Conversations Among the Ruins

"Enjoy your flight."

I wonder about that.
Who on Earth

enjoys
a flight?

Would you say
"Enjoy your

root canal."

"Enjoy holding
your hands up
without your shoes on,

banging your laptop
on plastic crates,
losing a shoe,

and almost peeing
yourself

when somebody
coughs or blows
their nose. Enjoy

eating
a sixteen dollar sandwich
from Subway
that tastes not only
like subway but also

strange. Enjoy your
hours at a time
in a two foot space."

I laugh, and jump a
second, because despite
my headphones

I just heard
coughing.

As it turns out,
McCarren Airport
has greatly improved

for me throughout
the years.

For one, I just made it
through check in, bag check,
and security

in fifteen
minutes.

For two, TSA
did not confinscate
my crystal ball.

For three, there are all
sorts of shops in here
that sell all sorts of

skanky sequined
and mesh underwear.

But most of all,
I'm flying out of here
to visit for the Holiday.

Because I came here
and I built
a life. "Home' is a

perplexity of a an
idea.

"It's a whole lotta
feelings - all this
holiday stuffing" I said
yesterday.

It took a lot of
isolation and pain
for me for a long time

here to finally
have those people

that I call friends,
and not only know

but know
me
too. Barcelo

said to me
yesterday at the
wake

"It isn't about
who loves you.

It's about who you
love anyway."

Today I love this
airport.

But I will not
enjoy

this
flight.

My heart is a helicopter.
Chopping air loudly in this
gold candy cane

head.

Took myself on a
trip today to the

Welcome To Las Vegas
sign just to watch
people be human and

in love, squabbling under
the digital sun -

holding hands and
yelling as I

asked myself
where the fucks

the soul?
Right here baby as I
scan the music
trying to find a

beautiful part that
hooks - I don't.

Reading pieces
and parts and shattering
ice cubical cinder blocks.

A wall is a wall is a wall
is a wall pick your light up
mis focus connective

pattern and when
you are left with
all that is left what

will be left of
that?

Do I
even remember

that drive ha oh
man that skyline that
gives me hives

every time I see it -
too pretty too hard and
full of truth and

the mis truth of the
mis life I lived amongst
- it all.

"Why
in the hell
are you in

Vegas,
ayway?" So many
many people ask.

And I get quite,
and lower my voice,
and make my face serious

and say

"Because I am a
color person not a
hard angel person.

The drama
of the lines within
the architeture of that
city is, out here,

replaced by
dramatic neon
color."

People take that in
for a minute and
generally nod in

approval - as if
they are to agree,
I will not say anything

weirder. I was

driving down Trop
today and I looked over
at Excalibur - a giant
run down palace.

Las Vegas Boulevard
covered in people, like
ants.

Not one of the
thousands I stared at
heard the hellicopter land

across the
street. They were all
staring up

at the faded
castle.

Last week I amlost
ran over my second
Elvis impersonator

in full costume
in under a year.

I nearly crashed
my car into a
rhinestone

studded, light
pink stretch
hummer

limousine as I
left work
last night.

You ask everybody
you meet
"Where
are you from?"

Because there is
a slim chance
in hell

that it's
actually
here. There is

more traffic in
the flight paths
than on any

road, and every
time you drive
to anywhere

an ambulance or
a fire truck makes
you miss

the light. Because
everybody knows that
everybody comes here

to be as dumb and
incoherant at life
as possible. They call

it "vacation."

You watch how addiction
has altered once
beautiful people's

faces and you become
oblivious to
plastic surgery,

nine inch shoes,
five inch skirts,

and thousand dollar
blonde highlights
and

if you're lucky,
you also don't
notice

the extreme povrety
in which this town
functions. I've seen

people stumbling
out of dumpsters and
screaming sick dopers

in the street asking
for
a hit or a quarter
underneath

the day clubs that
support how young and
beautiful you are,

how fucked up you
want to be and "artists"
with "names" like

"DJ Vice."
Las Vegas

is an odd circus
of sorts, with
lights and an art

scene that I love,
my friend the sun I
now have a relationship

with and on an off
day, if I want, I can
even kill

Elvis.

Sitting at
stoplights

is different
in Las Vegas.

Like watcing
a vollyball game
of poverty serving

excess, where
everybody wears
the same

flip flops.

An advertised
glittering bore,
I sniff

to myself.
I love
this town

because of what
it was

before I was
even born.

Grand gold
structures.
Little

cocktail
dresses -

lounge singers
and shiny
cars.

I slum it
with all the
best.

My dr. pepper,
flip flops and
sinister

young lady
smile. I'm

a glittery
bore myself,
the word

"poet" stuck
in my sugar
teeth.

I don't
call myself
that. On a

good day I
only say

"I write."

Because I don't
play volleyball
games of

art deco
museum type
in the box

descriptive
shit. I just

watch
the sunset
with these

dull diamond
eyes = tinsel of

the future - a
reality of a
parallel

now type. Like
writing a

ten dollar
post card

about the
beauty of
a
dying water

supply.

There was all sorts of pomp and circumstance when he died.

"The Las Vegas Legend." The newspaper headlines splashed. The services were beautiful. Houses of power of the modern times, comedians, cnn reporters that follow the President were all up on the podium. Casino event worthy flowers and a guestbook the size of a bible.

They spoke of his joy of life and crazy casino nights as the flowers listened as flowers would listen and the audiance, all dressed in various designer cuts of black, laughed. He stared out at us from his memorial picture, impeccible silk shirt, tasteful tie, glimmering eyes. "The Gentle Giant" liked putting chopsticks up to his mouth to poise for photos, as if a walrus. He dressed up at Santa for Christmas and had so many friends in so many places.

Two months later the handy man and I stand in what was the departed's home. The smell is unreal. Like somebody was frying yougart for months. Hundreds of empty and half full pill bottles cover a table. Stacks above stacks above stacks of opened mail, magazines and business cards litter the floor. The furniture was visible at some point, I'm sure of it, but not today. The carpet was gray once. Now it's blue and yellow, green and spotted with red. I try not to touch anything, or move. I just look around with my scarf over my mouth and nose.

"You can tell... how he really felt..."

The handyman says to me as I walk into the closet, where despite the filth all of his shirts and ties hung pressed, immaculate. On the shelf my eyes catch sight of a bright red pair of chattering teeth wind up toy. Always the trickster he was, the closet of this place, the greatest and most sad trick he ever played.

Vegas is just the sort of place where you go to fashionable services to hear the grand stories of a crazy life, lived to the fullest, and end up in the house where that life spent time alone, and sat, un surprised,

at what an absolute disaster it was

underneath all those neon words.