RED

I look at the boys – boys they are, younger than me [and I thought I was the child!]
They have, upon them, rifles, much bigger than their bodies, ready to fire, the fear consuming their thoughts like hungry flies. I walk past, embarrassed. No. I don’t care.

I look him in the eye. Eyes. The eyes tell me about his knowing and not-knowing at the same time. He must be like a baking potato in that suit; the cheese melting down the cracks in him; the black boots like a ball and chain to his baked potato outfit.
Does he even know why he’s there? {Do I?} I turn my head up at the hell of a sun that’s causing my brain to throb inside my hat. Everything just seems to melt together, including my self, my perceptions…

The afternoon fills up with raindrops of silence. Emptiness is when the bucket is full. Everyone is hiding out, enveloped in their respective cocoons, away from the chaotic splendor caused by a confusion of burning tires, choking rubbery smoke, a red hornet’s nest covered in zooming buzzing, flighty creatures, colliding with green and black flies. Lies. Lies that collide and cause political traffic jams, trafficking of puppets patrolled by puppet masters.

The city is on hold, the conventional financial center shut down. Shopping malls – areas of retreat – no longer blast megawatts of electricity. Shops are shut, mouths too. Fear lingers like inextinguishable birthday cake candles. Those who know dare not speak.

In my overheated stupor, I inch my way down the road of cooking cement. Even at this distance from the war zone, I pass threads of razor wire and images of flesh, red and infinite red dripping from beakers on the pavement, not evaporating but coagulating in gutters, the stench causing one to retch.

I am not hiding out. I share the afternoon heat with a fellow solitary nomad. We partake in the act of being lost in translation. We translate our confusion in the form of a guided meditation book. Living out – camping out – of our suitcase and backpack, we have no home to retreat to. Our home is in our hands. In our minds.

In this place where a life is relatively meaningless – what difference does it make who dies? Life can be lost at any and every moment and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if it’s gone.

Those who hide away – those who fight – me and my solitary nomad companion – each of us, our lives, will continue to the next once it’s lost here.

This is a battle that can’t be won. Fighting with this philosophy, nothing is destroyed, nothing is created. It – like the blood in the gutter – simply coagulates and emits a putrid stench.