“From the news store I go one block south to the Postal Convenience Station, where I am secretly in love with a woman behind a counter.  I have already put my pages in the manila envelope.  I address it, and then I take my place at the end of another long line.  What I need now is postage! Yum, yum, yum!  The woman I love there does not know I love her.  You want to talk about poker faces? When her eyes meet mine, she might as well be looking at a cantaloupe!  Because she works sitting down, and because of the counter and the smock she wears, all I have seen of her is from the neck up.  That’s enough!  From the neck up she is like a Thanksgiving dinner!  I don’t mean she looks like a plateful of turkey and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.  I mean se makes me feel like that is what has just been set before me.  Dig in!  Dig in!  Unadorned, I believe, her neck and face and ears and hair would still be Thanksgiving dinner.  Every day, though, she hangs new dingle-dangles from her ears and around her neck.  Sometimes her hair is up, sometimes it’s down.  sometimes it’s frizzy, sometimes it’s straight.  What she can’t do with just her eyes and lips!  On day i’m buying a stamp from Count Dracula’s daughter!  The next day she’s the Virgin Mary. ….. I at last have my envelope weighed and stamped by the only woman in the whole wide world who could make me sincerely happy.  With her I wouldn’t have to fake it.  I go home.  I have had one heck of a good time.  Listen:  We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”

 

Tonight I walked home with the dusk, in the dust.   

Each foot fall kicked up a cloud, calling the darkness to come, come, come out now. 

I shuffled along with the Ipod set to shuffle, singing, ‘cause, hey, if they’re gonna watch, might as well make them stare.

I sidle through memories and side step all too present shit in the street.   It’s a dance I’ve become familiar with.  

For once this walk can’t last long enough.  

The power may be out, but my power is on. 

Just flick the switch, it might be faint and flickering at first, but I swear, just give it a minute, its fluorescent. 

I breathe in deep and the exhaust fumes can’t touch me,

 Make sure not to step on a razor blade, that all too real hyperbole of how life shouldn’t be.  It’s a joke, but it’s not. 

The hairless dog looks warily at me and I cringe.

It is the opposite of cute, it is no one’s best friend. 

But I like it, in its gross strangeness, my cringe becomes a smile,

And isn’t that just Kathmandu for you? 

 

That pants-less child cries, but there are no tears in his eyes. 

His plea is met, music is turned on, and the hypnotizing rhythms of stricken lovers screech like car wheels on the street. 

I trip over a speed bump in the dark, jumping from a fire work’s spark. 

The kids scream and return to their game, it continues always despite the crash and clash of fire crackers and the lack of any pretense of sight anymore,

It’s infringements are so very slight. 

With Their darting eyes and dirty limbs, they are untouchable, they belong to the night. 

And so do I, right now, with the stars glinting brighter than my eyes ever could,

they stretch wide, taking in the sight, A  black out’s better than a dessert of sand for this,

It’s out of my hands and off my feet. 

What’s that smell, who is that staring at me, is that woman peeing? 

A million questions, I let go, they float up to rest comfortably in the embrace of the sky as another firework races by. 

I smile and laugh, it’s all over my head, and through my bones, and down my lungs,

The darkness has beat me home and I am alone,  

But in that good way.

So I open the gate and step inside,

My eyes open and my heart tired, but stretched    open      wide. 

 

 

The fireworks are less like fireworks and more like low grade explosives.  It looks like Christmas and sounds like WWI.  Trench warfare under multicolored lighted bulbs.  The streets are painted, the dogs run by, multicolored streaks across their flea bitten fur.  Kathmandu during a festival is a child’s dream and a PTSD victim’s nightmare.  I am neither. 

Here’s some pictures from Mustang.  Just a few, I don’t want to overwhelm anyone.  I hope this works, I haven’t used Picasa before.

http://picasaweb.google.com/melaniegmoore/SelectedMustang?feat=directlink