This is the beginning of a longer piece I am working on.
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Backwards: I’m in 1994. Have you ever been to 1994?
It’s before the towers fell, before Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s before terrorism became the new fascism and half of the country stopped believing in God.
Well, it’s a series of checked black and white tiles trying to pass itself off as a nouvelle operation. Tiresome and not completely worth it. Houses are being torn down and condos are putting put up. A group of artists are trying to re-create Paris from the 1920’s in an abandoned warehouse. We call them the Lederhosen because they can’t get past the idea of wanting to be artists as opposed to actually being them. They are our Belgium’s. We do not like them; we lie to them, frequently and without hesitation.
Later that night we will all go to the Hare Krishna’s and eat the free food they give us. While eating a monk will tell me I am dead. He will look into my eyes and tell me that I am not welcome there anymore because he cannot see my soul.
I am stoned at this point, high on opium. I tell him my soul was eaten by the great dragon and I am on a quest to get it back. He puts a hand over my eyes and chants. I get up and leave, Bana comes with me. We go down to Mix and swindle some frozen yogurt off the midget working there.
“It’s bullshit.” Bana says.
I believe her.
* * *
The Lederhosen ask me to read to them. They ask me every week. I always tell them I cannot read. Every week they ask if I have learned yet.
I give in. I go to their warehouse and sit down and they hand me a PBR. There are mats across the floors and people in clothes found off the street. They are building a fire and building a religion. They don’t know which will burn brighter.
The girl with yellow hair asks me to read. I try, and I fail. Words stammered and revealed true emotions that shouldn’t be filled outside my own conscious. As per usual it was about Bana. They were all about Bana. The group looked around nervously and I gave up, got up, tossed my can into the fire and walked out. I met her up on University and we went and got coffee. She asked me what the deal was. I told her I was passing her poetry off as my own. She looked over her glasses at me.
“I don’t write poetry” she tells me.
We leave.
