Invasion of the Crackheads

I can't leave my home without being accosted by drab leather hairy punks and sad fat old ladies in the beat highrise next door. They ooze from the walls like medicine and smell like a month's worth of pee and cigarettes. They are pulled forward by legions of frothing, snapping pitbulls in the frenzy of bloodlust. Approaching me nonchalantly, like I am their right and proper neighbour, they sycophantly speak with mouthfulls of marbles asking for cigarettes, spare change, marijuana, ether and beauty. I mumble something unconcerned and removed in reply then shuffle off into the new dawn to class. They haven't gone to sleep yet. They scrounge all night for crack-money in my garbage bags and on St. Laurent with their squeegees and plaid pants then smoke a rock in the back alley behind my house and jitter the night away in a forgotten euphoria, huddled amidst the stones and fallen branches before, red eyed and lusting, hitting me up for smokes as I leave my house at 8am. Is this really what they would make of the instantaneous miracle of their lives? something so benign and hopeless. How many cracked out strangers are there in the city and throughout time? Who will give them cigarettes at the end of the world? I am amazed that their beds don't swallow them as they sleep, and that they, like me, still keep on waking into this distorted dream...