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| {sketch-while-wait} |
On Friday, while Human and I were well into our nearly 3 hour wait on the border to cross into the US, cops came around to the lot that half-way surrounds the house to collect a dead body. In case you lost count, this is dead body number 2 this year found in the lot. Human’s mother was at home watching all the cops swarm in and comb the grounds. She didn’t know what was going on until they asked permission to look around the ‘yard’ for the object that killed the man they found- a knife. Or so they said. And she watched as they wheeled the body out.
The victim was a known vagrant who was often seen riding around Rosarito on a bike. I must have seen him dozens of times while walking around. They said he was stabbed to death in the lot during the dark hours- maybe 2 or 3 in the morning- If the dog trying to wake up Human’s mom was an indicator of something going on outside at the particular time. None of us were disturbed by anything on that occasion otherwise. (Thank you sleepy herbs.)
I am still trying to figure out why parts of me seem to be getting softer with each death that happens around here. Why am I not becoming numb; desensitized like the boys at their video games?
Life is not safe outside the imperial American delusion
Out here, no one hears you when you whine
(to be read also read as threaten to sue)
And I keep testing myself in that outside place
I don’t hide in a gated fortress with other gringos huddled around
I live where everyone has the chance to gawk at the girl(-boy)
(“What the fuck is that supposed to be!”)
I don’t drive everywhere hidden high away in a shiny SUV
I walk the stinking streets and crumbling sidewalks
I dodge the drug addicts, bums, and leering gossip-men
I stand in the lines on the border where everyone bares
Their diabetic sores and missing limbs to you
Selling their wounds, selling their hard life and chicle, chicle
Where all the fried foods fill the air with an over bearing carnival smell
Music is played in an unraveled way, incongruous with the next busker
Then to have lunch on India Street
With maybe the stink of an open sewer somewhere in my clothes
I can’t acclimate to all-organic, hypoallergenic sunshine glances and smiles
The crows come to pick from these carcasses so I will do the same
The dark birds, more my kin than human shapes of any social status at this point
There is a Fifth Ave to walk down in San Diego to the trolley line
And on the way down you can see into all the restaurants full of gentles
These well off gentles sit, well lit and wined, smiling around white teeth shaping
American words endlessly sucking and spilling like the hissing tidal flow not far off
Vacuous and happily one with the one that is the ego of self
You can flirt with all of them if you have a striking look, striking to their liking
A storm coming ashore to lean in on paper houses? wearing a velvet blazer, wine red?
On the blue line trolley appears a beautiful family, homeless
Young parents toting a pair of skate boards amongst their baggage
Black skinned, skinny and altogether handsome-like to be models, if only
Kindly-voiced Papi polite to know enough Spanish to
Sell large (but not large enough for some) Hershey’s chocolate bars out of his pack
Something sweet to end the working week for mostly sleepy Mexicans
Bringing brand names back home with them like good slaves to the consumer system
A woman with knees to me clutching a KFC bag full of dinner bought her bar
Weary Mami with head held barely up by a manicured hand explained
To a curious man with a Little Caesar’s pizza box on his lap
A story told like something familiar to my ears
Moving from motel to motel with a baby in a backpack
And a mannered toddler trailing talkatively cute
They are not shabby in their poverty
As they simply cannot be if they are in San Diego
Trying for something better than what they have
Can my Walt Whitman love for any of them as they are me as we are one
Help any of this ruined reality?
Then come to a home supposedly mine to sit in death’s lap
And serve the cause of art happening 3000 miles away
All stress and no glory
All is wonder
All is a joke
What have I to show for these tribulations in the desert?
These words?
Huh.