The Hamlet Project

How’s it shakin’, bacon?
What up?
You chillin?
Sometimes in intense un-normal situations,
The return to normalcy can be bracing.
Tony told a story about walking through Hackney
Where he saw this guy he knew from his neighborhood –
Someone he greeted pretty regularly, who knew his kids and such.
So this guy he knew from around the way
Was standing on the street
Brandishing Molotov cocktails
Surrounded by a crowd that was scared and confused
Probably, too, police or security, trying to talk him out of it.
It’s a heightened situation
And as Tony goes by he nods at this guy, like always
Says his standard hello and the guy nods
At Tony, lets his weapons drop for a moment
In order to say hi to Tony and his kid
Then once they’ve passed, picks his weapons back up
And once again menaces the crowd.
Tony doesn’t know what happened then –
He kept moving
But I wonder if that little dose of routine
That little break into normalcy
Got the brandishing, violently inclined man
To reconsider what he was doing,
To suddenly see the weapons in his hands –
To be as he was, at least for a moment.