El Nino, La Nina And The Junction (in Pueblo, Colorado) - 1. Chapter 1

I

El Nino’s gone, and La Nina’s betrayal offers little but dust and glaring sun to irritate and blind the eye of summer roaming Abriendo from drought-crackling grass in Henkel Park northwest
to gridiron Dutch Clark
past dark bust commemorating one of the Americas’ founding fathers of religious-political mass murder:
dark Christopher Columbus across two traffic lanes from solid half city block of brick-incarcerated commerce, and air gastro-erotically smitten by doughnut smells,
heat waves rippling toward the empty navel of heaven from the pavement outside The Pantry,
departing and arriving patrons pausing to exchange everyday histories,
some intimate, some less, from the past, in the present
punctuated by dog tails waving unneurotic above straight, orchestrated lines and madly jagged cracks
in the sidewalk katty-corner from the honest animal stealth of Siamese slinking
into the broken glass-strewn walkway behind the used record and book stores, the tanning salon and beauty parlor skirting the intersection soon to be hallowed by protests against a government indulgence
promising to forever close dark, sad eyes of childhood thousands of miles
from the inefficient luxury of fans trying to expel heat, through open, second-floor windows
at the Mesa Hotel, no air conditioning, absentee landlord-ship provides gaping prurience of cobwebbed glass-eyes staring vacantly through the oppressive air at the stop for the Red Creek bus on the corner round-angling off Union Ave., Lake Ave. and Berkley-Beulah buses belching fumes through the same intersection onto Colorado Ave. to dispense and re-engorge themselves with passengers
in front of the pharmacy where the old man pursues false aspersions of shoplifting outside,
cigar smoke backward-accosting the time-eroded arroyos in his face as the last Berkley-Beulah of the day chugs away from the curb toward the sun-brazen canopy of western sky beyond the government-subsidized apartment building for the emotionally ill farther down,
echoes haunting the streets of the tall, thin man in the black fedora wandering through the muttered cadences of his time and talking to the kids
without bribes of candy, need of help in looking for lost puppies,
but the rhythms of present childhood stirring distant memories,
daylight remnants seeming to stretch in an attempt at relief in a sigh denied by traffic sounds,
ruptured by screeching tires as teenaged testosterone peels out of the drive-thru at Taco Bell,
car interiors pungent with the soul of onions and chili,
desecrated by the sound of crude laughter: “What for ya’ give a friggin’ shit about her, anyway?
she’s just a ‘ho-bag, man,”
more laughter, and soul-hymens are violated again and again by young manhood clinging
above ice-chasms of societal dysfunction, gasping under avalanches of skewed expectations
as relentless as La Nina seeking ecological vengeance,
with hand reaching across Southwestern hundreds of desert miles to slash the throat of approaching night
with a jagged blade of lightning, her thunder peals of hollow laughter mocking promise of rain
and leaving nothing but spectral ballets of dust to assault table umbrellas on the patio
at the coffeehouse on Broadway -
- and suddenly, a blue-gray hatchback careens off the street into the coffeehouse driveway,
missing the patio railing by a tenuous promise of a few feet
before rounding the coffeehouse and out onto Abriendo,
followed within seconds by a cop, then another missing the railing by a thinner promise of fewer feet,
while a third one pedal-to-the-metals it to the intersection, barely pausing to look left or right
before charging after his prey,
no sirens wailing in functional confession, but lights flashing to silently both proselytize
and divert attention from a red-blooded denial of a blood-lust to pursue the authoritarian paradigm,
its corners neatly proper, retentive and as infertile as the rain-bloodless thunderhead
smothering the lightning-lurid horizon while masquerading as a life-engorged bush…

II

... it’s inevitable summer and a high-speed police chase is a visual byte of free entertainment
not over-straining television and computer-cloned attention spans on the coffeehouse patio
only eighty-five percent full instead of standing room only as on most Saturday nights,
eddies of surface desire, whirlpools of aching deep need for connection
spinning fragments feeling the elastic tug into crazy-patch mosaic,
puzzles loitering in waiting, yearning for manipulation or caresses from hands and fingers
dealing cards mid-game poker at one table,
while beneath another lies stretched the golden water spaniel on one flank,
sideways somnolent, peddling feet stirring the searing breeze
and slumber-glossy eyes under eyelids fluttering
in rhythm with dancing visions alive in ancestral memory-cells as ageless
as the sharp, jagged shards in tones of bitterness:
“You want to know what happened with my boyfriend at the bar, last night?” - heavyset,
her dark-brunette wavy hair falls to hunched shoulders,
“Sure,” - this from the red-head, ears pendulant with metal,
mousy-faced, pursed lips a vagina of voyeurism,
“I won’t go into all the details,
but the first thing was him going into this spiel of crap about commitment being
some kind of co-dependency,
then – then! he had the gall to tell me to go home by myself because HE wanted to stay there and play pool
with some of his buds until closing! - not to mention he left his wallet at his place
and I had to pay for our drinks and this loud, awful punk shit he played on the juke box almost the whole time we were there,
Man, was I ever royally pissed!
“What a jerk! – whad’ya gonna’ do about it? – the oral-lipped vagina is now pursed more eagerly than ever,
“Oh, I’ve already called this other guy I saw a few times a while back,
have a date with him after twelve when he gets off work at WalMart,”
“You went from a jerk to a guy that works at WalMart?”
“Don’t start! – ‘cause wait till my old boyfriend gets a load of him, man!”
“A WalMart hunk, huh? – like, wel-l, o-okay, whatever,”
“Oh, cut it out! – my ex has keys to my place but won’t get back from a business trip to the Springs
until at least one - maybe later - this morning and it’ll be precious to see the look on his face
when he walks in on me and my new guy!
“Sounds a bit cruel already – can’t say I blame you, though,” affirms the other,
“That’s exactly what the ex deserves – fucker! – oh, shit, look at the time!
I have to be going to get ready for my date,
See ya’ next Saturday night – okay?”
“Sure thing – have fun,”
and the brunette squares her shoulders as she stands and passes small plastic black and white pieces
marshaled across a grid of same-colored squares on a nearby table and a voice awash above the mesh:
“Wait, you can’t move there,
that’ll put your king in check,”
“Oh - sorry, didn’t see that,” – hum-mm, okay, guess I’ll go here with my rook,”
“That’s better,”
and a clacking sound punctuates moves, the spaniel waking, raising her head and peering about
before again stretching out under the Sweet Prince* in his chair across the table,
beautiful eyes and face vibrant with memories from two weekends earlier
of a rare, moisture-dripping night celebrant at the matte bar in Manitou,
the air, the streets, seemingly the clouds and very mountains resonant with young hope and desire
soon to be squelched by a fear of one’s self through fear of another,
and seeds of deception begin swirling like the blur of voices, the wind across the patio
above bleeding furrows of pain and sorrow, the crying wound of being
gaping upward at the desolate navel of heaven,
like the coffeehouse at closing, customers gone, umbrellas folded and laid away,
while in his bed somewhere east of the departed sun and west of the womb-shaped moon
El Niño mourns a dearth of fertility, his betrayed and betraying, cold-hearted consort lying in ambush
with another blade of lightning to slash the belly of the night,
though all now is mostly quiet and deserted, but for tails wagging unneurotic
of dogs, Siamese and others astray, dislocated from mere time and place
in the morning hours of relentless, pitiless summer
under La Niña’s baneful, watching eyes…