this seems familiar

my friend called me yesterday and asked me to watch his newborn next week...i agreed, flattered that he and his wife would trust me with that responsibility...although i have never changed a diaper...and it will be joyful, to have influence over an infinite life...to be able to tell her in eighteen years that your uncle al watched you, sung to you, rambled on for a day...i am lost in a sea of despair...far from any bright blooming days, roaming the garbage riddled, piss stained boulevards of the city...realising that i am not worth my weight in gold...hoping that this fragile newborn will grow into a happy, care-be-gone adult...ready to make this world more wonderful than it was before her existence...on this unseasonably warm december night, i hope that my influence on the people i love will be enough to justify my existence...because tonite i feel like the wasted day, the waning hours...perhaps i am the selfish, bumbling fool...perhaps i am the shadow on the street, the rat on the tracks, the vagrant on the train...but perhaps i am something more...something good...all my words lead to someone else's despair, my presence leads to someone else's problem...the light and the darkness converge on this sleepy new york street...the cigarette smoke curls towards the sky...i watch the souls shuffling in the pale half-light and i wish for sleep...hours before it will take me...