no pun

so sophor didn’t come after all. not that i really put any elbow into making her come. and rescue me.

so thought mike d.

so now he’s left with a half-drunk latté, a sober, glistening palmiere and a honeycomb retriever the size of a horse. go away you filthy bastard.

so said mike d. to the dog. to the sober palmiere. to the birds. to the world.

so, gum trees, do you know where i can find rob g.? you haven’t seen him recently? i haven’t seen him recently! useless ass.

so shoes, take me, anywhere anywhere anywhere i don’t care. to the artisan coffee shop next door we go!

so, napalm death scum tee, this street has nothing but artisan coffee shops! where will we go to escape bread products of southern italy?!

so, levi’s 512 loose fit, it’s gottta be, if there are times in the history of man when things just gotta be then why hasn’t she come to me?

so tell me, what are you?

so am i robot, not a human, too?

so let’s go back to the world, to the business of making things click like a well-made box. shall we visit the artisanal organic organic over there? yes, i am talking to you my beloved jacket of mao.

so so so, life has boiled down to this eh? another coffee at three to wash down the pad thai at everyday the same hour same eatery with an awful fun for a name. everything’s just

so. let’s just get back down to the story, of how mike d. is looking for the missing rob g. and how can you fit all that into a paperback that is just plane fun?

so, no more siestas for the mind.

so tell me crisp, perfect biscotti, why in the dawn of someone’s life, dreams of faulchion and perfect shields of gold, of ambrosia and foxy iris bold, still can’t convince me that life will be any thing but just so-

so?

draining camp

feeling all alone in this world mike d. reaches into an old bookshelf half-filled with The Little House Cookbook, a seventh-hand copy of L’immoraliste and two lunchboxes of non-rarity basketball cards.

in this alternate universe Patrick Ewing can fly is fly the shit.

but really what he really wants is Sophor really.

but as always in times like this people you need are always needed elsewhere.

Sophor, datanglah, aku tak ingin menjadi seperti orang-orang di lagu Flaming Lips itu. he hasn’t forgot them? but why hasn’t he just come? the wall is always open.

what (strange) language is that (strange) man speaking?

don’t you know? it’s mike d. le poète fantastique!

Aramaic? doesn’t sound like it.

you’re impossible.

impossible is everything.

including Sophor coming here to rescue me today.

why, i only need her to sprinkle Krispy Kreme original glaze coating on the dough of this earth so everything sticks and stays and my rubber boots can carry me through to rob g.!

those boots, monsieur, are made for waddling.

i know, i know. an eskimo gave it to me. i could hardly see his face for all the fur.

you mean on his windcheaters?

actually, it was her .... the fur? it was antler’s. a fourteen-pointer.

you know a lot about the world m. d.

i know, i know. an eskimo gave it to me. i could hardly see his face for all the fur.

didn’t you just say that?

i know, i know. etc.

the begin

ning marsha was the name of a pattaya girl who got lost in her head and wandered into a narrow strip of artisan breadshoppes, smelly secondhand bookstores and flaking air jordans hanging from telephony wires above streetcorners.

they say people deal drugs under the air jordans. or hand-made brogues. no one knows.

anymore.

or ever?

but let’s just forget mike d. and rob g. and ms. marsha for a while. how long is a while? maybe 3 postings, 2 weeks, an hour, maybe forever. let’s just talk about the place where they live. let’s just talk.

adults like to call a place like that, “home”.

they like to say, “for human beings are nothing without a place they can call ‘home’.”

they like to say things in sentences that begin with, “for ...”

i like sentences that end.

that don’t have words you feel you have to ‘ ’ when you transcribe them.

a pub named after a pub in cheshire, england. or new england. a mini market that sells mouldy farmer’s bread in my literal memory. a cafe manned by a woman wearing black aprons with white cummy milky stains in my dreams. a ghost from a noh play. his name was benji. he was gay.

when you talk about a place you can’t tell a story. or maybe you can, but i don’t.

because i’m stupid.

i like to sit on a cloud and mock jupiter as he panics in his orbit around the sun.

from where i am i can see mike d. running around a blue dot on the ground looking for rob g.

ning marsha reaches out her hand trying to catch mike d.’s attention. his eyes. the cardigan rip on his elbow. anything.

but nothing a woman can do can turn the mind of a man away from another man.

from up here ning marsha’s outstretched hand looks like an emdash.

like this: –

the end

the last time mike d. saw rob g. was at an indian restaurant called passage to india. it was missing the ‘the’ or the ‘a’, he cannot quite remember. words are just dead neons anyway, ha.

the restaurant was at the back of an alley, with a blue garbo at the front, and a statue of ganeca, with the head of a pug, next to the sky.

they said the chef was from the north of india. where the river is yamuna, never the gangga, and the coconout trees haven’t produced milk since 324 BC. that’s why the food is drier, and the chai tastes like earth.

rob g. explained everything to mike d. he knew so much about the world, he looked into everything lovingly.

they ordered a thali, a dosa, and a dessert called jamun, or gulab, or jamun gulab, whichever way they called it the only thing they remember was the sauce that the chef said came from a special breed of honey. bee, you mean, corrected rob g. i knew how you grew up too, mon chef d’restaurant indienne, you never learned how to think clearly, consoled rob g.

the chef dropped his head, or his hat, they cannot quite remember.

before the end of the meal suddenly.

suddenly.

so.

rob g. said he had to split. the bills? asked mike d. no, some trees, answered rob g.

with those words rob g., or was it mike d., disappeared into thick air because the air in the restaurant was indeed thick with scents of jasmine, clove and a pair of sandals made of disused wires.

mike d. never saw rob g. again.

his heart hurt so aching-

ly.

that’s how you avoid adverb in a sentence.

destruct

-ively.

until one day, the day mike d. bought himself a shiny blue radio.

p.s. this is a picture of the restaurant:

there is no picture of the restaurant.