I hear the rumblings of garbage trucks. Picking up canisters and dumping the contents into the back amongst the bad fish that Mrs. Yablamowitz threw out. The empty milk containers with the expired dates on them. Banana peels all black and bruised with stickers saying Chiquita. Dog shit that yuppies downtown pick up in plastic lunch baggies. Q-Tips with wax on the ends. Old prescription bottles of meds emptied and flushed down the toilet. All kinds of notes and letters to former lovers letting them know just what bastards they truly are. Pens out of ink. Fried liver, Ms. Smith’s kid didn’t eat. And, pieces of cloth with blood dried on them. Cotton balls, cotton balls, cotton balls. And beer bottles broken with labels peeling off.

All this noise. My head aches as I lie in bed ,staring at the copy of Brothers Karamazov on my nightstand. Too loud, too early to take in Dostoyevsky. The Russians would understand. Fyodor is to be savored, adhered to, read out loud with coffee stains on the pages. A bottle of aspirin is next to it. Russian literature and pain killers. It’s that kind of morning.

The garbage trucks have left my neighborhood. They’ve gone on to disrupt others. Lawyers cheating on their wives. Mechanics hungover. Grocery clerks crawling into bed. Cops counting the days till retirement. Criminals counting too; one more job, and I’m done, they say. Folks in diners eating bisquits and gravy. All of them awake on this planet. And, the snow falls. blankets are kicked off my bed. I am naked.

The mirror does not lie. Some say it makes you look bigger, but that’s not true. It shows you your true reflection. What you are. I stand before it and pledge allegiance to the common man. The ones on the back of the garbage truck. The ones without student loans to pay back. Those that find themselves in a hell called marriage. My hand is on my heart for you.

It is morning. Go get ’em boys.