sleeps

Can you tell I've been sober? I can. responsibilities demand it. I looked across the dark night, across the same abandoned building tops, across a city of poverty.
Poppin', let me ask you this, do you intend to vote?
Usually no, but this time, yes, I intend to vote.
You do. Why this time?
Because now we got somethin' to vote for.
Have you ever voted before?
No, but this time, yes.
Are you registered?
Not yet but this time I'm gonna go.
That's the word? What you're sayin' is that's the word in your hood?
Yea, there's a black man in it.
Because Obama's black.
But I tell you what, these guys living in this probably don't know who McCain and Obama are. They got one thing on they minds, money.
What if someone brought papers to the street to register people to vote, do you think they would vote?
Now that's an idea. That'd be somethin'.(like i had said something radical).
Jesus, I don't know man. We live in the same shit, you're just a few blocks down the way but damn I hope there's a change.
There's got to be. These kids, some of them, have nothing but fear. That's why they usin' guns, afraid to use these. Poppin' says, holding up his fists.
Right. But no one's listening to the preacher. I know what they say, I've been to the rallies, I've seen it, those kids see the media, they'll go nowhere sitting in church. (I was being cynical but there was truth to it.)
Yea, shit. I don't know Poppin'. (we call each other poppin')
I nod and move out, wheels churning, looking for a solution from the bottom of poverty. There is no other way I wondered. The answer can't be rational, if it were It'd be done. The answer must be logical but not rational. The answer was in art somewhere, not in pictures or media or process but in concept.
Too vague you fucking lunatic, says the voice of fanaticism in my skull. I thought of Buttercup, little pieces gone, taken, routed.
Fuck you, is my response. Add to it or die, just fucking die. my custom over response holding me grounded and flailing. I have a creed but no leader, what a romantic joke.

Buttercup calls.
I can't pee, it's terrible.
Think of waterfalls and prancing horses.
I pee but I feel like I have to all of the time. they say it is a side effect of morphine and I'm on a lot of morphine.
You'll settle out, you'll find your rhythm. Give it forty days, not fourteen.
I know, that's what Jayson says (the surgeon). He says you've had just about the most serious operation you can get so don't expect to feel better, not for a little while, for a few more weeks.
I sip my beer.
Baby.
Yes.
You're falling asleep, the medication is working.
I should have called you before I took the medication.
I know, but you need your sleep.
Silence.
Babe!
Yea, I think I gotta go. 1 more sleep. She counts the sleeps before I see her again.
One more sleep. And we disconnect. One more disconnect.