Yeah, I feel the beat, man, do I ever feel it. I can't help but feel it. How can you? It's just there, the air you breathe, echoing thunk a thunka against your bones. And it drives me, man, it really drives me. Full throttle, baby. You know how the bones go, don't you: whump bumpa bumpa, whump bump. There's never been a word more precise, I groove on it. It slides me right into the old groove, low friction, I keep getting faster and faster. You never know what'll happen next; everything's always happening; somebody might get killed, you know. That's the day-by-day, the calling play-by-play.

The way it was before was great. That's when I lived in Jersey, I'd catch the PATH train into town from the Hoboken terminus. Every morning it was standing in the crowded cars waiting for departure minute, the doors open to the platform with everything smelling, the air thick with a warmstale stench of rotten eggs and piss. With a day after day like that, I usually was nauseous: that sour jumpy tummy from more than a couple beers a half-night's sleep back. I never lost my cool, though, no not once, though I seen quite a few heaving in the aisles; I just played along to the groove, tapping my feet, nodding my head, a shake of my hip if I really got going. Tschu, tschoo tschoo tschu, tschoo tschoo tschu, tschoo tschoo tschu, some wild-ass airbrakes or something, and we be going tschu, tschoo tschoo tschu like there's no tomorrow. It glues me back together, and how it binds me! I'm hard as rock, strong as steel, I'll steal a seat from an old lady, and by lunchtime I'll be ready to kill. It's a big city out there.

Like not long ago, back on the old job. I was walking down the street, right around the Bryant Park area, middle of the afternoon it was. I'd been sent out on an errand, and was heading back to the office, down the old sidewalk. And there's this car, nothing special, the kind of nothing car the owner puts in a real two-bit alarm system. This one's gone off, it goes reeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I couldn't tell if it'd been broken into, or if someone had just looked at it cross-eyed. That's why everyone always walks on by; it goes reeeeeeeeee and if people were dogs we'd all have been howling. I was almost past before I finally got it. It wasn't reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, it was reeeeeureeeeeureeeeerureeeee . . . I couldn't move, man, I kept going too fast. I went with it, I had to, a good twenty minutes of that and I was mmmmm. Kind of makes you, want to.

Of course the boss catches me right inside the door. Right in front of Ms. Lipserool, his gal Friday, and my dreamgal All Week. Madame Uh Huh. Fridays when she's in his office, I start to get shaky, but then I catch it, the beat gets going, she goes uh huh, uh uh huh, uh uh uh uh huh uh huh.

My fist could go through my desktop if I wanted it to. Go through anything I wanted.

Right in front the boss shouts, "Where the hell have you been?! You've been gone almost an hour!"

But Ms. Lipserool keeps typing away tic tic ticka ticka tic tictic ticka ticka, so I say, "Hey, you told me to go out--never know, might go out and kill someone."

Glancing at my knees he sputters disgust, "Fucking moron, how the hell'd you get grass stains in New York City? Run up to the park and give a bum a blow job?"

Ticka ticka ticka ticka tic tic tickaticka tic tic, "Hey, I try harder. I killed a Martian. You on me and it'd be fucking Christmas," tickaticka tic tickaticka tic tic.

I think--you know how it goes. It's late at night, the cars out on Broadway passing uurrrbrrrruummmmnnsssss. There's the subtlety I fall into. The occasional elevated picks me up, something I can't put into words. The Doppler effect screeching too loud through my bones, busting up my brain.

But then, it gets really quiet. A toe anticipates a wriggle. Reemerging reassuring it goes pip plip plip, plip plip pip. Sounding out of the bathroom, bouncing off the hall. My ears rip pip plip plip, plip plip pip. Those upstairs, they flush Pampers and peed-on pillows down their toilet, and when that clogs, they shove them up the bathtub spigot, mush them down through the drain grate. It goes pip plip plip, plip plip pip from the ceiling. The plunkunk of a plaster bit into the tub whips me just this side the speed of sound.

I think about it like Ms. Lipserool's here. She's always her. Her real name is Honey. Honey's always here, always been.

I say, "Hey, Honey, yeah."

Honey'd round her lips, wet them, she'd say, "You know, sometimes you're doing something, and then sometimes you're doing something else."

I bow my head up and down, telling her straight beat, "Yea Hon, you know, sometimes I gotta go with one thing, sometimes I go with another. Way it goes, with the flows."

My ear resting against her breast, I hear it going plumpa plunka chunka plunka.

Outside some kid yells, "Hey Baby!"

I tell her, "Yea. Hey Baby."

It goes pip plip plip, plip plip pip, plip plip, plip, pip plip plip, plip plip. Killed many a good person. I can't wait for it to get cold, for radiator weather to start aknocking. Everything dies in winter.