Getting Down With Willie - Dealers Hustlers AddictsOn The Streets of NYC 1989

Getting Down With Willie 

Dealers Hustlers Addicts

On The Streets of NYC 1989

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All are imperfect 

In this human world

Yet perfectly imperfect 

All Willi had was his block

A glass cathedral 

Shooting up to the sky

Willie sells crack to live

Refrigerator box in a alley

Sleeps down in the park

Sometimes the subway

Kings of Manhattan 

Destroys low income housing

Builds more cathedrals

Self enclosed 

Glass worlds

That control it all

Philanthropy?

Art museum? 

What good does it do?

Fans egos and elitism

Legitimizes the lies

Bleeding out in a

Culture heading 

Down fast

To the killing floor

But Willie is the criminal

Problem for society

Sells drugs to live

Whatever he finds

Nothing trickles 

Down on these streets

Willie gets kicked 

Out of the Met

He wants to sleep

Skyscrapers

Money are God 

Climb the rungs

Every action 

Has a consequence

Every action has 

A consequence!

"Just say no Willi! Just say no!"

Nancy Reagan

Willi heard someone puking

He takes a piss on the wall

Keeps moving 

Down the street

He's closer 

To understanding 

Human nature

Never read Freud

Jung or any lofty 

Elitist nonsense book

It's all there 

Down on these streets

You just gotta look

Willie laughs at the 

Fur coated fools and

Marks buying cheap 

Shit on the street

Willi laughs at the suckers 

From the suburbs

Out of town jokers looking for 

A high time in the city

Willie will send them 

To the right place

Knock three times

Put the money 

Under the door

It's pure 70% crack

Blow your mind 

In fucking two

As he takes the money 

Suburban white boys

Willie knows who he is

He knows what to do

It's day by day

Take or be taken

The streets 

Speak the truth

Real humanity

That night had a true honor 

Willie said I was his brother 

He said I could sleep in his 

Refrigerator box

I says "no"

Can't take your box 

Willie says

No white boy

Laughing 

"The grate is warmer"

Steam rising

Willie looks like

Street mystic

In steam myst

We make a little fire

Garbage burning

Can see my breath

Willie hands me 

Dirty cup whiskey 

I down a shot

Smiling

Willie makes a

Silent toast 

Inside we both

Lock eye's 

Laughing

We see the

Goodness in all 

But no words

Are needed

No words

Needed

***

Spent time on the streets of NYC to learn some truths about what was going down in my country. 

Nothing has changed, people dying today on streets like flies.

If you live on the streets you have a PhD in life.

If you get a PhD, in some elitist University, you know nothing. Your spirit is dead, and you're living in some loser world trying to impose your secular norms on all those around you.

Everything here is "true enough" (oh, dear Wittgenstein!") which I'm writing.

Sleeping in a refrigerator box, drinking whiskey from a dirty cup, my time with my teacher Willi, were among the best moments of life.

***

Written by David Arndt on the streets of NYC while drinking whiskey with his friend Willie in 1989 while gazing up at those glass cathedral Skyscrapers dotting the skyline whose lies  killing all that matters one breath at a time. 

Revised October 1st, 2022.

***

Image - Streets of NYC By Lynn Goldsmith.

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. He knows the dark side of NYC more than me so he thought he would join us here and we will all get high as kites.