No matter if there are two strips of mud, sand or roots

Anything can function as tracks

No matter the rotations of clocks’ hands – or how much money one has

This train will run on into low-lit lands dripping with richly saturated color

Mud chases dragonflies while blots of scintillating silicates 

rollercoaster to the sides

Trees tilt their bodies while spreading their arms

and their hands make a single flip as if to reveal a prize

In a rhythmic archway of steadily random nature

rustling, sifting sounds and a thundering rugga-chug chug

lead to a sudden explosion of space.

The sky flies up and releases us, 

morphing into a blue mass that escapes our fingers

We write on her body with warm lines of breath, 

our pen two soft, massaging lips

and it’s in this ecstasy that a large bar of concrete 

between two masses of aquamarine

sits without a whisper, like a terrible, old memory

that’s become acquiescent with time,

that squints tears of rust into strangely crystal canals of saltwater below.

A giant succession of green train cars whisks into the distance and a glass door

of an overlooking coffee house opens before us.

A couple among us tries to write onto the sky, 

but instead they’re just talking

and those old memories buried in the saltwater below,

seem like a dream, like something better than the same old embrace.

He says: “I’m flying on a kite to Russia next month.”

And even that numb mass of smiles across from him feels a pinch

She blurts like a percolator:

“That’s nuts.  You’ll die there in all that rust and concrete.

Your lips can’t handle vodka’s sourness, and your brain will collapse

under the slithering mass of Slavic, philosophic drivel

Their couches have Cyrillic upholstery

that makes a farting sound from under your ass 

and your gleaming smile only tells people how damned nervous your are.”

His will is a rusty, concrete slab. 

His language is crystalline saltwater, flowing in a low babble:

“ I will fly on a black kite into the darkness of an unknown land

I will tie my line when it breaks, 

and smile at the twinkling night district below me

And wait patiently for the sun to rise, 

for that day when I romp in a birch forest

chasing a paralyzingly sexy woman who kills me before I refuse her.

I’m a sucker for my visions, a fool for punishment

But at least I don’t wear red, white and blue panties

and cream them every time I see power.”

After a short pause, she opens her mouth, as if to say something

But the espresso machine rudely interrupts

The whole table rolls it’s eyes, and takes a moment to make a gastric grind

At this coffee house perched over train tracks

With blue canals on both sides.

Nanjing 2005/4/22

Explanation of "Kite to Russia"