prose

A large wound, open and fresh,
Dappled by its own spittle,
Reminds me of the rich
Imported soil of a garden.

Moist and funky,
A steam bath awaits
When ground opens.
Rivulets of murky water

Collect at the bottom
Of each scoop;
Warm loam appears to pulse
With eyeless worms

That free with each dig --
Veiny, watery.
Open wounds give under fingers,
Dirty nails -- fresh soil too --

Marrow laden bones
Like thick thirsty tree roots
Stop scalpels from sinking
Straight through to China.

After the last day of school, all those long nights of leisure left me. All those days sitting in humid classrooms, looking out the window at the coeds gone. Now I am on a bike, cutting through traffic to make it home in enough time to catch a plane to Brussels. Of course, the flights not until late, but even so, I have all my packing to do, and my buddy Dan said he's stop by with his truck and pick the stuff up I'm leaving.

I ride low over the bars, keeping eyes on the D.C. cabs, shuffling in an out of traffic, ratcheting my shoes in their toe clips. I grind a little up 17th, sweat burns my eyes, pitch my bike right down P street, and finally stuff it into the elevator, and onto the rack in my efficiency. The machine is blinking so I press the its black rubber button and, after a long shrill beep, its Judy:

"Mike Š meet me at Julio's at six. I hope I catch you before you leave; if not, call me when you get there and have a safe trip. Ciao."

It is about six ten so I shoot down to the restaurant on the corner, hoping she is gone so I can pack. At the entrance, under a forest green canopy, and stand above Judy as she sleeps on a white brittle table, her long shiny hair pooled into the triangle her arms form as she rests on them, so I slap my palms down and she jumps about a mile, almost hits her head on the sky.

"Hey babe," I say while she's in the air.

She comes back down and I take off my courier bag and drop it with my radio down, it screams with static so I switch it off.

"Made it, huh?" she said, "where's your bike and where you off to without telling me!"

"Who told you?"

"Well it was Jess, she said you're out of here, I'm pretty surprised you didn't tell me. I mean, what does it tell me?"

"It tells you that I know you and it would have been better if you'd have found out after I settled," I say and then sit down in the chair across from her.

Even then I am too close as the tables are only a yard across. The molded plastic settles under me and the legs skitter and splay. I lean back and the chair complains more until it braces into grooves in the floor. I can smell myself even over the thick strings of garlic and Parmesan, the tomato paste and olive oil. I really need to take a shower. My beeper vibrates against my hip. I look and the number is Dan's. I click on the radio and press transmit, holding the receiver close to my ear:

"Six-three Š six-three Š"

"Go ahead six-three," answers the antennae'd brown box.

"Hey, beep Dan for me and tell him to meet me at Julio's, over." I wait and listen to runs going out to five-seven and triple- seven, I hear four-oh testing his radio saying copy Š copy? I feel Judy staring at me and I tell her just a sec with my forefinger.

"As good as done, six-three. Out," answers dispatch after a few. I switch the box off again.

"Talk to me, babes," I say a little gruffly.

Judy just sits there staring at me and I wonder about why she wants me to be with her now before I leave. I feel her still looking at me, so, as a game, I try to hold her gaze. Her eyes are black and make her look ghostly; they are deep-set in her head and their dark lashed are as thick, dark, and long as raven feathers. She only wears eye-liner and it's heavy today. I notice these things as I stare, as my eyes get dry and thick and the blood comes to my face. I turn away.

"What do you want, Judy," I say a little furtively.

I slap my fingers in a thick funky beat upon the acoustic table top. She grabs my hand to stop me and I wonder whether that was part of my plan. Just then, Danny saves me with a cup of Café au lait and I roll my eyes at him, he gives me a wink. I pour some sugar in the deep soup bowl cup and stir it in with a spoon from the place setting.

"Brussels, huh?" she says, knowing I know that she knows exactly what the story is.

"Yeah," I say, "permanently and forever and I could say you can visit me, Judy, but I would just be being polite."

"Oh yeah, fuck you too," she says and tries to grab my hand again, though I lift the cup to my lips before she can clasp it. They are clammy in spite of the weather, in spite of my feeling uncomfortable and a little claustrophobic under the awning and wedged into that bear-trap chair. Sweat dribbles from my pits so I press my arms down to try to stem the flow.

"Listen, Jude, I have to pack," I say as I empty the last of the froth and kick the chair out from under me. It tilts over and bounces and vibrates. It emits a buzzing until I pick it up and place it under the table.

I turn my back and head outside, taking a big sigh, and look up at the summer sauna DC overcast. I feel the clouds when I breath and wonder if someone in the clouds sees me in clouds instead, its so humid. I always feel the rivers that course down Penn. and crash in falls down Capitol hill. When I'm finally in the jet, doing the tourist pass over the monuments, I will ask the sky-waitress for some booze and whether she sees all that water covering the capitol city..

Judy startles me when she clasps her arm through mine.

"You know, this is the way lovers walk together in Europe," she says, her head cocked up, her stride lengthening to mimic the flippant Europeans.

"Ça va mon ami la-trah-la," she lilts and presses her hip to mine. I give her the hip butt and she laughs, although I don't want her to and she comes close again. I swing the heavy sack from across my back to her side, and the I get to the entrance door and she gets in, into the elevator too, and then in the apartment.

"What?"

"I just wanted you to know that it is time to tell you that since I met Mark, I hadn't met anybody else, you know, it was no problem. You see, nobody at all and I looked at him and knew it. I mean Mark and I have been together for a long fucking time and all that, but when I met you it was different. I mean, you are the first guy I met since Mark who I like," she said drawing close to me, face to face, her face tilting upwards.

"This isn't fair," I say a little under my breath.

"Wait," she says, "I have to get this off my chest, you know. I have to get it out of me before you split."

I only get out, "but Mark."

She closes in and kisses me with soft lips, on the mouth and presses her hand into the nape of my neck to pull me closer. I finally release me muscles and allow my body closer. I feel the tips of her breasts brush against my ribs and I try to embrace her.

But she wriggles free and turns and disappears down the hall, "Bon voyage, mon ami, la la la!"

By the time I get downstairs, Judy is in her VW Rabbit, pulling away from the curb. Mark, the bastard is in the passenger's seat, his torso hanging out the window, showing me I'm faced by covering his hand with his face.

"Eat it, sucker!" he yells.

I start running after the car. Judy slows the car, teasing me with stops and starts. She lets me get right up along the car, Mark is still hanging out and laughing his head off. I rush up, and in one sweep, pull out my U-lock and smash in the rear window. It crackles and popcorns inward and I stop quick and yell:

"Eat that, you fucker!"

I stand there, U-lock in hand, shaking a little. I hear a bleating behind me and it is Dan in his pick-up. He's laughing but I'm not. I jog up to the truck and hop in the bed.

"Take me for a ride, Dan, I need to cool off."

Dan peals off and almost looses me off the truck's bed, but soon he is down 14th and we check out the monuments for the last time together.

The windows were frosted and the room laid large and heavy. In all its width and depth, the walls were close and scarred, shreds of paper flittering in the wash of central heating. Against the walls, tarp covered working tables. In the middle of the concrete floor sat an old Myron Stout and me. Even under the down of blasting heaters, he clutched a red plaid blanket over his knees. Mr. Stout only required that I speak softly and keep away visitors; he touched me sometimes, but only to remember . Today I was reading from Camus' L'Étranger. I read and read, acting out parts by making my voice gruff like too many cigarettes.

no one gets too much heaven no more -- and then the girl goes and runs off with the boy and i am in bed alone this morning and yes she is just a friend but i worry i worry byt i had a great sleep on my lonesome because sometimes she gets groovy and i can't see why people get so bloody incensed all the time as though they were bothered intentionally and i was thinking that so many so many people so many people are convinced that in so many way there is not global conspiracy the theory is hate and the hate pervades and it was fun to see the swoosh in her hair the blush in her cheek because honestly i have never seen her flirt not even a little bit this large prodding stoic cock tall and erect and sticking out of the pentagram all day every day so long that there vitriol against men has made my journey challenging at the least and yet when a pretty boy says hi all the rules go out the window -- be docile around superiors and lovers, be the sweet little daddy's girl the sweet little lover because you and i know that in so many ways you like it when your superiors are your lovers and then it is all because you are a female bam bam breaking the faucet with you brute strength with the hairy legs that keep you running ahead when i am trying to take pictures while i am trying to take images for my work and it was a promise you made to me that you would assist me a little bit byt now you say you don't wanna and you art not my slave not my slave byt why are you such a good slave otherwise such a good slice when you want something you think you can't have and I hear so many voices cry out: why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me? we hell i don't know -- he never found you very attractive? never found you anything byt a big strong man with breasts you are the big strong man with breast? why is that? why do you saunter challenging all them men to have a coneest: i bet you don't have a bigger cock than me! I bet you can't bench press as much as I can! I bet you I wear bigger pants I bet you I hang to the left and the right, I bet you I am not impotent are you? i want to measure i want to see you stand taller want longer and then i will disfigure and only then will my cock turn into a clit only then will my manly chest soften and only then will the nipples turn soft and pink.walking with the woman and her man, walking around singapore walking together looking at her body looking at the soft down of the blond hairs at the base of her head falling from her french twist hearing her soft english rose cadence and seeing the way her clothes cling to her pale flanks and the way they touched and the friendliness between them and their insistence that I come along so that we would look at nikons looking for the f5 looking for the filters looking for marks and spencer and he is roberto a good looking italian living in paris and every weekend she goes to him from londres or he to her in londres -- a paris london relationship and she reminds me so much of liz looking at her supple body was like ants eating away my eyes ants eating away my eyes and since they look so similar in kent i have a feeling that it is in the water -- we talked about how italian women often after the age of 18-23 there is a change a sudden perm, blue eye liner, too many accessories and the clothes every piece at once and how the young girls are au natural and s. the kentian rose sat there in a gray tank, tight white shorts and keds and she had not a lick of makeup and her eyes were naked and she had a french twist and you know -- no makeup in the world could have improved and then i felt such the outsider such the leper and it was all i long for, this urbane relationship where time is spent byt also the passion and the work is spent and raffles costs $750/night and you know it seams to me worth every penny every penny to be seduced and sedated by royalty by kings by the scent of brunei by the lovemaking of emperors and I am oft convinced that I am unwilling to be anything byt the third wheel the observer... the journalistic gadfly who smells the flowers of another for i find myself around another's flowers always wanting to seduce another flower away another away and it is by far easily the fear of commitment the fear of the commit for when I had the fear I had the fear and knew no serious marriageable before 30 no way no how and the house comes rumbling down and then there is mim and jim and liz and john and this is what I learned:

to have a lover, to have a mate to have a soulmate is not to have spent ones life then find the soulmate, byt that the soulmate the loverfriend and you should be spending that life together, finding those passions together -- not two wholes touching byt two wholes merging and you know i thought it was complete byll shit byt now I am no t too sure I am not too sure if it doesn't exist and there must be une petite femme with the desire to create to make to shoot to travel to explore and to make love incessantly as well, to swim,surf, hike, explore mountain bike and in addition to love the world of the digital of the future of the literate -- and this is not too far byt when will my knight in shining armour arrive?

and then i laugh and then i laugh because my life is so rife full of these petty dramas and it is a self deprecation, a fun way to whittle away at myself for I write better and explore better when feeling the melancholia the melancholia and here I am sitting on the boat quay in singapore and it is only because this is one thing in my life not 100% sussed, that is why I am obsessing about it...

a welshman told me after i had had many strange dreams about my ex s, he asked me how long had it been since YOU broke up with HER, and I said about a year -- well, he said, invariable, at about a year's time a man if he had broken up with his lover, will start to begin to forget the bad of the love affair and only remember the good and will become lonely ;lonely lonely and then after a while he will say out loud for his very soul to hear and those around him:

fuck! she wasn't that very bad after all now what was I thinking when I got rid of her???

and here I am travelling around the world, getting choked up and lonely yes i guess it is loneliness byt by god i am not feeling sorry for myself no not at all because i am doing so much cool stuff -- 52 rolls of film -- if you wanna go over to my mum's house to check them out -- feel free, just call 703-807-2163 before you go and give the old girl a big hug for me -- and ask her to see the boomerang that I sent myself by post -- it'll be a keepsake and will make many generations chuckle aimlessly and here:

sport. sporty sport. sport-ready. a girl in jog bra and short shorts walks a black dog with white marking, white sock. sniff sniff sniffing down along the bark of trees, under the afternoon shadow of the diamond head. the field. the drummers and the shell, where the kodak hula show amuses and the public can watch watch watch people move their pelvis back and forth. the the girl walking quickly swinging hips, tight black under shorts: sometimes lycra and close-fitting, sometimes baggier, often black, the pale tummy, the crescent navel, the contour of the ribs, the slender paleness of leg-above-sneakers. a leash. a leash law. the piss that burns grass, the scent of other canines. alpha dog. alpha male. heat. spring. sunny. after work business, rushing in a car for the two miles. in the center of the park there is a diamond, there is a pitch. hotshort, sliding shorts, shorts, uniform number 10, knee socks, cleats...helmet and glove and now in the rain again, drops kissing their faces. jagged shoes dig into grass and mud of the outfield... she, the walking girl, the hawaiian girl, the girl with her doggie dog, tight-fitting black lycra life, is a beautifully threaded bead necklace. all her parts differing sizes shapes colors, all strung together limpy together in my hands.

synergy moves across the fields like wind. this most basic of needs, the building blocks of community, caresses the husks old grain stalks.

dirk consoles red; red flirts with pretty boy; never enough hours in the

day, says kat.

i raise my hands, unable to delete any more, anymore. words are words and editing is not the proper way of the white man to remember history. herstory.

"He thinks it's great and does it again, just because he can."

email and _bound_ all evening with a former lover. the woman hurt me, but i asked for it. now her friends root for us. i haven't been an us for a long time. emails back and forth, telephone rings past my bed time. i answer, its she.

_bound_ -- she and i are attracted to the same women. I say this, she replies for me to be careful she might be jealous.

virtual girlfriend. the woman who broke my heart, the woman i broke my heart over. blunt bob, thin features, smooth lithe cream skin. creamy. little, better say petite. elle est tres petite.

She is C&S.

"He thinks it's great and does it again, just because he can."

Dirk says, "Red - better a moment of weakness that passes as the tears dry than days of the pain and effort it takes to conceal the sadness. Once you've wept, the tears are gone, but the struggle not to weep binds you for long, long... "

I say, there is always an ember you can ignite if you have the patience and are willing to spend the vital energies.

i remember: the line of her body when first i removed the clothing. the place behind the pillow where she kept her pajamas. the crooked back from the scoliosis. the little fingers little hands. the firm budding. the blunt hair, hark and rich.

a friend told her, "he cared for you, pimples and all." this friend is "rooting for us, for you for me."

ben and jerry's is an ice cream store.
they sell ice cream to women
they sell ice cream to hope.
in an old post office
next to the pennsylvania
river...

"saying that they were going

to put my dog down sometime that week"