[021. Pandemonium] [Picture # 3]
I am the people in their colored suits—going through the motions of a day’s work. The hours are hollow. The noise from the street, the baby crying heart-throbbing sobs on the roof of a building that seems to defy gravity, finds its way to the center of the city, where the cars honk impatiently and the neon lights of the signs seems to make their own kind of song. My ears are deaf from years of grunts and groans and the makings of trash and children. My ears are deaf but my heart is not blind.
I see that the faces of the kodomo have no stories to them. I see that the children are faithless as they walk behind their mothers, swinging arms, weaving in and out of the masses. I see that they are ruled by tradition and regulations, but that there is no honor. No honor to be found in the dogs that wander stray in my paths, no honor in the way the people move, so that I cannot catch a glimpse of any one face. There is no honor in the train that moves periodically to the station and in the way the men crowd unabashedly so that they press in on each other like rodents in a hen house.
It is pure pandemonium when the train door opens. The men rush in like an ambush on the enemy, and more than one man falls to the trenches of war. When the door closes again, the energy subsides; but the peace is one-sided. The clock above the tunnel ticks away the hour until the next small earthquake hits my side. It is a hopeless tirade of ins and outs.
There is a poster on the white-washed wall behind the tunnel that depicts a skinny pregnant woman looking forlornly down at a laughably large portion of hamburger. It reads in my language:
What are you doing to yourself?
And to me, it is the perfect irony.
[024. Leech] [Picture # 16]
I am a jinn of a Disney-ish land. I am here and there and everywhere at once; my foot is in million-dollar skyscrapers but my fingers are in sleazy bars with trashy motels. To you I am a rainbow; my colors are bright and false like a chameleons’, but bold and daring to an entrepreneur. I have the promise of tomorrow, today, and the change in the past. There is a little glitter, a little hope, and perhaps even some gold at the end, for the lucky man with the pricey cosmopolitan. There’s no place like home, where even Dorothy’s pretty red shoes are for sale at a bargain.
For a while I can seem wholesome. I am the embodiment of Uncle Sam’s mottos; every man has an equal chance at fortune. I am a mood enhancer, like the beat in the veins, the bangin’ tune* in the music; blue kisses for blue lips*. My glove fits your hand. I fulfill your deepest desires, bumping you up to another level of unforeseen ecstasy; you trick-or-treat just to taste my candy*. But I am not all that I seem. Beyond these Meadows* is a more sinister fellow.
I am a leech, where you cannot find me. I take without giving until you find yourself—pockets empty, minds blazed and hearts burnt out. I suck the capitalisme out of France, the high risers out of New York, the royalty out of imperialism. I am the worm under the roads, watching men with the swagger of a king and the women who trail behind them in dripping mascara. I am the eyes of the city from the gutters of the land. I am the eyes of a gentleman corrupted.
And I’m just the devil with love to spare.*
*bangin’ tune-loud tunes with a strong beat that sound especially good with Ecstasy
* blue kisses for blue lips- Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
*candy-Ecstasy
*Meadows-Vegas is “meadows” in Spanish
*from Viva Las Vegas by Elvis
