Calle Huertas

Jorge's machete gleams in the moonlight over scared scrawny Daniel painting pictures of drunk tourists and old buildings on stone lettered streets          
                       walked by women who endured rape in the Sahara to be raped by broken dreams, taunting English boys dazed by their own spinning stone lettered heads among petty dealers in knock-off jackets            
                  closing a deal with the Danish kid just returned from Lavapies speaking in utopian tones about French strawberry fields practicing Bob Dylan poses in water puddle reflections his façade smeared like color fields in the rain.    
   
Pablo  dirty and unwashed watches with excitement pretty girls tripping over heels  
                    even he knows vulgar pick-up lines work best on Friday,  
          Gustavo chain smoking like a stinking addict one cigarette after the other between alien yellow fingertips    
complains like a man happy with unhappiness  
                                            about Spain about Argentina about women but never about the French.    
   
Labyrinths lead to plazas twisting down cobblestone hills    
trekked by zombies with purple eyelids  
                                       the smell of empty beer cans, piss-stained walls, flowers growing out of the cracks in the floor where men balance trombones between the holes in their toes.  
 
All those jazz cafes!  
                     those Popularts and Segundos those red lights beneath Chinese writing the ruthless smiles of Colombians in the doorway the Chinese working harder selling beer out of their backpack, six cans for five.    
   
Touched with skin ripped off the bone    
of the finger turning drab cobalt to dirty gold  
                                                shining on the homeless asleep underneath the old ladies who take in    
the laundry and humanity  
                         and still have the dignity to walk their dogs in this shit where the art is free for the taking as long as you can carry the garbage on your back.