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Not a Haiku
So what happened to that kid you used to write about, you know the one?
He's in jail.
Why?
He'd been breaking into my friend's house, stealing things; she caught him in the act coming through a window; he ran away; eventually cops found him because he doesn't hide very well; she's pressing charges; he won't cop a plea thinking she will drop charges; she won't.
Is that a dangerous situation?
I think it may be.
For whom?
For everyone.
What will happen?
I am not fond of my thinking on this issue.
What does he need?
I think he needs his parents.
Where are they?
In jail.
Heroin
As I purport not to make things up I would like to offer a correction to a recent post wherein I stated that a specific local murder had to do with anger when in fact I had no idea if anger was an issue or not. Also, I said the victim was shot three times point blank in the head. I made that up. I have no idea in which part of his anatomy the man was shot, the one found lying dead in the middle of 2500 Palmyra Street, New Orleans. Three times point blank was from another area murder that I have not mentioned, one which was suggested to be a revenge murder. Or I'm making that up too.
It is my idea that revenge murders, and intimidation murders, the latter being when people are silenced to keep them or their family members from testifying, are often carried out with particularly violent affect, multiple head shots and whatnot, to send a message, and one that is mostly very effective as very few people will testify against these unimaginably violent street killers. One intimidation killing can go a long way in suppressing the civic-mindedness of even the most upstanding member of any given neighborhood. This may be all wrong. I am making it all up. But as they are only my thoughts I make up I hope to plead to a lesser charge than the one I am guilty of when I blatantly change or make up facts.
It was two guys, young heroin junkies, that killed the man on Palmyra, and it wasn't out of anger but for the the man's late model Ford F150 pickup truck. The victim was 68-years-old.
I've been thinking about violent crime a lot lately because it is locally on the rise. Law enforcement seems less visible than it was for a few years. Crack cocaine is less the scourge of our neighborhoods (not because it is less in use but because the users are co-existing more comfortably with non-users) as heroin cycles back into the picture to be the drug of choice among the young, reckless children of forty-something crackheads. I've been watching particular young heroin addicts for a few years now but ignoring it, and news reports that call heroin the new threat I ignore too. Paying attention to facts is hard and sometimes ungratifying. Times were a little rough here during the economic grandness of the nineties. Now with recession the Iines at the food bank are spiking the graph. The poor are getting poorer. And with that anti-crack, heroin, making new dedicated customers by the day the face of local drug dealing changes, and its like we have to start over with the rudimentary stages of the greed and power struggle.
There are also some positive things happening here in this great New Orleans gumbo and someday I hope to relay to you a few of those things as well. If I can see my way to it.
Dead Kitty
That was a mean and thoughtless thing to do--naming that kitten Notyetded, is what I'm thinking as I approach my driveway to see a little lifeless black and white ball of fur curled up on the grabble (tm) apron, with a small piece of intestine protruding from the young belly. As this is perhaps the fifth or sixth dead cat on my property since I moved here I have to say I really don't know if people dump them specifically by me or if the deaths themselves occur here. A pretty good pack of dogs worked this neighborhood for about three days recently and after this kitten showed up in the driveway the dogs have not been seen. So maybe it was the dogs. I left it there overnight and in the morning scooped the rain soaked stiff carcass onto a shovel blade and transported the dead kitty to a clump of weeds on the Pentecostal property. The little left paw was curled at the wrist, covering the nose. I don't know what happens but after about a year if I go look for remains, there will be none. Like I said, I've done this five or six times now, but you'd never know it to search the Pentecostal property.
Well, a couple of days later I see Notyetded crawl from under the "cat gap" I left under the NO EXIT sign which boards up the side entrance to the dance hall. I'm thinking about calling him Frank as there is that slight resemblance to my boyhood cat. But Frank was a warrior cat and this little one is not that, I think. I probably won't call him anything.