Wednesday, December 21, 2011

What Chapter


This city smells like someone’s been fucking inside a McDonalds wrapper, these streets are cleaned by goose-stepping garbage-men, kicking plastic in every direction. The architecture is faux colonial, the gates are glass and honey. The boy is home. Burn the tires, let a gypsy find solace in some smoke. Queen some coats, wolves with pomade  in their hair, sipping on moonshine, sipping on the memory of that last call, last kiss. Kill the lights, kill the coke. How did we write the future in song and then get surprised by the way it ended?
She drags him across the dance floor like a rag doll, he submits like a struck dog. He pushes her back with his weight propelling him, shoulders driving her into the ground. Burying her, eyes closed imagining trespass. Stomping each other with every step. Tango, tumultuous sad dance made from the pumping systematic loss of blood. From heartbreak and hard drugs. Who can dance it well that has not been fucked and fucked over? No one. No virgins here. If there were who would want them. El Capitol, El Captain. Buenos Aires. My man, dressed in black again and again. Do the laundry kid.
 With champagne in one hand, wine in the other, a mouth with a pain killer cut up under the lip, bus seat kicked to 90 degrees, we enter. Finally ready for vacation, finally ready to enjoy the destruction we’ve caused. 6 months later, its time to relax. First night in, I see Ally Stone in a bathroom against six men in the Falkland Island war revisited. I’m just here to do the dishes. This is a great man, above war so I don’t think he needs to get his hands soiled in this, he just puts em in the soil. Get me. We all need a witness. I’m just here to do the dishes. Repeat. Repeat this.

“Don’t rub me to close. Why you got names like a snake. I don’t know how long you’ve worked here but I’ve worked here longer. If I pulled my dick out it wouldn’t be more awkward, if you introduced me to a congressman I ‘d ask him for a light.”

Ally says this to no one in particular and everyone in general as we enter the pub. Exit the rules and progress. Here we come full circle. Fear, I’m back. Missed you too.

There’s a puma outside licking the air, rubbing ass against the tent. I get up to drink from the river where he drank and see if I can still taste him. There’s an arctic fox playing with his girlfriend I move closer to see if I can chase her, skirts are skirts, on and off paper. Milkshake makers.
Fin Del Mundo, we’ve made it thru the entire continent to the southern most tip of the earth. Glaciers as big as some countries, which ones, I wont google. The hardest trip of my life. The most rewarding time facing death, in a total white out storm with gale-force winds beating me into the ice, my frostbite giving way to hypothermia, a hike of 97 Kilometers, costing me my knees. Ben saved my life when all I could see was glacier and no hope. My brain began to systematically shut off function. All I could think was I don’t wanna die with my pants down, and though I could not see the Peruvian Army shorts I wore, could not feel the limbs I was told I owned, could not know my high-top Nikes from the ice. They said I was naked. My body shaking like pistols in her hand. Mind still stuck on that hand. Lost 700 at the casino that week, but not that hand.
He chiseled ice from me, put life back in me, asked nothing but a humorous line to know I was alive. Some debts are just lifestyles. Round we go, owing each other everything.
You wanna hear I miss you but don’t wanna hear I am coming for you. How should I show up? In shackles or riding motorcycles, with love or hate in my heart? Knowing I scare you makes me afraid.
           She didn’t wait for me, hadn’t spent billions of years shaking off glaciers like dog water in anticipation of me. She never thought of me while throwing temper tantrum gale-force winds, her avalanches were without reproach for my absence, her boulders were not tossed down the sides of her face demanding I be there, yes, I knew she cared little if I climbed her but still I imagined she wanted me, like a lover, I forgot my past fires swept beneath the hearth, I should have remembered that she might also move to kill me, with direct orders. Its good to see you again. Campanero. Another mountain climbed just to see where we stand.