03-31-2013, 04:10 AM
For Meral, who died last Easter, aged 30
The guy from Sheffield took another desperate gulp
from the last bottle of my stolen whiskey supply.
It was a hot August night but he shivered heavily.
The sweat soaking his t-shirt was due to withdrawal.
He was a sympathetic junk of flotsam: George in need.
While I rolled him a cigarette I threw a skeptical
glance at him: would he be able to drive?
He was a truck driver, had run out of money
and gas on his return from the Balkans, because
a Turkish street pharmacist had gypped him in
Thessaloníki. We finally managed to mount the
tractor unit; he did not remember where his
trailer had gone. We listened to Cream’s I feel free
and were swiftly floating into a Hitchcock scene.
We parked at the city baths, a ten-minute walk to
the shabby drug bazaar. George suddenly turned to
me, bleak-lipped, and whispered that he had
just shat his pants. He told me he’d drive back to
my place and must have gotten lost in his private nightmare.
I met M., the dottoressa, in front of one of the joints.
She jumped up and down, pumped up with speed.
We sat down on a stone bench, where she fed me some pills
I swallowed cider. I looked at her face striped by trembling
streaks of moonlight. She had found a wealthy customer
but didn’t want to make the deal alone. That’s how luck is spelled,
I thought and she drove us to his house in her father’s limo.
A couple of stretched-out eye blinks passed and the three of us rested
amply oxycodoned at a pond overhung with rustling willows.
An eon later I stared at the nicotine-colored
ceiling of my own bed room, while listening with disbelief
to the sad voice on the phone: M. had died in a spectacular
car crash this morning on the Autobahn to Frankfurt.
I inspected my pockets full of drugs to share with George,
but he had disappeared leaving an undecipherable note
on the kitchen table and a stench in the bathroom.
(she drove a black Benz to death)
The guy from Sheffield took another desperate gulp
from the last bottle of my stolen whiskey supply.
It was a hot August night but he shivered heavily.
The sweat soaking his t-shirt was due to withdrawal.
He was a sympathetic junk of flotsam: George in need.
While I rolled him a cigarette I threw a skeptical
glance at him: would he be able to drive?
He was a truck driver, had run out of money
and gas on his return from the Balkans, because
a Turkish street pharmacist had gypped him in
Thessaloníki. We finally managed to mount the
tractor unit; he did not remember where his
trailer had gone. We listened to Cream’s I feel free
and were swiftly floating into a Hitchcock scene.
We parked at the city baths, a ten-minute walk to
the shabby drug bazaar. George suddenly turned to
me, bleak-lipped, and whispered that he had
just shat his pants. He told me he’d drive back to
my place and must have gotten lost in his private nightmare.
I met M., the dottoressa, in front of one of the joints.
She jumped up and down, pumped up with speed.
We sat down on a stone bench, where she fed me some pills
I swallowed cider. I looked at her face striped by trembling
streaks of moonlight. She had found a wealthy customer
but didn’t want to make the deal alone. That’s how luck is spelled,
I thought and she drove us to his house in her father’s limo.
A couple of stretched-out eye blinks passed and the three of us rested
amply oxycodoned at a pond overhung with rustling willows.
An eon later I stared at the nicotine-colored
ceiling of my own bed room, while listening with disbelief
to the sad voice on the phone: M. had died in a spectacular
car crash this morning on the Autobahn to Frankfurt.
I inspected my pockets full of drugs to share with George,
but he had disappeared leaving an undecipherable note
on the kitchen table and a stench in the bathroom.
(she drove a black Benz to death)