All the Things Wrong With Lahore


The first thing I saw this morning was a body
fall from a high place.

Strangely enough, having gotten its dead arms
entangled in the flag-poles jutting out the side
of some bank-building it managed to splatter itself
silly on my newspaper, which was not- as was usual-
filled with news of countries with unpronounceable names
and oat-opera histories of stock-market crashes this morning.

Still that was nothing compared to
the second thing I saw-- a sock-monkey
berating a policeman for allowing
his pants to fall down in public,
revealing him to be wearing
his politician mistress’s lipstick-stained lacy,

you guessed it,

panties. I was unsure what to make of it all
until the leather-skirted peroxide blonde,
marinating in barbeque sauce, on my table
rolled over and coolly began discoursing
on the metaphysics of relativity
while the waiter with the extra pair of headphones over
his third ear asked me if I would like another
serving of parsimony with my doggy-bag
of gourmet locusts, stir-fried and soulful.

Still all of this was rather tame compared to
the mullah who accosted me on my way out, begging
me to let him save my soul for the price of a phone call
to his favorite rock band’s manager’s office
in Gstaad, only he said it Geestaaahd and I had nothing
to say to him after that. The doggy-bag grown
soggy, I was forced to offer it as a bribe to the policeman
threatening me with instant gratification if I did not
hand over my pants. Doggy-bag eagerly accepted,

I was allowed to make my escape back
to where you were supposed to be
picking discordant notes on the ivory keys of your father’s piano
and when I asked you where you were, you said nothing
only
spat in my face-- wept inky tears that pooled into your palsied hands.

Still, when I got to my room at the top of the house
where we used to live and turned on the lights,
there were no signs that this was home and I still
had only the white static noise of the telly to talk to.