Yesterday, walking down the street I ran into a man I used to know. I remembered him from the hallways and haunmted corridors of the primary school I attended, hunched low with his satchel amongst gray-faced trouble makers and bubbly 1st graders. He never said "hello". He only nodded or mmumbled sometimes when bekoned to susbstitute for ex-nuns and devout catholic saviors schooling eager young minds. I'm not even sure if he was a regular instructer, or just a fill in for empty chairs warn in by over-eaters and under-acheivers. He existed only when someone else stepped out for coffee and cigarettes, toffee bars and Florida beach house pipe dreams. And yet, even in spite of that, down the halls he was softspoken, yet confident. He knew his purpose, excepted it and moved on. But yesterday, on the corner of Broadway and Clark north of ghetto devastation, south of suburban alienation, he was no longer that man. His confindence had dwindled into glass bottles in brown paper bags and 25 cent meals at the food pantry at night. He glanced at me briefly, and even if I was vaguely familiar to him, I didn't matter. All that mattered was railcars speeding fast too fast and dirty pennies in barren urban fields, sick with big boots and trampled dreams of saddened stars of track and field. He was hopeless mad forever.
