eat my heart

He got into her Turkish tudor foolish fuel efficient machine, slamming her erotic door creating aftershocks in Sichuan and kissed her hard love.

“Wow,” she said, “that was delicious. Tell me more.  I feel insecure and despise all my devious intentions.”

“I am too sad to speak. My verbal actions will tell you a story. I am sad and lonely. I can talk about America and how I lost my chance to be rich and famous. I played college baseball and the coach never let me hit. I sat on the bench getting splinters in my ass. I was always treated with disrespect. I will reap what I sow. I can tell you about people who will cheat you.”

“What kind of story?”

“Drive around. I will concoct a magical musty mysterious tale of woe, conquest and self pity.”

She shifted out of park. Her thin hands gripped life’s wheel.

She remembered wild sex with the tall absent minded angry teacher, speaking of sex, death and Indian food fool foreign language hands, lips, smells, tastes, aromas, a throbbing purple snake and confused groping. She couldn’t sleep, let alone dream, remembering it all. 

“I am a man eater. You are a man. A real man. I will eat your heart. This is our custom. We eat the heart of our lover to give us strength. In exchange, I will give you something to remember me by and by.”

“What happens after you eat my heart?”

burn

the woman at the metro
with a burned leg - you remember her clearly
how she sat after dragging her bad leg
into the car, into the compartment
this image of her
alone
cold
scared
in pain
how did it happen? why is she alone?
on a late night in a flimsy sweater
her skin below the knee
running to her ankle
all burned away
exposing blood red lines
her abstract expression
her sacred scared distracted face
watching night fly past windows
where blue televisions and children kept an eye 
on each other
how the woman kept going
on the metro past a stop
where the expensive private hospital on a Roman
hill gleamed its extensive intensive pensive care
ward and her treatment was delayed,
forgotten, useless
here
because she is poor
so she stayed in her seat
anxious now feeling her pain
wondering where she would go
where she would end up on this night
as a stranger studied her anxious, passive 
expression feeling burns, violent burns
inside sensations fire and heat
nerve impulses darting through, along sensory
channels where signals are blocked by
neurotransmitters shutting down
her chance

Sing

I found a temporary room at an expensive private suburban hospital. Clean sheets, a cot and three daily hots. It was an intensive care color spectrum zonal theory filled with young lovers in their emotional zombie reality of lies and uncertainty.

Downhill from the hospital a crying man waiting at the Metro station held a cardboard hospital chart and paper package. An orange paper folder discovered papers from a doctor, a lab, a prognosis, a definite definitive defining medical history. It revealed a story about someone dying, a wife, uncle, someone he loved.

He waited in heavy unconditional silence for a green Metro to collect him and his package of fear, loss and regret transporting him down the line. Home. Where he’d spill the contents on a table surrounded by friends and relatives sharing his tale. Loss and hypodermic needles of pain, pleasure, desire, sloth, envy and assorted fabulous conversations laughed.

A bird pressed itself against a thorn to make herself sing.

A stranger passing the hospital smelled wild roses. A bird sang. He whistled. Bird answered. 

The bird’s song were short sharp sounds, a trill, long deep vibrational throated mysteries, harmonic scales, warbling. 

“Now I know why the caged bird sings,” whispered an orphan child scrambling across mined fields next to her Cambodian bamboo home.

The man and bird carried on this musical conversation until the bird was satisfied the stranger knew the music. It flew, singing. 

divorce integrity

In Turkey divorce is seen as a failure. A place where the majority of women know their place and stay in it. A place where mothers control and manipulate their daughter’s behavior, attitudes and imaginary freedom with a heavy dictatorial hand called love. Chains of love.

One was different. She confided in me. I listened. After seven months of marriage she’d decided to leave her husband filing divorce papers.

“I feel so much better,” she said. She opened up. She felt free. She had a lot to say. She’d believed her husband in the beginning.

“He lied to me. He courted me with sweet words and I thought, or believed I thought or thought I believed he had an open mind but I was disappointed because he wasn't honest...so after some time measured in weeks then months I saw his, how do you say, irresponsibility, how he wouldn't contribute his heart to me, to our relationship and then, when I tried to talk to him he was closed to me, he shut down and I was working and trying to keep the flat up and work on our relationship but I saw it was difficult, then really, really impossible to live with everything in my brain and heart.”

She inhaled. “Now, when he saw my action to end the marriage he was filled with remorse and regret and apologies. But it's too late. I told him to move out. He returned to his family. He tries to bother me every day in his childlike whining way but it's over. I can handle it. I am strong and know what I want in my life. My family is very supportive of my decision.”

“In China it’s always about saving face. Appearances. Here, it's about self respect, growth and personal dignity,” I said. “Some get it and some don’t.”

“Yes! I am not living the lie anymore. I feel free.”

dead sunday

I learned from Ankara students how they were tired.

They loved being addicted to their phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants by mouth. I processed their fear and anxiety. 

A national Turkish problem according to a psychiatrist I met one day by chance on purpose my second week is anxiety.

It was a dead Sunday.

Clinking a small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

I sat in a tea house filled with artifacts. Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick deeply embroidered cushions near a well thumbed Tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on the suspicious, auspicious way. I gifted them the State of Relaxation. The Zen Tarot. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future.

We are all extras in someone's film, said Sappho.