Tin cans

Most of the time, me and my cousins want to go barefoot and kick tin cans through the streets...

We volunteered to be street kids, growing up on oreo cookies and river water, swatting bugs off our faces.
At nine, we held our first guns and shot at walls in an abandoned hospital. One ricocheted and hit my cousin in the shoulder. We never held a gun again after that. Knives seemed safer anyways.
Fed a steady stream of folk tales and faerie horror stories, we spent most of our nights hunting monsters through desolate streets. During the day, we fought another kind of monsters...
School got in the way of living. School was a factory of monsters. It disabled our breathing, enabled our nerves, caused tears to stream down our cheeks. We were illiterate bastards without a wheel to change or adapt.
Eventually, our parents caught on. They put rules and stories between us. Boring stories. Distanced us like railway tracks. Made us isolated cases of withdrawal symptoms. Rules were implemented on us, on me...it made me wish I still had bottles of acid in my cabinets.
We grew. They grew up. I grew up. Laughed and cried. Forgot and replaced. We became I. And I was made to campaign against aids, cigarettes, drugs, sex, violence...
We wore ribbons in our hair, ties around our neck. We cheered in games, did our homework, stained our fingers with ink.
Our hearts were opened and broken. We helped people who didn't need help.
We were mainstream puppets until we met in a street corner market once more, for a bag of oreo cookies, at the age of twenty.

Me and my cousins took off our shoes and kicked a tin can through the streets, feeling the ghost of knives press against our thighs.

Comment moderation.

Cross eyed, with back pain and black cats. I think the lady down the street wants to publish a book about how astronomy and science tie in with religion and tradition. Even if she throws buckets of cold water on neighborhood brats, I think it's supposed to be a Young Adults book, perhaps even a childrens' book. She was inspired by the legends recited in old poems of Greek Mythology, Fey's tales, and Yoruba 'pattakas'.
The thing is, she has white hairs sprouting from her dying roots, and her neighbor doesn't understand why old people are given a driver's license and the right to drive. It's like putting suicide crashers on your friendly street corners. They pull out of parking spaces with a hand over their eyes you know. But then we feel bad, she thinks, because old people have the same right to get from point A to point B whenever they want to, just like the population of young people.
Cause, if we're going to go off on old people's physical incapacitation brought on by time...then why not mention the young people's incapacitation brought on by freewill, i.e. liquor and drugs.
But drugs are a hush hush subject amongst teens, it's right cause it's wrong, cool cause its pathetic, totally awesome in a totally lame way.
Thing is, we take incapacitated people's license away, so all in all, this whole argument has been a tangent of fancy fallacies and pointless dead ends.

So, this old lady that lives down the street, she owns an albino cat with heterochromia. One blue eye, one yellow eye, framed by white fur. Her neighbor wonders why it is that that cat seems so attractive. Is it because it's an uncommon thing? Yes, it probably is. But, at the same time, such an uncommon thing is subject of persecution as well as admiration. A jealousy complex? We want to be special by being individuals who, at the same time, are looking for unity and understanding. But, we want to be unique. When we find something along the way that actually turns out to be unique, we say: "Pretty!" and then burn it at the stake.
Fallacies, fallacies and pointless arguments.

So, about this lady that lives down the street, her neighbor adjacent from her house believes in respecting old people because of an old saying that runs in his family: "Las canas se respetan", "Respect your elders".
He looks out his window and wonders what has happened to the world these days. In olden times, old people were respected, even if white hair and old age came with its severe draw backs of incapacitation to do manual work and therefore bring home the bacon. But still, there was wisdom in every crack and valley that broke apart the skin. Accumulated knowledge.
Now a days, to put it in strange terms, we want the wisdom without the cracks. Aw, come on he says, it's like buying groceries for free. Equivalent exchange applies to everything...
He shut his window though, as someone screamed out "false argument! Dead end!"

I really do think the old lady down the street wants to write a book, even if she doesn't finish it cause she's about to die, right? So I told her that, and she replied: "We are born to die. We are living and dying."
And I thought, damn, her neighbor was right, you can't give a driver's license to a person who lives to die...