A Hint of Wind

.1:30 pm

He sat in that one place for a very long time. Watched everything moving around him. And he thought those thoughts that he thinks.

A hundred cars a minute taking turns at the intersection. And closer to him the tracks for a hundred train cars an hour. He drinks water from a bottle and wishes it were beer. He rolls cigarettes for a habit that is never satisfied.

The sun burns at over a hundred degrees and it is too hot. He has found shade behind a warehouse and there is a hint of wind. Now the job is to wait. Eventually the shade will spread and it will be night. Then he will wander the city looking for dark places.

A woman approaches. She is pushing a blue bicycle along the train tracks. There are many that use these tracks - a favorite shortcut - a quiet place. That wind that was hinted at: it blew ripples through her dress. She stopped and looked at him from the shade beneath her wide hat. It wasn't the first time that she'd seen him and this time she smiled.

And he smiled back.

And she said, "I was looking for you."

"Here I am."

"Yes. There you are."

They sat together and watched the clouds move. When the train passed, he put his hands over her ears and she counted the cars. Then it was quiet again.

Some nights he would sit alone in a cafe with a bottomless coffee and read novels. Sometimes he would get a bottle of whiskey and cans of beer and write useless poems about trains. And then, on occasion, he would meet her and they would walk the dark streets. In her bag: a sandwich and chips and an apple and a plastic water bottle of vodka. They would pretend that they were famous writers of poems about trains.

"Yes, and next week I'll be traveling to Paris for the release of my new epic."

The wind - it still rippled her dress and then it found things to do with her hair when she took her hat off. He watched what the wind did to her and it was good. When he looked at her eyes it was even better. She looked back at his eyes and her look said, "I still don't trust you. I think I'm afraid of you. I wish I could believe that you were real." He looked down. He looked down at his hands and at his sadness. To himself he said, "I don't trust me either. But I know. yes, I know that I am real."

Another train passed and a hobo flying by waved at them. They listened to jazz unreeling from a cassette and they played with each others' fingers until the sky became one cloud.

She said, "I have to go." And she left.


He bought a day pass and rode buses around town. The big city alive outside the windows. Beautiful women on the sidewalks. Everywhere it is landscaped. Every tree and bush for a reason. Every rock just so. Neatly fit between concrete and asphalt. Signs announcing things for sale. Gas stations and liquor stores. Used cars and strip joints. Hey! There's naked ladies dancing around in that building.

The bus driver pulls over and gets out. He walks down the street and goes into a bar. It takes most of the passengers a good ten minutes to finally realize that this guy just quit his job. They shift nervously in their seats, eyes averted. Nobody knows what to do. There was nothing that school or parents ever said to prepare us for a situation like this.

When the next bus finally pulled up behind and that driver walked over to see, he found a bus full of passengers staring at him in scared confusion. They brought in another driver and everyone got to where they were going and the next day they'd all forgotten about it.


He's on another bus in a different part of town where nothing is landscaped. Broken cars and appliances grow where otherwise would be palm trees and fountains. There is an accident ahead and traffic has stopped. He has to listen to the woman that sat next to him. She has her cell phone on speaker and she's yelling into it about the cops last night and that asshole husband.

Buses trapeze hot warm cold sweaty air. The boy with a mohawk stands next to the woman who could be his grandmother and says, "It smells like fucking ass in here." The elder woman looks at him. She smiles. She can smell this kid's ass. People occupy seats with pure intention. You don't want to sit in that seat because the person in the seat next before left a ghost. Pure intentions of unnecessary hatred. Eyes askew looking right through you. We can all smell each other's ass - each other's sweat. We won't look at eyes but we will make silent judgments. We will look right through you.


His name is Igor and the woman that he loves refuses to have a name. She says, "I'm sequestering the vodka until I get a few more kisses." She hums Cowboy Junkies' songs over and over and over and then she whispers her ultimatums in sub-aural meanderings.

He said, "I want a woman with substance."

Panties encrusted with misunderstandings. Dreams deepdipdunked in sugary yesterday tomorrow. She said, "Substance? I'll give you substance. I'll take the leather off your tongue and make you lick your own ass." She said, "Don't even. No. Don't." She said, "God, I love you. Come to me. Go away. I don't know you."

There's fourteen syllables at the place where you almost finish a haiku.

When they were playing with each other's fingers, he said, "Tell me a joke." And her fingers stopped playing and her eyebrows got angry defensive and she didn't tell him a joke and he was an asshole about it.

Somebody ate some food. Somebody else slept in a bed. Some not even didn't. Mosquitoes dined. He wakes to swarms of mosquitoes taking turns at his flesh. His eye catches the cockroach that fell asleep watching him.

She looked at him - or maybe he just remembered once when she had looked at him. The reality or the memory - either was piercing enough. He thought - I have some stale tortilla chips somewhere. He thought, "I'm sure a fat glop of A1 sauce could turn this situation around."


bamboo chocolate
blue dragonfly you unfold
what is your color?