ando drom!!!

Itakepleasure in the apple pie of turkish tracks

gypsy without a home

house still intact

I want to Opa! my way to

exoticism and hoot

my feet into a frenzy

of left-behind cares

dont give me glut(en)y?

please

trapezoidal thoughts

of octagons

that wake with banana peels

on their loverfaces

persist

through the mist

of outside window

public transportation

library purchase

whatoncewasfree

now has a price

and it is my

hardrive to half-fill

with foreign rhythms

i like

but am not like

despite

travels to faraway books

of what i once knew

was just a magazine

on a boarding pass

to my terra-cotta childhood

of fermented memories

I just want to be a gypsy without a cause

let me be a no-mad

let me be

a

nomad.

V

The blue-haired Vendetta invited me to walk her across the street to the Safeway where no one feels safe. She is perfectly crude and I have to laugh (despite a professional facade) at the irony of choosing doughnuts while discussing the way she assaulted a policeman. V is the perfect contradiction; a self-acknowleded hypocritical Christian with an abhorrence for herself and an intolerance of judgement from the rest of us. Deftly, her tattooed hands, self-sliced arms search for comfort and fulfillment in a half priced sandwich and pepper jack cheese. This woman was once the model pimping prostitute who lost her waistline and self respect to baby fat and whole milk blended into years of undeserved beatings. She jokes with a raspy booming voice about how bad she wouldn't feel if she accidentally stole the doughnuts. Concluding that it would probably make her an "asshole", she sneers at the cashier and "pays" with EBT.

I am welcomed, initiated, granted special privilege to rest on the designated curb where guests shoot the breeze and talk shit about the volunteer staff. I feel honorably misplaced, but oblige the arms that could break me with a compliant seat to her left. She spills life like a carton of spoiled milk and spews pain as thick as doughnut custard. I watch in silent satisfaction as her black lips are wiped clean by ham and cheese. With the hint of a child's devious smile she allows me to fix the stray bobby pin that frames her glitter covered head. "No more alien communication I guess", she laughs as her antenna is tucked away safely.

V tells me the story of porn-prostituting-pimping-lesbianism in her characteristically cursing jargon and I listen; not to the gory details, but to the way her persian eyes brim tears when she talks about respect. When she talks about her son. When she talks about God. Who she could have been.

we sat on the curb and she cried.

And I've never been so grateful for a glazed doughnut.

(because everything else is too complicated)

Hello, Indonesia!

Who could possibly be translating my words into German?

I am honored, quite honored, to be your brewski for the day.

Who is reading all the way in Latvia

Argentina

Australia

Belgium!?

What a journey (quite the journey)

these thoughts have made.

"The church is a whore, but she is also my mother." St. Augustine

sometimes it's tough to be loyal.

Thou shall not kill.

This is what's real. Trust The Onion to get things right.

dont. follow. the lights.

we'll call it simply morphine

because it takes pain and morph(s) (it) in(to) e(therial)

dreams

of ghosts that mourn

the end of your screams.

(and who doesn't love to dream?)

while awake

it will seem like a swim

in a murky lake.

the Zuckerberg Zion you will never find.

With every pixeled thought I share, my fingers type a step forward into the web-filled space between the peaks of aliens and kin. Caught in the heat of hesitation; amidst the push and the pull-- the intellectual innertia of wanting to be the all-knowing unknown traps my marrow in the valley of intimate strangers. Ambling unguided through this Infernal canto I, like 500 million, strain to subvert the human condition. "I will now feel less lonely. These words will bring closeness. These likes will make me liked. Here, I am understood." We want to be the object of another's wasted time; the update that gives us status. To (be)friend(ed) has taken the place of handshakesmilenod, though everyone is now the author (albeit abridged) of their own best-sold story. No Barnes&(expensive, and not so) Noble, no-- this book fills up the li(e)brary of every face you've never known. It is the book of refreshed quick looks. The book that will always be spark-noted/plot summaried/ back-covered/ever-referenced. The book of the current past and the twice passed-over. The book that is often read aloud but could never allow our hearts to be read.

And we walk through this valley looking up at formidable peaks.

But suddenly, it dawns upon me: I don't need to write a face to find my way, nor do I need to read one.


For I (we are) am already completely known.

I promise you are not alone.