spent on Jefferson's warm floor.  The night before that Cain and I spent sleeping on early morning benches at the 65th and Madison train depot, mainly a platform tucked away in a small valley of trees and leaves in the midst of the city.  The spot was out of the way and close to our path of shame where we'd scrape up our panhandled morning dime bag.  Only meaning we wouldn't have to worry about trains into Tower City or poorly told lies as tickets for rides.  We'd already be here when we woke up.

The three nights before that we spent on Jefferson's clean carpet, snoozing comfortable mornings with a warm blanket and a soft pillow.  The two nights before that I'd spent in the back seat of a vacant car that had been sitting up a dead end road for as long as we'd been walking by it each morning.  Cain slept in the front seat with it pushed back like a hospital gurney.  I'd only catch a few hours at a time, taking to the early morning east side streets, pacing the spindly filth laden E. 105 for an angry fix.  Or down Euclid to Coventry, begging change from those who aren't as tight pocketed as down Mayfield Rd. and into Little Italy, where the sidewalk's were harsh to those young fools trying to comb the streets for loose change.  I was enduring uncomfortable brow beat-downs from the locals who apparently weren't buying my out-of-gas story.  Hoping I could catch a generous handout from this lady carrying a bag of groceries out to her car, otherwise I'm heading back up Euclid.  Before all that we'd found shelter at Jefferson's since getting the boot from Cain's swanky loft apartment that I knew we'd never pay much rent on. 

“Damn, I wish I had something to smoke.”  I thought to myself, stretching out in the soil with my head on the tough fabric of my duffel bag.  The thick checkerboard webbing of shrubbery above me cut out the direct sunlight.  I was all alone, not wanting to move and start the day yet.  Just like lying in bed at home when I was a kid, trying to wring that last 30 seconds out of my bedsheets before having to get up for school.

Engulfed in a wood-chip mattress, with my head on a canvas bag for a pillow I laid without motion, thinking about yesterday afternoon, when I'd spent the length of a fat Bob Marley type joint, pulling back mouthfuls of grape flavored Mad Dog 20/20 with a surly slug they called The Prince.  A man without a roof or the gumption to get one.  He had a belligerent renegade beard crawling on his face and looked to have gone the last 8 years of his 30-year life-tenure without shaving once.  This odd character I'd met near the Cleveland Greyhound station, was 20¢ short on a pint of Mad Dog.  He would give the cashier at the liquor store a hold-on finger, leaving the pint on the counter.  Then he'd walk out onto the sidewalk and that's when I'd be passing by with nothing but a quarter in my pocket.  It would be all the money I'd have but since I was already high when he asked me, I gave it to him. 

Prince told me he'd give me a few pulls off his bottle and I declined, then he offered to get me stoned and I agreed.  There is a concrete garden, stuffed somewhere in the urban setting near the downtown Greyhound station, by a soccer field with shining silver bleachers I figured were on some kind of school property.  Levels of concrete circled and sat, forming shady areas to sit by running water fountains.  Trees and bricks, moms and kids.  Businessmen sat on benches reading newspapers, homeless men laid on others, using the papers as pillows.  I had never noticed the park before that day.  I followed this man into it.

He didn't introduce himself to me yesterday as the Prince, that's what he was called in his circle of cohorts.  He had a swagger about him that was something more than homeless but still less than socially acceptable.  His face could have served as a landing platform for WWII jets.  The guy's chin alone, covered in prickly black wires that struggled from his face in a 5 o'clock shadow that had grown into a midnight mess.  We climbed many levels of concrete steps to a round gathering of stone benches inside a circular knee high wall. There were  three other people kicked back with brown bags and cigarettes.  With me it made four.  Four grown adults and there wasn't a shower between us.  There were two other men in dirty shirts and an older woman who's short graying hair was a used Brillo pad in the breeze.  She was outspoken and over friendly, throwing her head back in violent fits of laughter with her chin high, exposing brown teeth when he thought something was funny; which was about every two minutes.

His royal highness was folding the brown paper bag down methodically away from the mouth of the bottle just a bit, as if cuffing an important pair of jeans that fell too long passed his ankles.  Neatening the top of the bag in a nice, crisp cuff.  It was a nervous habit in his ritual of pulling on gulps from bottles in bags.  The Prince lowered the pint and wiped his lips, handing it to me. 

“Here...”  He spoke with breath that could have soured my liver faster than this rot gut Mad Dog would.  “Hit this.  Keep it down and be discrete about it..  It's an open container charge if  one those foot cops walk by and see you.  Here... I'm gonna roll up a joint.” 

I took the bottle and gave him a nod.  “Prince,”  I said. “Why do they call you that?”

“It's the way he carries himself.”  The wiry tramp across from me tipped her bottle to me.  “He walks around like goddamn royalty.”  Her wine sloshed around the inside of the bottle as she gestured around the small circle of faces.  “And he ain't nuthin but a bum.  He ain't no prince.”

“Goddamn straight,”  he said, sprinkling the brown commercial grade weed into a rolling paper.  “I'm the king.”

“King of shit.”  The old women threw her head back like she'd just heard the joke of the hour come out of her mouth.  The other two men who had been in their own conversation stopped talking and looked her.

“Helen, you laugh like a god forsaken hyena.”  The old black man with in a white tee shirt scolded her.  “I can hear you comin from all the way down on first street with that cackle... tell her, Toad.”  He nodded his big black head to guy in a mesh trucker's hat sitting next to him.

“... He ain't lyen.”  Toad squealed.

The king of shit lit the joint and stunk the air with the whiff of cheap pot.  The kind some Mexican  line jumper probably compressed  into a marijuana brick and smuggled across the border in his ass.  The kind of shit that will do nothing but give me a head ache.  I know all this going into it, yet I puff on it anyway.  For about a half hour I sat there killing the bottle and smoking bad weed with Cleveland's prince of poverty.  Once the smell of refer wafted around, a couple more heads wandered into the circle of stone benches.  A young man of African descent who looked like he'd just bounced his fro off 1977's basketball court climbed the stairs with a tall skinny white boy behind him.  Basketball under his arm.  They sat on the other side of the Prince and pulled a face up to the joint, which was fat like a middle finger all the way down to the red, smoking cherry and could get the whole block stoned if it weren't such shitty weed.

  I leaned back against the short wall and I traded stories with the Prince about where we've been, what we've done.  Other faces popped in and out of the conversation but for the most part it was just the Prince and I.  His nickname fit him.  Although his huge rough face and old blue denim shirt he'd found in the trash made him look haggard, his step had the confidence of a man with nothing left to lose.  Piercing icepick eyes.  He took two hits and passed me the joint.  I hit it and reached to hand it back to the Prince, who declined and nodded to the old lady so I handed it to her.

“What, you're just going to skip me.”  She grinned big with skin that looked like she'd started smoking at age 12.  Her teeth were so brown they seemed to be made of wood, from where I was sitting

“His weed, his rotation.”  I said sitting back down.

“There ain't a thing I have in the world that woman can't have.”  The Prince motioned to the haggard hag sitting across from me, hitting the bud.  “I owe her my life 12 times over.”  He said, looking at her hunched on the bench.

“Honey, there ain't a thing you have in the world, period.”  she jabbed.  “And even if you did, you can keep it.  I don't want your broke down shit.  I can get my own, thank you very much.”  The woman passed the joint to the man they obviously call the Toad, skipping the bowling-ball black guy in the clean white tee shirt who didn't partake.  I don't know why they called that guy Toad.  I didn't ask him.

“And what about you child?  You're a cute one.  You got anything on you?  Holden anything for Moma?  A quarter, you got a quarter, chile?”  A couple of the others started laughing.  “How 'bout it honey...”  The filthy old hag turned to me with a wooden grin.  “You got any money for me?  I'll treat you real nice... he he... here, just give me like 10¢, I'll give you a sponge bath you'll tell your children about.”  I wanted to puke.

Instead I said something like, “Yeah uhh sorry, I can't afford it.  Do I look like I got shit?”

“Sponge bath?  She'll give you a hell of a lot more than that, this one will...”  The toad pointed with his index finger to the old woman who was propositioning me with more seriousness than I was comfortable with.  His index was sticking out of a dark knit glove with the fingers cut off, “She'll give you herpes and syphilis for starters, little bit a gonorrhea?  Sound good for 10 cents?”

“Nawww....” She'd probably smoked a million cigarettes in her day and sounded like it.  “My pipes are clean, baby.  Not like the outsides.  No rides for free but but it don't take much for a ticket.  Whatcha got sweety? ”  Helen the hag burst out into a fit of laughter like she'd made the funniest joke she'd come up with yet.  The toad and his friend started laughing at her. 

That was it.  “Alright...” I said, with sudden discomfort.  “Can we talk about something else?  I want to fucking throw up my lunch now thanks.”

The first thing I noticed after being introduced into this circle of transient wanderers was how those who call the dirty streets their home exist in a completely different society of their own.  Real people living hard lives without regard.  All sharing the same city as a living room and a toilet.  The junkies, winos, addicts, and broke as a joke homeless fools pulling up pavement pillows were for some reason more my speed than those I've known to carry thousand dollar purses and platinum credit cards; flawless faces with perfect teeth and expensive cars they'll trade in once the shimmer dies or once they no longer feel superior to the world for driving it.  I've had more a stimulating conversation with a man on the skids than I've had with the majority of people I know that can talk. 

Here in the dirt, were nobody has any room to point a finger.  Here on the muddy bricks where cantankerous blasphemy to the rule book takes place, where it's all been done before, where there's nothing that hasn't been seen.  On the bottom, where we're all the same.  When all of humanity is reduced to the same worthless slob, we can relax without regard to being judged on a book by the cover basis.  There will be no pressure to be anything but what I am, some guy these people are never going to see again.  The Prince didn't have a goddamn thing in this cold, crewel world yet he would give that woman what he did have without thinking twice about the subject.  Not just because he owed her his life 12 times over either.  The prince was wise to the ways of the wicked world and the system that ties us all together.  He would have given anybody his last dollar, even if it meant he'd be dead broke. 

The king of nowhere.

He sleeps on the sidewalk with a bold feeling of freedom.  Free from society.  Free to wander without strict thumbs to be pinned under.  Nobody dictating where to go, what to do, when or where to go to bed.  Rising and falling to the rhythm of the streets.  The Prince wanders in and out of taverns and urban city parks, preaching the word of feel-good logic.  Spreading a euphoric all-around love.  The doctor of Detroit Ave.  Practitioner of shitty weed.  Juggling the many downfalls of being homeless:  no food, no roof, no bed, no shower, no kitchen, bathroom, source of legal income, nothing.  Even with all those pit falls, according to the word of Prince, he gets an unexplainable feeling of freedom in the whole city technically being his home.  I wasn't there yet.  Hopefully I would not be homeless long enough to get this full experience.

“I live on divine timing.”  He told me. 

“Divine timing?”

“Yeah... moving to and fro with the flow, you know?  When I feel like walking, I stand up and move.  When I feel like taking a left, I do.  It is interesting how we all interact with each other in such a setting...”  He motioned his finger across the view of the inside of the city.  “... where we all share the same space, how we all feed each other's reality without really even realizing it.”

The joint came back to him and the Prince took it to his face until it was devoured by his beard.  I figured his mouth was in there somewhere, I just couldn't see it underneath his Fidel Castro facial hair.  He drew back a chest of smoke and kept talking.

“Things like... How I'll just be wandering around following the flow and I'll run into a situation that ends up beneficial to me, you know?  An opportunity I'd have missed had I taken a right instead of that left...”  He took another quick pull on the joint, expanding his lungs a bit more, trying to get the optimum hit.  The Prince continued with his sentence, toking and holding in  lungfuls between words, his voice came out strained, like he was bench pressing barbells while talking.

“Maybe I'll follow the flow...  just go... go, you know? Wandering, walking aimlessly and end up right at the right place where I need to be at that moment...like when I met you.”  The Prince exhaled a long lung into the air, sending out a marijuana cloud like a Cleveland Steamer. 

“What do you mean?”  I asked him, taking the spliff from his fingers and giving it the business.

“I mean when I met you, I was in a situation where I needed 20¢.  All I did was walk out and ask the first laid back person I saw which happened to be you and you gave me a quarter... and let me tell you, that doesn't always happen, looking like me?  Naw... you know how hard it is to get good silver on the first ask?” 

Saying nothing, I passed the smoking twist of pot to the old hag whose nose was in another conversation.

“...People think I'm going to turn around and spend it on drugs... and well, they're right... but... still, you know... uuhhhh.  Shit... I'm sorry, what was I talking about?” 

I was watching the joint make its way through the circle of stoned homeless.  “Divine timing.”  I said without looking at him.

“Oh yeah, divine timing, right... it's like ... I walk around the city a lot, right?”

“Right.”

“Well many times when I approach a street I want to cross, I'll get there right when there's a gap sufficient for me to jog across without having to actually stand there and wait for traffic to clear.  It happens more often than it doesn't happen.  To the point where I notice it and look for it, then I really notice it when it happens because I'm looking for it.  So you've got to wonder, is it my expectations causing me to continently hit that space in the traffic, you know?  Is it me projecting my will out into the universe, out into the machine, where it mixes, melds and communicates with all other's projected will and energies, causing me to hit the street just as the space in traffic appears and cars to hit the light ahead of me right when it's green?  You know?  You with me, or did I lose you?”

“Naw, naw...”  I said, “I'm right there.  I'm hearing you, and yeah, I would agree totally.  It's like, a couple years back I was staying over in Little Italy.  You know how it is over there, you've got to park on the street.  So I'd end up circling the blocks for a space to appear.  All those streets lined in parked cars, trying to find a space where I won't have to walk six blocks home and forget where I parked the next morning, you know?”

The Prince said nothing and gave a look that proved he was paying attention.

“So by your rationalle, on divine timing, I should be able to follow the flow, driving to where a person just happens to be leaving and in a hurry, sitting in her car, waiting for a space to appear in traffic so she can pull out... and I'm right there to take her space... so like, everybody wins.”

“Right, or something to that effect.  We're all constantly interacting and affecting our surroundings, you know?  How can we not, we're all part of the same reality.  That divine timing thing isn't magic, it's not weird, you know?  It's something perfectly explainable probably through quantom psysics probably, some kind of math I don't know shit about.”

“Sure, sure.”  I said, distracted and looking around.

“But the more you notice it, the more you notice it, you know...the more it happens.”  Prince straightened up like he was about to say something important.  “It's like... I don't know, with me... it's weird I see 11:11 on the clock like... all the time. I mean sure, whenever it's 11:11, right?  Like... twice a day, big deal right?  But it's not that, it's the fact that I rubberneck to catch the time, not at 11:10 or 11:12 but 11:11... more than randomly probable.”

“Alright.”

“But... no, it's like... “  His royal homelessness fumbled a bit, trying to gain the right pool of words in his head.  “It's like... I get this ... I don't know... felling of relevance when it happens... like... for some reason, when I catch an 11:11 on the clock I always find it odd, the timing involved when I'd see it.  I don't know, I guess I can't explain it.”.

“Ok... “  I said, honestly trying to follow him.  The marijuana had stolen my linear attention span, as well as his thought process.  It had me paying attention to six different things at once and had him talking in fragmented sentences; where his mind would move too fast for his mouth to keep up with.  So when when the tongue got too far behind, his mind would scrap the thought and start the mouth talking on a fresh idea.  In-between each thought would be a momentary lapse of focus in the Prince's mind, an effect of the drug, causing his motor mouth to fall into a mindless kickstand, things like:  I don't know... like ... and well, uuhh, yeah, uuhh.

“So like... what I'm saying is, it's not the number 11:11 itself or the fact that I keep seeing the same time on the clock, it's the feeling behind it.  Almost like a week sense of deja-vu.  I don't know, it's weird.  So... uuhhhh, it turns out, I'm talking to other people about it, you know... just throwing it out there and a couple people I know are like 'yo, yeah... me too.  I see that shit all the time.'”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.  So I do a little reading online about it and here it' s like a phenomenon of sorts.  A lot of people report catching the 11:11 when they'd specifically went out of the way to look at the clock, repeatedly.  And you know...sure, whatever, it's weird but whatever, it's just co-incidence, right?  I mean, so what.  You see the same time on the clock right?  But it's not that, it's what is behind that co-incidence that interests me.”

“And what's that?”  I was all inquisitive 'n shit, wondering where a man like the Prince gets online

He leaned his princely head back like a scholar, stroking that Charlie Manson beard, looking like the guitarist from Soundgarden or Faith No More.  He spoke with the assuredness of a man confident in his own beliefs, although off the wall and out in left field, he tied it all together nicely into a cohesive summery of personal insight, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about most people I know.  The Prince genuinely believed in his convictions and didn't feel the need to preach, sell his beliefs or change anybodies mind, the sign of a man truly at peace with himself and his spiritual opinions.

         “Well you know...”  He continued,  “Everyone's got their theories, you know... but the one I like best was this... it's a hint, or a clue that you left yourself to help yourself remember a certain reality concept when it was time for you to wake up.  When it was time for you and all of us to ... evolve.”

“Huh.”  I said again,.  “And what concept is that?”

“The idea and structure of synchronicity.  The timing of things.... like when you find an old picture of someone you haven't thought of in 10 years and 10 days later they're standing right in front of you... synchronicity”

“Right Right, like the Police record.”

“Yeah, man, for sure... the police... ha ha... I grew up listening to that shit.  Motherfucken Sting and shit.  But yeah... that's what they were talking about.  It's the idea of co-incidence.  Two events that are seemingly random that co-inside.  It's not weird, it's not magic, there's a perfectly good explanation for it.  If we could see the big picture we'd understand it but...” He reached out his princely homeless hand and pinched the joint that somebody's was passing to him.

“The big picture is a very big picture indeed.”  He continued without hitting it.  “We all effect each other in ways that we just can't see here in three dimensions... you know?”  The joint had sizzled down to the brownest of roaches, smoldering in his fingers.  He offered it to me and I waved a refusal, I'd end up sucking the thing down my windpipe. 

“So what does that have to do with the 11:11?”

“The 11:11 is like a blueprint of synchronicity, or more like an example of it, I guess.  So by noticing it when it happens, you'll learn how synchronicity works and you'll notice it more often.  The more you notice it when it happens, the more it happens.  Then you can kind of follow them, observe how it all ties in together, watching how it all goes down, how one thing finishes and another begins in its place.  It's the timing though... the timing of it all, dig?” 

“Sure.  I can dig it.”

“I knew that you could.”  Prince said, doing a poor impression of somebody from TV I couldn't remember.  “Yeah, but... we as humans are just waking up to this shit right now, you know... humanity is waking up as we speak.  You know... they say it only takes one half of one percent of humanity to wake up before we all start to.  One half of one percent, that's it.  That's all... that's our critical mass.”

“Yeah?”

“Yessir,”  The Prince went on, motioning with the dead joint still pinched between his fingers.  “You'd never know it, because nobody ever talks about it 'cause they feel stupid.  It's like the theory of the hundredth monkey, you know?  99 monkeys know how to wash off a piece of fruit in the river, it's just 99 monkeys knowing the shit.  But once that “hundredth” monkey learns it...”  He put his fingers up into quote marks.  “A critical mass is reached and enough minority of the collective conscious is in the know that it's heard by the whole.  Once that hundredth monkey learns to wash his shit off in the river, they all know how to do it.  Just... instinctively.  Monkeys all over the world, will know how... not just the monkeys hanging out down by the river.”

“Fucken monkeys.”  I said.

“Yeah, but that's kind of how we are here on earth, you know, monkeys in suits, yeah?  You know?  Monkeys with calculators.  Apes with a mortgage.  All waking up together, as the small minority of those who naturally wake up first start to hear the music and act accordingly.  When there is enough of the collective mind seeing the same thing... then we all see it.  Just... instinctively.”

Prince flicked the roach off into eternity and continued talking.

“You know, it's the same movement the 60's was about, love energy prevails, conquering all, it's just 50 years evolved.  We are waking up my friend.  You know what they call this period of human history, as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, where history, the present and the future are all happening at once.”

“What?” 

“The great awakening.... You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because when a collective entity as large and full of life as humanity is becomes aware, it effects the entire universe... One verse... Uni-verse, one song.  It's the infinite song that plays always on the other side, once humanity becomes enlightened as a whole, bridging the gap between this world and the next?  Sheit... we all grow then.”

“And where do you get your information?”  I said, trying not to come off condescending, actually interested in what he was going to say.  Which was nothing, he just looked at me and said:  “Eehhh... doesn't matter.”

The Prince.  Kind of a strange guy.

“It's like the fucking stones song, man.  'You don't always get what you want, but you get what you need.'  I have nothing and I don't go hungry, I always sometimes have food, usually have drugs, sometimes a shelter.  I get what I can from the whole without overdoing it and I chime in wherever I'm able... otherwise, I'm everyman, you know?  Everyman living on Divine Timing, my friend.  Watching it move, dig?  Studying its habits and learning them.  Getting high on the little things, man.”

“The little things?”  I twisted up my face, wondering where he was going next; distracted and wanting to get moving.

“The little things, man.  You know... Maybe the fact that your last cigarette comes at a comfortable time alone with your thoughts, or when you're in the face of a perfect view of the city off a back fire escape 15 stories up.  Or the fact that you walked up right at the right time to ask the right person for 20¢, when if you'd waited 5 more seconds, you'd have missed that opportunity completely.  The fact that it's such a beautiful fucking day, man.  The fact that the whole city's your red carpet, brother.  You've got to change your prospective.  The outcome of your situations will depend on your mind-state going into them.  You've got to look at life from the prospective of the little things.  Then your true prospective widens.”

“The little things, yeah?”

Prince had reopened the tin in which he kept his weed and was pulling out a cigarette that looked like it had gone through world war II.  He handed it to me. 

“The little things, man.  Like the fact that you gave me your last quarter and like the fact that this is my last cigarette and I'm giving it to you.  The fact that there's an extremely long story on how I ended up with this cigarette but I'm not going to bore you with it, seeing as I can tell you're restless and needing to go... but smoke it in the name of divine timing, my friend.  I know your situations will work themselves out better than where you are right now.”  The Prince nodded his head, referencing a conversation we'd had about my current homeless situation.  It was what engaged our divine timing topic.

I took the cigarette from him.  “Thanks, man... You're alright.  Divine timing, infinite... I like it.  I will... I'll smoke this in the name and yes... you are correct, sir....”  I said, standing up and dishing out a firm handshake.  “I do have to go.  You're alright, you know that?” I gave a grin with a few front teeth that should have seen the stiff bristles of a morning toothbrush, sliding the cigarette behind my ear. 

“Aahhh, he's a shit-bag.”  The old hag gave the Prince a gap tooth grin that could have seen the stiff end of a tooth or two. 

I was smiling when I turned away and walked back down the steps out onto the street to get lost in the traffic and the divine timing of the city.  When I got back to my hole in the bushes down by the river last night, I put the cigarette in my shaving kit, saving it for the morning somewhere it wouldn't get broken.  Then I forgot about it till just now...

... where I'm lying with my head on the canvas pillow of a duffel bag, under the cool shaded shelter of my temporary home down by the Cuyahoga river, trying to think of a good place I can hide my bag while I scrape the streets for my morning fix.  This shady spot we found was found by many others, I was sure of it.  Nothing I had would be safe sitting here unattended.

“Fuck yeah, that's right, I forgot about that cigarette in my shaving kit.”  I sat up in the naturally thatched dome of bushes and dug through my bag to get at it.  “Aahhh, that's fucking beautiful, thank ... you ... Prince.”  I mumbled to myself as I pulled it from the leather zip-up shaving case I'd found at a thrift store for $3.  Sliding the smoke behind my ear, I rearranged my bag so I could lay back down on it.

As I stretched back in the wood chips and rested my shoulders on the long cylindrical pillow, taking a lighter to the cigarette and filling the thatched hut of bushes with a hazy fog, thinking of how nice it was going to be to actually have this whole cigarette to myself since Cain wasn't here... who should stick his head through the opening in the bushes I'd crawled into?  That's right... Cain the fuck Crowley.  Think of the devil and the devil appears.  Mr. Insane meglo-brain, Cain Crowley, the devil incarnate if I've ever met the Prince Of Darkness, skating in on divine timing.  Fucking great.  I guess they let anyone into this joint, huh?  Now he going to stick his face all over half of my cigarette, the one I was supposed to be smoking in the name of, the one I'd got from the Prince of City Parkness. 

“Ahhh, good timing.”  Mr. Crowley nosed in an edged up to the opposite end of my duffel bag, “I haven't had anything to smoke today, you mind if we share that?”  There was nothing I could say since he shared everything he had, including all the dope he didn't hide from me.  He extended his lanky legs to stretch through the wood chipped carpet of our new rent free living situation, facing a different direction as was I.  And just like that, my cigarette I saved for the morning was instantly cut in half, just like f'n that.  And look who gets the shit end of the whole divine timing deal this time.  Me.  Mr. Crowley must have been on his flow to have came sailing into the smoky bush hut when he did.  He had woken up early and ceramic-sink-showered in the same gas station bathroom I was about to hit.  He smelled like the soap in the dispenser there. 

“I figure we'll head over the bridge and hit the Shell station so you can clean up.” He said, puffing on the cigarette and passing it back to me.  “I found a spot yesterday that will be perfect for you to hide your duffel bag.  Nobody will find it where I have in mind.  This place here isn't a very safe spot to stash your shit.”  He said as we killed the smoking twist of tobacco dead.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”  I said.  “I didn't want to leave it here.  The only way we knew about this place is because someone stuck their head out the top, so you know other people know about this spot.”  I looked around the inside of the bush to find the hole he'd probably used as a quick periscope and couldn't see it.  The shelter of foliage was thick enough that it would probably keep me somewhat dry if it started raining right now.  The wood chip and dirt floor would become a muddy and soaking wet problem, luckily today was a hot summer morning without a cloud in the blue Cleveland sky.

When the Prince's cigarette had been extinguished I drug my duffel bag onto my shoulder up over Center Street draw-bride and down a few blocks to a gas station where I washed the twigs and berries out of my goatee.  Cain showed me a spot behind a dumpster that butted up into a bushing of trees, leaves and strategically placed wilderness, smack dab in an urban arm of the city.  Mr. Crowley was right, nobody would ever probably think to look where he'd pointed out.  I stashed my bag and took my bird bath in the sink.  When I came out of the bathroom, Cain was sailing out the Shell station's doors with two hot coffees in his hand.  He had the equivalent of 'drive, drive, drive!' on his face.

“Go, go, over that way...”  He was pointing on the other side of a thick line of pine trees acting as a fence to block off the commercial from the residential properties.  Handing me one of the coffees, he warned:  “Watch, it's hot.”

“So, what... you stole these?  Is that why we're running away?”

“Please... we're not running... I just don't know if he saw me or not, the cashier was coming out of the cooler when I was walking out the doors, my back was to him.  I don't know if he realized I had anything in my hand or not.”

“Yeah, so we're running away.”

“Drink your coffee,”  Crowley said dry as a Eucharist wafer.

“No sugar I suppose?”  I dug.

“Nope,  No time... no time for love Dr. Jones. Aagghrhhh.  Fuck!”  Cain sipped at his hot black java, burning the roof of his mouth on the first sip. 

“Watch, it's hot.”  I came equip with the divine timing of humor.  Mr. Crowley didn't find it funny.  I was just happy to have a hot cup of coffee to wake up to.  It was a luxury I had not had the pleasure of in quite some time.  Coffee is one of the many things I take for granted every day I wake up and flip on a switch in my bedroom to turn on the lights, every time I open the door to a new slew of food in the fridge and when I hop in the car to drive over the bridge, instead of scamming my way onto the train so I can scrape a fix up off the sidewalk. 

“What?  You're not happy with a free coffee?  You need sugar too?  You want me to go back in there and get a couple creamers for you?  You know what Thomas, you've got to learn how to appreciate the little things in life, man.”

“Naw, man.  Naw.”  I said, pulling the top off the Styrofoam coffee cup and blowing at the steam escaping from the top.  “I don't need any sugar, I'm sweet enough.  The little things.  Right.  Appreciate the little things.  Yeah, original... I never heard that before.”  Sarcasm was my other name.  “I thought we agreed not to steal from this gas station, you know... don't shit where you eat?  What happened to that?”

“Well... it's not like we live here anymore.  The whole city is our home now, Cleveland is our living room, Thomas.  We've got a whole slew of gas stations to burn and sinks to shower in.”  Mr. Crowley raised his arms in a victorious V, like it was something to celebrate.  His coffee spilled hot down his arm when he did.  “The city is your carpet, the -- Oowww, fuck that's hot!”

“Oh, so you couldn't grab me a muffin then?  To go with my cuppa mud?  Huh?  Something to chew on?”  I was looking down at the small bulge in his front hoodie pocket and the crinkling of plastic wrapping when he walked.  I was hungrier than Gandhi with something to prove.  Cain was holding out on me, with a look on his face that said 'get your own food.'

“Drink your coffee.”  Was his response.  Crowley turned his head and kept walking, squinting in the summer morning sunlight.

I rolled my eyes down the street and they cleared a path for my ego, which was pretty much null and void once I entered the realm of sleeping in bushes down by the river.  With that being the back drop for the nexus of the day, we headed back down through a winding of streets and down a hill, toward the long desolate shadows under the Detroit-Superior Ave. bridge, on the beginning of another daily search for another malignant bag of east side poison.




OOO