American Diaspora

On the drunken filigree
of midnight,
some time between
1987 and 1997
(a decade I have disembowelled and entombed)
whilst one-shoe shuffling
beside
a fractured tenement promontory
in Lower East side Manhattan
or the
defaced frontage
of the Gurkha variety store
in Old Freak Street, Kathmandu
I can’t fucking remember
which
I saw a flock of drug dealers
scooping the night up
into planished ultramarine eggshells
and downing it neat
with a shot of Yamasaki 

I crossed the road
into the path of
a cankerous behemoth
dissembled
by a PCP Belushi speedball
who
projectile slammed me
against the crocheted metallic shutters
of a dive bar

Smash, smash, smash
‘where have you hidden your spacecraft - give it to me’
he crush-demanded
my corneas dissattenuating
with every expulsive impact.
This was a difficult question
to answer
‘I swallowed it’ I replied
‘You can’t hide it from me’
he shrieked
grabbing for my rib cage
intent upon the
defenestration
of my internal organs

Without warning,
to the melody of
a chainsaw
biting into sinew
the drug dealers
dimorphic, rapacious
swarmed and expunged him
leaving only his
gleaming white bones
for shark bait.
They turned to me
their beaks heron-claw scarlet
and spoke
in a single voice

‘Will you join us?’
They asked
their breath,
fricative,
mingling with
their chameleon midnight bile,
sable wings softly
twitch-opening.

‘You turn kings and queens
into electricity,
and live in a nest
weaved from stolen lies.
You are with many
but always alone’
I told them.

‘You keep the
shards
of your forever love
in a 5c Winstons tobacco
tin
under your pillow’
They replied.

’For you
hope has coalesced
into shallow perfidy,
for us it is a commodity
we sell by the ounce.
Are we so very
different?’
;