Chicago, 1974
Photograph by John H. White
“Would you mind if I took a picture?”
Lester had the rock knuckles. Dry skinned, with the creamsicle polo.
And street charisma. Scene stealing when he preened in the photo,
with a hand full of gel caps. Half-fiend, fueled by his dreaming in proto-,
the only path he knew was the L tracks. A walking ode to the motto
“Play the hand your dealt.” In turn this street was the road that he’d follow
to which he deemed as his dojo, lessons soaked through the bottle.
Earned his stripes, for dolo, although most the ribbons were Blue Pabst,
and half the trash was lotto tickets he scratched and tall necks he threw back,
driving his El Camino through the grotto, now riddled with new jacks.
It was his block. And he knew that.
Marlon walked as a bundle of tics. Bumbling. He fumbled with wit.
His tongue unequipped for quips and hand unfit with stumbling writ.
Described as happy, actually naïve. Comfortably numb to the shit.
Actively looking for passive relief, Summer time basked in reprieves,
looking for a good time regardless of the number of quids.
Relapsed. Lost to the beat, as addicted as any addict that breathed.
He just passed through the streets. Grasped to the ridge.
Simple. Getting high enough to ignore the past that he lived,
Boundless. Loosely wound, street walking as a fountain of nerves,
in his only pair of jeans, and a yellow sweater he found on the curb.
Smoke curled in poofs. Bar tattered, same as the roof.
Conversation unfurled uncouth. Bar talk, chattered lies same as the truth.
Lester, one seat. Marlon the next. One confident, the other was less.
The lame, and the spur of the boot. Next to one another in front of the booths.
Depressed, midday drinking. What else is there to do?
Slunk in his seat, Marlon turns. “Hey, can I bum a square?”
“Sure, kid” Lester thumbs his pair of jeans and pulls a marb one Hundred, bare.
“I’ll smoke one with you.”
As soon as they’re out the door it’s
“Would you mind if I took a picture?”
“Sure, kid.”
And it’s a Pulitzer for John H. White, for the still that he’d get
of two people who had never met,
aside from a cigarette, a neighborhood, and skin that’s tinted.
For a newspaper that probably wouldn’t waste the text to have their obits printed.