Please don’t shoot up today, but if you do, please make sure that the needle is clean.

I drove the Badlands not too long ago. I just had to check in, if only for myself.

“Down in that part of town, where when you hit a red light, you don’t stop.” – Bruce Springsteen

I was raised around enough old men to know that being from the K&A was a mark of pride, where they made the tough guys. Now it’s the zombie factory. The opioids hit you hard, and that makes me sad.

Do better PPD. You think those Oakley wraparound sunglasses, hoodies, and khaki 5.11 shorts are fooling anyone? At least find a cop, whose 6”2’ and weighs a buck fifteen… and keep him awake for a few days before you send him out on the streets trying to score and put someone away for 30 years.

You think that twelve-year-old dope boy on the corner can’t smell the trenbolone coming off you? That kid’s got ten toes down. Ten tall on the yard. I’ll bet you anything you’ve got some shitty clover tattoo on your ankle or some Italian name scrawled across your back. I’m gonna guess O’Connor and Esposito.

I’m just as guilty of anyone to working out to tracks that celebrate how rough it is.

“Came up two blocks off the Badlands.”

“Almost got murked in front of the same church my family got married in, dad got carried in.”

I’m not proud of it, but there is a dark ego in knowing that certain kinds of people can still survive amidst this nonsense. Our people.

There are so many beautiful places in this city. So many parks, museums, and old buildings… and then there’s this wasteland humans get ground up in. Throwaway people are discarded like organic refuse, biological waste. I know we treat you like the stupid little brother who got kicked in the head, and in many ways you are, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t part of it. You’re in the club. You know how it works here. We can talk all the shit in the world, but the moment someone outside the tribe starts up….

We don’t hire hitters around here. We call family.

Kensington. You’ve got that dog in you. I want you to take all that trench baby you’ve got thumping around in your chest and crawl up out of the mud. I know it’s not easy, but it’s not like you’ve ever known any other way.

Please know that you can always call home.

With every ounce of love I can muster.

“This one right here is for all of my Oodles of Noodles babies.”