Way More West
Page 18
the monumental theme-park obeisance
to la puissance de la drogue outa Tingo Maria,
a jerkwater cocabush town in the North.
Whatimmer, for South, it was ein Come-back.
What a produktion—picture a jungle fort in der neuwest,
Peruvian cops in U.S. fatigues,
led by a Scwartzkopf Simulacrum in Green Issue,
they run in to U.S. kopters and chop chop
off to the other end of the runway
where Cocaland is awake and busy in the bright morning.
Smiling, chewing, singing peasants drying leaves
they’ve, Ha Ha, harvested—across the way men in sombreros
do low-end chemistry on the leaves to make paste—
in front of a hut two “Colombianos” wearing gold power-chains
drink booze while a jungle box blares Salsa y Chicha.
Now the drugkoppers are landen and sweepen.
We hear the ostentatious piñoneo of their Israeli firearms.
Small groups of combatants establish a safe distance
and after making eye contact, khoreograph their punches.
The Sombreros immediately confess. The touristas
walk along with l’armée and lumpennarcos to a shed
where presto a plump sack of cocaine paste is waiten
—Colonel South has the nerve to charge admission
to this wooden performance.
His philosophy is that it doesn’t take a whole minute
to reproduce a sucker—that gap-toothed sonabishi
was definitely into der Schlupfwinkel heimlich big time,
runnen gunnen und hitten die bedeckung!
Hé, lighten up on das Deutsch, d’accord?
Kein Problem, Odin curred. I must say,
among my ’ped students, he’s the least trammelled.
Setting him among his own kind is against their ethics
as it ought to be, but they do it all the time.
Odin lifted his lime and soda
To the Millennium of the Dogge, it is way long overdue!
... Of course none of that is on my card.
Saluki shook her silky ears, Of Course!—
I hear you curren.
See that Dalmatian in the first row?
His spots overlap—no good for show.
Mais, c’est la question-clef:
why would the homokorps
hire a canine (she said the word
with a certain elevation of her Showtime nose)
to instruct them in such arts against their own kind—
even granting your dangerous aura, dating
from the Roman invasions et cetera? And
in possession of 17 million Americano, what’s the point,
even if you are a Working Dog.
Also, and it may be none of my businesskonzerne,
but the ’ped writing this must be the biggest nutcase
in modern poetry to lead with a Rottweiler.
It makes me nervös.
By the way,
are you on vacation?
or is the Academy “on the market?”
Odin straightened his Iron Cross, cleared his growl
and smoothed out his tee-shirt which read Ou est Peltier?
Well, it’s only a convention, isn’t it—given the right
transgenics, I mean, a dog’s as good as anybody, sometimes betta—
You don’t look like you’re taken de hintertreppen!
But whatever the case, you take the Epic you can get.
Any move to the merely heroic, brave men fighting
to get home or to avenge their kinsmen
aims at a solemnity higher than its original.
No feast in the Hall
no schwartzen Wölfe grabben die Hündin! [and by the way
did you imponder that testimony from the Kapitol
about the judge who allegedly showed pictures
of DOGS FUCKING—true or not, that was truly disgusting
from my point of view.] It really hit die Sturmglocke!
En effet! I was shocked and humiliated even to hear it.
I would never Think of showing them in such an act,
the indignant beauty concurred.
Natürlich, Odin agreed, we have no equivalent.
The sheer writing of the poem must be our shelter.
And the use of slightly unfamiliar words and constructions,
along with the distant knell of archaisms, all
the relentless manipulation to supply big time æther
overarched with magnanimous austerity.
These poor devises alone must now do
what the whole occasion did for ’omer. So
lay off the hack, he labors “bei Nacht
und Nebel” as the sated populi toss and snore.
And as for the inheritance,
a lawyer smarter than any dog gedroppt a lot of it in Miami—
but it has had a Texas recovery—plenty
enough to go into das Business.
Da Si, shook Saluki, smoothing her feathering, “On the ’orses!
Whereupon they both barked as if in quotes
and gave each other a High Paw.
Several Bipeds turned their heads
and squeezed their Newsweeks in discomfort.
“Jesus—transgenic dogs,” one of them muttered,
“why didn’t they take the Airbus!”
Odin ran his tongue over his impressive teeth
and observed: from the minute that species
stood up and walked the planet was doomed.
But seriously, we all know now
what the man meant when he said
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”—
it’s when the genome come home to roost:
Protein Chaingangs dressed up to look like scientists
in white coats and droopy socks and dumb hair.
More crooks in banks than in the prison system.
My biggest customers are bankers,
so when it came time to clear out I taught the last class
the entry that closes die Books,
the one we rarely get to teach, and Shot Them All.
Just Like That?
Essentially.
Even in El Peru
there are some rules, I do believe.
¡Sin Duda! Rules for the fools.
But in das Businessenvironment
there are no rules (that’s the point: mustn’t drive
away die investing Klasses), plus
mass murder is not to be found in the Book of Crimes.
It is found only by the impromptu tribunals
who try the Werkingklasses. Shooting the clients
before “turning out the lights” is considered practically œcological
if not merciful in the die Garantie.
There’s nothing more Secure than Death.
¡Verdad!
War may be an art,
but Security ist eine Technikalscienceschaft—
In any case, don’t forget that Business is terror
and since terror was my business I just left a note
taken credit for el Sendero, and,
after spraygunnen several of their slogans about
[Chinga de Madre de Fujimori, among them)
I punched in the code to set the charges—
a not very baffled sequence ending in delete—
then shot der Chauffeur who was holding the door,
On the way to the Aerodrome I phone ahead
saying I was eskapen an attack and would need
uninhibited entry and total cover, otherwise
“the lust of fiction would be punished by the contempt of truth”
or something like that—it’s more impressive in Quechua.
The Timing moreover was as close to parfait
as a mere computer can get: you noticed when I entered
that as
our eyebraus raised together,
there arrived the waves of some vast explósion!
Vraiment! Saluki curred, the pulsation entered
when you did and no doubt both ’peds and quads
were plenty tired of le waiting—
but I must admit I thought “What a dog!”
and I thought. “Quel sang!” & “Oh, how korrekt!”—
big shock waves really turn me on!
Now the hostess saunters by
asking what’s going on with Y’all Quads?
We were just laughing at the Mosquito Coast
down there on our right Saluki offered, We were wondering,
in the spirit of Das Businessenvironment,
what the Gringos are going to call it after the papers are signed.
The hostess stared out the starbord hole—
good question, she thought—
I don’t know, she said at last, But I’ll bet it’s not Mosquito.
No Way Odin chimed in. Mosqujito bad for developen—
der kamakatzi Syringen can spread Anything—
anything you can get and Everything You Don’t Want.
Those pilots are the Levellers.
They just take it from where ever.
It’s the most random sample going.
They have surpassed the Domini, “The Dogs of God”
in their blank indifference.
The Hostess studied the Rottweiler.
Mental note: one cold dog.
“Not surprising,” she said—
but some folks are not going to like the sound of that.
By the way Miss, if it isn’t too forward,
what’s that patch behind your ear for?
Saluki started, and appeared nervös—Oh, that!
she whispered, is a Trans-Derm-Scop Disc—
I’ve been deep-sea fishing.
The Air Hostess looked into the desert creature’s
liquid eyes and saw a yacht heaving in the swells
over the Peru Trench . . . .
So, the hostess blinked, what’ll you
Deux chien have this time—it’s “on the plane.”
Well Done, grinned the Rottweiler,
I’ll have a Ripped Mass
with a splash of testosterone!
The hostess turned to la chienne de chasse in expectation—
The same with a little tincture,
the canine beauty said,
shaking her feathery ears, but hold the testosterone.
Just then the tocsinless signal of the planelink
drew Saluki’s attention. She picked it up—Bueno!
It was a salesman. How did you get this number? she asked.
A marionette filament of voice came through the uplink—
I looked in the Phonebook.
You Read Too Much! Saluki curred, as the silky hair
rose on the back of her graceful neck.
You sound like a mongrel. So what have you got?
Mig-29s. They’re cheap and they’re hot—also
I can get nuklear for between 300 to 1200 a kilo americano—
and concerning die Epidemie have you thought
about investing in Rubber Goods? Are you
interested in a space station? Slightly damaged
needs body work, some panel replacement
No, I’m, not! Saluki was offended now.
(due sans doubt to the space station
and its association with experimental Dogs)
I’ll take a Mig though.
Just put it down off I80 at the Sinclair airport.
load it with Microbombs; Tell’em it’s a Zero.
I’ll Take an IDIQ the evening of the 6th of December.
I’m booked for take-off at a quarter-of-an-hour before dawn
Send the bill to Big Saudi—and Get Off My Link!
Some Dogs!! The desert creature could barely suppress
her grinning indignation.
Odin glanced up from his reading material.
He was now amusing himself with People Magazine,
a subject, at least, in which he had a professional interest.
He incurred that The Mongrel was just dumping inventory.
The gunrunner’s night never ends—
it stretches out to take in the day,
its blue eyes never fade. Gunrunnen is the final morality,
purchasing power stripped to the bone—if that species
was put here for any other reason, nobody’s mentioned it.
Saluki noted the Panama Canal.
Actually he’s my chef d’équipement—everything
fabricated of detection-defying polymers. He’s a whizz.
His motto is “Stealth is Not Enough.” If you can kurb
your compulsion to be haughty, he might give you his card.
Well so far that’s an If-and-a-Half. Is that dogge
transgenic, a single-gene mutt or what?
I think you’ve got yourself a biped traveler, Odin.
Looks like you’ve been penetrated.
Watch your language!—you can catch diseases
just from the way you talk,
why do you think even Perfect Celibates die?
Vraiment. But there are no celibates among dogs,
I take it you’re alluding to the troubles
consuming the homo-saps.
Tout de même, this mongrel seems quite studied.
He lets his tongue hang out like a regular mutt,
no pretense of any kind to modulate his wild nature,
as one would expect of an authentic
modern member of the genus canis.
And that K-Mart jacket he’s wearing—
is that supposed to be some kind of punch-line?
Let’s face it, if that’s the dog I just spoke to
he’s still doin’ it in the street dans le rue—
Somebody forgot to shut the door on his Pet-taxi!
You obviously move in refined circles, Odin discurred.
Der Mischling’s Businessenvironment is pocked with Plastique.
Why bother with a smart jacket? The limits of tolerance
are reached pronto. There’s no useful profile in that fevered arena—
these runners have no claim on truth or diligence—
they’ve got High Speed and Nitroglycerina.
Whoa, Odin! Saluki encurred,
Hardware and Nitro really do it to me, it’s the Stuff
of which I can’t get enough, it’s the opposite of bananas.
Richtig, Odin incurred
Can you tell me the name of that town down there?
sparkling in the thin equatorial fog
Fifteen hundred metres above the deep blue sea.
Settled by Basques and converted Spanish Jews,
Notorious now for its evil patrimony from The Traffic
which has become the base exchange of half the World
having a value ten times that of ingot gold—
and, to be fair to the better side of town,
there is a statue of Carlos Gardel, the greatest tango singer
who ever lived, always accompanied
by fresh flowers and the salutes of the multitude . . .
he crashed here, on the approach to what
became his last and final date.
Oh Please have pity! The first thing I did
when I went transgenic was to learn the Tango—it had been
the only one of their accomplishments I Yearned to duplicate,
The Only Thing—Tango-milonga,
the long measured human walk,
the compelling instrumental finality of the steps,
the orchestral sweep of the social symbolization,
the dreaded vocalizations of the tango-romanza
and the tango-canción. When Carlos Gardel bought the farm
in Medellin, that bleak night in 1935,
the son of the arrabales died,
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br /> and the dreams of the porteño began.
Saluki was having a closer look at the valley sprawling.
Hourra! she excurred, there’s a mess of dogs down there
and they appear very restless and hungry.
Too many dogs the lower Odin acurred.
When you were run by the Mohammedans,
were you aware that the most scurrilous epithet they have
for the European is “a dog?”
You don’t understand the laws of the tent, Rotweiller.
In their world, dogs of high breed are part of zee seraglio.
That’s repellent, Ødin offered.
En vérité, that’s why they do it, Saluki recurred.
Across the Cold Hiss of the Nightflight Odin Enters the Downlink
The Bipeds snooze and snuggle in their pillows,
their slowly firing idling brains,
their somnambulant systems
halting and hunting like an engine,
along their dampered hertzian waves,
A cargo of nuisances transiting l’Amerique Centrale—
“Das big Konzerne” has got a CLOSED sign
hangen an der door
The lights are low . . . the cockpitdoor is open
the digits of red and green glow like embers
throughout das Sústem...
on the ground the deathsquaders buckle
their Israeli hardware and prepare to lock & roll
The Rockies hold a good crop of snow
this spring Odin learns from the Storm Link—
the toilet bowls and broad green lawns of Denver
will be eager to receive their share of the drip,
as they will, if Phoenix don’t suck it down first.
Vachement! Saluki raised her glass to toast.
Vraiment, vous avez du chien, Odin replied.