Metro Casket Express - TLC 43

The five-car Express pulled into the central underground Ankara station every midnight.

On the Departures platform were 1,001 soldier boys in pitted iron helmets carrying black gas masks, silver water canteens, golden rucksacks and rusty rifles.

David carried a slingshot.

A sergeant-at-arms played a bagpipe dirge.

The Arrivals platform fronted 1,001 weeping women.

The women, informed by a faceless totalitarian desk jockey handed the inevitable task of notifying next-to-skin, came to claim. Wives, mothers, daughters and sisters wept for death.

Orange and black doors opened on both sides. Soldiers rammed spines to attention eyes straight ahead. Scottish notes reverberated off tiled walls.

Each car held 1,001 wooden caskets. Boy-men spit on hands hauled them out and stacked them below Big Brother Is Watching You eye-spy cameras.

Weeping mothers, daughters and sisters surged forward fighting and grasping. Women rummaged in caskets seeking clarification: an I.D., a photo, a necklace, a ring, a shred of admissible evidence, a glass eye, a visual epiphany. A memory.

A woman keened, “Where are you now my blue-eyed son...my darling young one...”

This captivated an audience of transparent inoculated passive ambivalent idle Turkish bureaucrats hiding behind piles of shredded fake treaties with ISIS, Greece, Armenia, Israel, Iraq, Syria and 49.5% of the Turkish population among falsified bills of lading for African ivory, Burmese jade, Iranian oil, Central Asian natural gas and sleeping tigers.

Men finished unloading caskets. Women scavenged.

Boy soldiers sang, “We’re off to the Kurdish/Syrian twilight zone to meet our destiny. Front and center, Sir.”

They marched into cars. Doors closed. It departed.

Despondent wives, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, daughters and strangers waved goodbye. Women dragged caskets home for a broken hearted family farewell before carrying them to a cemetery to join a woman drumming soil and watering roses with her tears.

A gravedigger spit on his hands. My job is never finished.

The Language Company

Three Baboons - TLC 23

Watering red roses one rosy dawn on the Ankara balcony he met three baboons from a Russian tribe.

A blond corn-plaited hairy one stuck her head out a 3rd short story window and spit past trees. SPLAT. She looked around, smiling. Her upper teeth were small and sharp. He smiled. She jabbered sounds and articulated questions.

“Where do you come from?”

"Do you have money?"

“Are you alone?”

“Do you want sex?”

She strangled sounds but that’s the essence. Baboon language is simple and direct. Humans should be so lucky. He smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other. She disappeared. She returned with two friends. One had dark hair, hard eyes and big floppy breasts. She shook them side-to-side.

“Look at these watermelons,” she said.

They were heavy fruit. Good enough to eat. Another baboon joined them. Blond, with sapphire eyes and straight short spiked bangs. She stuck out her tongue. A shiny silver post glistened. She was the playful one. Laughing like a child she rolled her tongue around, up and out, like a little snake, kissing phallus. Every now and then a one-eyed snake needs to find a cave. All three jabbered with inarticulate clear syntax.

“Where are you from?”

“Do you have any money?”

“Do you want sex?”

The plaited hair one got halfway out on the narrow balcony crouched down and opened her legs. She rode an imaginary wild mustang. Her eyes and face assumed a state of fluid ecstasy. Shake your moneymaker. The hard-eyed one massaged empty space.

He smiled at this spectacle. They laughed savoring the power of erotic visual suggestion. The silver-posted one flicked her tongue in and out like breathing. Full of energy they needed a verb.

Monkey see, Monkey say, Monkey do.

He waved currency at them. They smiled. He gestured I’m coming. They nodded and disappeared. He skipped downstairs, out the door, ran to their apartment and rang the bell. Ding-dong. Honey, I’m home. The blond plaited woman dragged him in and down a hall. “Ssh,” pointing at closed doors, “they are dreaming about their families in Kiev.”

They were polite. They played all morning introducing him to well lubricated Kama Sutra gymnastics. International relations improved. They made a triple-decker sandwich with trimmings. Let’s eat. 

Ulus Club Scene

I came across a story in the NYT today about a hot new expensive trendy fancy pants nightclub in Istanbul called Ulus 29. I lived in Turkey for a year, teaching English, finishing my little opus, A Century is Nothing, making images and staying alive to tell the tale.

In Ankara there is an ancient part of town called Ulus. The excellent Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is in Ulus.

Ulus was my favorite area in the cold boring government city filled with Russian hookers, Mafia, faceless paper pushers and friends. Did I mention the well adjusted people and anxiety ridden urban population wearing huge watches to tell time something important and popping pills to relieve themselves of anxiety, passionate guilt, remorse, loss and fear? Probably.

I went to Ulus on my day off to sit with cafe owners, carpet makers and dealers, ceramic artists, painters, booksellers, antique junk sellers and the working class. Here are nine images.

These people probably have no idea there is a club named Ulus 29 in Istanbul and they could care less. You may as well be talking about extraterrestrial life in a distant galaxy.

Metta.