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A Scratch

If ever there was a way to form an understatement: it's been quite a while since I've posted here, is a good way to start after two years without a tippy-type from yours truly.
It has been a while and not until I looked upon the date of my last post did I realize how much time had bested me.
I keep asking myself 'what happened and where did you go'.
My brain used to arrange my thoughts into poetry now he's a garbage man.
Today.
There was no garbage.

Untitled

Hide your sympathy
From my trouble
It craves attentions
Indecent foibles
Bring the car around
So we can cover
Our hidden melodies
From the faithful
Choirs watching
As they decipher
Our hidden melodies
Unlocking pity not understanding
Struggle in the misdiagnosis as I'm holding your hand.

Parched and Heated Already

Orders from Central Command:
Get your shit in order son.
Report to Iraq.
Report to Iraq soon.

Since receiving this news, I've had a constant hard on. It's become a bit bothersome. Don't get the wrong idea, Tricky Dick's not some relentless trunk of wood, he's just a very light, very restless sleeper.

My tastes have gone from refined to having ankles turn me on. Any flash of flesh and hint of eyeball will suffice. Slender thigh meat makes me salivate. Ass cheeks can't be too big or too bony for my fascination. All I see is the sexual nature of all women who pass within my vision.

Women with babies, born and unborn, athletic women, wheelchair women, noneck women, tired women, put upon women, chirpy women, savage women, ditzy women, pale, dark, yellow, spotted, giraffe-like, chipmunk tail, women of all shapes all ages and all sizes constantly call out for my attention, as long as the woman has some redeeming attractive quality, my dick is game.

She could be picket fence toothed and silverbacked but if she's got creamy long legs-Wood.

Long neck with an ET forehead and skis for feet but her eyes are amber jewels perched atop pillowy DSL's-Wood.

Man hands and Popeye legs but a slender waist peppered with freckles topped with floating milk bags-Woooooood.

As you can see, even horrid women garner my attention. Put a dime piece at my nose and watch me soar like a rocket tied to two useless flaps of flesh.

My perceptual awareness is also under constant barrage. I say thank you to someone who replies "Anytime" and that word stretches out into a loaded and bloated mass of innuendo sodden with all types of dirty endless possibilities. Every mouth is an invitation. Smiles are dark and sensuous. Hellos are insistent demands for the vigor of my stroke. Even inattention is nothing more than a furtive demand of “grab a handful of my hair and take me! Who cares if I've got three kids I'm screaming at and I'm trying to argue with the post office lady. I can see you out of the corner of my eye and its taking all my will power not to rip off my clothes. Take me! Take me! I need a roll of Forever Stamps!”

Don’t even think to ask what my dreams are like.

I’ll let you know when or if this new reality subsides.

A Twisted bit of Political Whateva

It's been said by some close to Hillary Clinton that she truly believes Obama cannot win the election come November.
That may be more true now than ever but not for the reasons she states. She argues he is the weaker candidate and that he cannont win even though he has won more states and more of the popular vote and more superdelegates have declared for him since super Tuesday.
If she were to follow her own logic, then why wouldn't she be trying harder (as in nicer) to get the Veep spot, ensuring Democratic victory? If she is truly the strongest between them, knowing she can't make the nomination (as she surely realizes), shouldn't she be fighting to form the winning ticket? I see in the Clintons, the spirit of winning at all cost, which is evident in how easily lies flow from out their mouths, even their daughter has begun earning her namesake.
Clinton mouths are blackholes where truth gets sucked in and cannot escape.
No, instead she is knee capping her opponent, doing her damnedest to ensure he can't win in November. One can only suppose her behavior is geared for an opening to run next election cycle. It is also possible that there is no next time for her. She may feel this is make or break and she must exhaust all measures.
I think the most ridiculous attacks against the Democratic front runner come straight out of the Clinton camp. When they are called out about their harsh intraparty attacks, their standard response is "well if Obama can't take attacks in the Primary, just wait for what the Republicans will do". The unspoken proposition in that refrain is -Our attacks are just as vitriolic as the Republicans-.
Perfect example is this latest episode of how McCain AND Shrillary are both echoing the same attacks against Obama. Bittergate.
I would be lying if I didn't write that this whole ordeal between Obama and BitchFaceWhoreMouth doesn't bode well for McCain. Simply because Clinton's ability to draw Obama into petty arguments diminishes his original appeal. She has taken his shine and covered it with her own purient shit so that now he appears less dignified than McCain.
McCain now looks presidential, until you watch him speak (I mean read his lines) or until you see him try to raise his arms above armpit level. Sad puppet.
My ORF (One Republican Friend) is now more confident than ever that the R's will take back the houses and the Presidency.
My ORF, coincidentally is also my One Retarded Friend.

From on High

Time for another deployment.
Still not positive but was told, "be ready."

Butthole Whores Articulate Something Momentous

What I am about to write is purely unscientific speculation but I will type on none the less.
My conjecture is that porn is shifting and sorting due in part to the internet. I know, way to go out on a limb there on that speculation, says you.
Read on.
The internet is not the reason, yet merely a tool turning the brush of desire against the engine, transforming it with every touch of every perverted and covetous click of a mouse. The reason has more to do with people using the internet as a medium, a means of mass communication.
Porn used to be a semi-one way street with the peddlers fashioning the latest craze and waiting to see what people would buy. People are now driving attention and $$$$ to websites, creating markets out of what used to be niche or fetish, relentlessly changing the shape of the animal with the curiosity of their desires in the form of mouse clicks.
The advent of real-core is a straightforward manifestation of that which I speak. When web cams and amateur vids found their way onto the net, guerilla style, their popularity had the porn industry scrambling at ways to profit. The porn industry sought to manufacture real-core material, manufacture being the operative word.
Real-core paysites popped up all over. Web cam barely legal girls looked amazingly familiar, as if they’d been seen in 20 or 30 other paysites and maybe they appeared more used and abused than fresh from the farm. Butthole virgins amazingly took big pole monsters quite well for their supposed rookie status to their anal adventures.
Another example would be that of the tattooed variety. Somewhere along the line, an interest was shown in women that had a different look and then, all of a sudden, you couldn’t click through the net without seeing Suicide Girls, Tattooed Cum Sluts, Alternateens or anything of the like. Even Vivid assembled VividAlt, an arm of the studio dedicated to creating alternative porn.
I believe the studios have it wrong. They still operate on the assumption of craze and fad. They misinterpret the need expressed in the various morphing of their chosen market. When VividAlt was born, one could almost imagine someone at Vivid saying “this is the new thing—this is what they want now. Why doesn't that bitch have a clit ring? Can't we find a cum drinker with a 666 tatted on her guzzler?”
The various ventures of Real-core, Gangbang, Ass To Mouth, B&D, S& M, Web-cam, Amateurism, Barely Legal, Cutie Cutters and not least, other Fetish types, as well as the obvious rejection of plastic tits, rubber faces, fake orgasms, contrived situations and just flat out phony people give us something to ponder.
Coursing through all of the varieties of smut I just named are moments like the bent awkward look, a genuinely pained face, an actually perky mound of flesh, visible and believable enjoyment in the filmed action—the crucial component is the pure experience of authenticity.
The rejection of the fake and disingenuous is a rallying cry “give us something real”. This, I believe, is what people are after.
I also believe this craving for authenticity is behind the shifting tides of mostly every aspect of society in relation to mass media.
That's why Hillary Clinton, with her fake crying and her contrived life, will never ever win my vote.
OBAMA!

Crabby Bitch Face Whore Mouth

There is this girl at work.
She is a married, mother of a one year old daughter.
Crabby Bitch Face Whore Mouth is what I call her if she doesn’t gets her cool-aid.
Her cool-aid usually comes in the form of any stimulant whether it be coffee, nicotine or a fat pig-snort of cocaine off a baby’s back. She is so dependant on stimulants that anytime she is not taking the nerve altering substances down her gullet, she throws up hate on everything and everyone.
Sometimes I wonder about her.
She can be as bright and dark as a razor.
Speaking of, the other day, she took a subtle interest in a conversation about Cutters. I asked her what she thought about it. The red face told me all I needed to know. Now, I tease her every chance I get. I turn every conversation back to the Cut.
"Can you pass me a pen" she'll ask.
To which I reply, "Sorry, but how bout this razor. We'll just make your skin my notepad today."
"Why are people such idiots" she'll scream.
"Does that make you want to cut" I'll needle.
"Hey fucktard, what are you eating today"
"I was thinking of ordering some Razor Whore Salad"
After much ball-busting, she finally admitted that she thinks about it sometimes. It was a real conversation. Neither of us held back.
Now, everyday, I obsess about violating her.

The Wild

I’ve been sleepless.
The sun goes up and down, leaving no tracks in the sky.
I glance at a window and feel little whether it’s bathed in light or deepened by night.
I’ve been hollow.
There was a time when I couldn’t contain myself.
Calm days were so few.
In the combustion of youth, my will was a tangle of strings holding back a woodland thing.
Then, the liberation which led to days without any sleep.
Came a time, it didn’t return.
Now I’m somehow lost without that noise in my ears.
Sitting in my car, driving home, staring out the window, searching.

Tubes of a Leviathan

Something terrible is stirring in the dark heart of everywhere.
I cringe to think that I may be eternally plugged in.
Tapping into a source that feeds back into me.
It takes even more than it gives.
I am a slave to it.
I belong to it.
I felt myself to be the master.
Now everyday it feeds on my mind.
Everyday I grow a little more insubstantial.
I'll save you a seat.

Just Killing My Ideas

Say something to yourself in the quiet light
Tell a tale ten times of unrepentant boredom.

Someone says in words typed out on paper . . .
go to Washington, D.C.

Shit.

Vespers

I make my way down the broken path
Blackened rough and ragged
Stretched out like a dried out
Magma River

An amber flash beams my wants to attention
And I obey
Turning my rocket mind
Inside out

The Avatar beckons
And I obey

Approaching the Temple
A wary sinner
I unscrew open

Metal and plastic place of prayer
My choices three
A trinity of divinity pouring

As a spider weaves her silk across
She freezes at my finger

I press a Premium button

The Temple words flash
"Begin Pumping"
"Begin Pumping"
"Begin Pumping"
And I obey

Filled up,
Driving away,
I am at peace.

Sort-of Typing

When writing, the most trouble I've ever had is finding a way to hold back or not to hold back.

How much is too much?

Am I revealing too much about myself?

Am I being too honest?

Not honest enough?

Should I even be writing?

Will these words hurt someone close to me?

Mostly, it's an inner conflict between the athletic, slutty, asshole I'm known as and the poet no one reads (my own damned fault because I show NO ONE my poetry).

I remember submitting an application for mail clerk, to my hometown newspaper, hoping I'd wedge my way into a staff writer position.

Until I met actual writers.

Most of the journalists and editors at my hometown paper were a stiff kick in the nads of my romantic self-image of the rebel writer-not at all how I viewed my favorite authors or myself.

These guys were pallid, balding and trollish in their appearance and just as unappealing in their manner. Most didn't have time for a young kid curious about the inner workings of creativity in regards to keeping the flow of words an irresistible feast or, at least, an appealing snack, for the brain.

One of those guys told me "there's no such thing as becoming a writer, you either are or you're not. After that, it's practice".

Back then, I was as serious about my writing as I was about pussy, risk-taking and living free of regret. Standing in the newsroom, looking at that sad handful of professional writers, I realized how little any of my interests were represented at that paper. As I figured that a town's newspaper is a reflection of it consumers (my hometown), I realized I was pondering a cross section that did not bode well for my future.

I never became a professional writer, in the sense of receipt of pay for tip-tap-typing away all day and part of the reason has to do with my experience on that day; A moment in time when I was blessed with a view of what lay years ahead on one possible tangent of my future. Another reason is that I was restless in that tiny town and wanted to see the world (I've seen pieces of it).

Since then, I've always wrestled with a way to integrate my personal self-image with the literary track I've chosen. At the times when this contest is at its most tense, I find it hard to write about any thing. Then, at some impasse, the impregnation of ideas and voices I've been holding back reaches a crescendo and I will not stop my fingers from the tip-tap-typing.

I will continue to write.

Thanks to RC and Boris for the encouragement. It means too much to me.

Back in Black

I recently returned from deployment in Kuwait.
My best friend Tom recently deployed to Iraq.

I recently spent a lot of money on a brand new black Honda Accord.
An old friend keeps asking for money—not everyday, but often enough that I feel like shit every time I say no.

I recently started to feel very distracted by so many things.
It’s hard to find time to write anything about anything.

In time, I hope that I find a way out of this literary malaise because I recently pulled a muscle from masturbating too hard.

Now it hurts to type.

Back in Chicago

My apologies for the lack of updates lately. Sex and good food, I confess, have been my downfall.

I've been enjoying this homecoming and now my leave is over and I am back in the Chicago area.

It's taken some effort to get used to the day to day and I've needed some time to process everything in order to create some palatable prose for you.

Please, accept my apologies and I will repay you all very soon.

Fajitas in Eden

Hello to all of my tiny readership from the Land of Sweat and Skintight Everything . . .

That's corecto, I am finally back in the States from a grueling, yet, easy Middle Eastern deployment.

It's time for some Chicago Stories and goooooood food and sex and more sex and possibly, some chafing. Let the flood gates of distraction open!

Stay tuned for some Return to Eden type postings . . .

For now, some fajita tacos are calling out my name.

TCN of The Wheel

A heart attack. A humvee. A string tied to a trigger. An improvised explosive device.

A bus ride.

Take a plane into a warzone and drop like a ball onto a roulette wheel. As it spins, you will acclimate to its revolutions. The acclimation will take so well that the spinning stops altogether though it never really does. The feeling gets lost around about the same time the food looses its flavor.

A bus ride.

Bounce-Bounce over a suicide.

Rolling and rolling over the numberless days of boredom—another bounce.

A bus ride.

Is the wheel speeding up or are you going so slow that your mind is compensating by compressing time though the smaller neural spaces like high pressure. A thumb somewhere in there presses on a nozzle and seconds spray high speed.

That day, the ball landed on a bus ride.

The unit was a small National Guard component from Colorado and they were being bussed from one camp to another where they were to board a plane headed into Iraq. The plane was to deliver more soldiers to yet another wheel.

Third Country Nationals (TCN’s) are a huge labor force in Kuwait. They hail from far off and close enough to provide a cheap workforce to one of the world’s oil-richest nations. They make little in wages but when compared to the trifles of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Egypt the distance means little next to the care what little compensation provides their families.

TCN’s do excellent work whenever shit is involved. If someone finger-brushed Fuck The Army with fecal paints of many different colors, a TCN will be there to make it so that shit graffiti never happened at all.

TCN’s are great with other people’s shit.

A TCN drove that day. He took to the road with a heavy foot. The turn before the camp is a sharpened elbow of pavement and he took it with a heavy foot.

There was a swerve and a thunderous pop as the bus skid and skipped the bend. The huge vehicle fell to its side, the windows popped and the soldiers inside became people falling on top of each other screaming. A young man fell through the broken window on the bus’s first bounce. The bus fell back on the soldier on the second and third bounce and dragged him the rest of the way. As the road whipped by like a belt sander at the opened windows, people piled on and drove those at the bottom grinding into the grating path. Flack and Kevlar protected many at the bottom from scraping, serious injury.

When my team and I reported as emergency personnel, I saw pieces of the wheel and I knew that I was still on it. Spinning.

The New Guy is Going to Pop

We recently recieved a new addition to the team going by the name J. Milky (close enough). Milky is a good kid from Nebraska with the attention span of a gnat and all the subtlety of a stop sign. I wanted to write about something else today but that post will have to wait because three roundhouse kicks was all it took to change the nature of this weeks post. Enjoy and welcome . . .


Welcome to ADD Theatre
A J. Milky Production
Brought to you in Vivid Realified Words by
BellyoftheWorld
in assosiation with
Ensephalo-Herps Studios

The following is based on actual events and unlike Hollywood “based on”, I mean this shit really happened and I saw it with my own two eyes—heard it with both ears.

SIGNS & SYMPTOMS THAT MILKY WILL HAVE A BREAKDOWN SOON . . . OR AT LEAST POP . . .

Statements Milky has made since arriving:

"I taught myself three things. Tae-kwan-do, Spanish and how to kick asses." said with a seriously serious face. He then proceeds to pluck away at his guitar which he does not know how to tune or play. Sweet sounds of my very own Audio Ghraib.

"I really could kick your ass. Why are you laughing? I really could." after performing three wild roundhouse kicks that shook the whole building with his overweight ass.

"I wasn't a borderline personality disorder until I met her. Before her, I was an Antisocial personality disorder."

"Are you going to do that To-morning Morrow?" when he gets overly excited, he mixes words. I've heard some great ones but I can only remember this one because there are too many.

"I've hung out with Mexicans since I was a kid"

"I was a boxer."

"I was in Prison."

“I’ve been stabbed.”

“I’ve been shot at.”

“I was in a gang. The cops still got me on a list for gang affiliation.”

"Why are you laughing" I’ve heard him ask this one about a hundred times.

"I've punched a patient before but I respected his right to privacy."

"I was ADHD until I was a Junior in high school, then I took myself off the meds and I'm so much better without them. A lot of great people were ADHD you know."

"Why?" about a hundred times.

"That's stupid." after every answer to why.

"Fuck that shit." after every reasonable answer to that's stupid.

"Fuck that shit." muttered under his breath after every answer to fuck that shit.

"That hurt my feelings bro." more times than I can count.

Things that have happened to Milky since arriving:

His "fucking wallet" was "stolen" his first day here. He had to cancel all his credit and ATM cards and request "all new shit!" Then someone found his wallet on the bus he'd been riding and turned it in to the Navy peeps at the hospital. "So you lost your wallet" I accused. His reply, "it was stolen until that guy found it."

He was kicked out of the Troop Medical Clinic because no doctors knew of him. It was one of the things that "hurt my feelings bro".

When he was told that he was being reassigned to an outer camp away from the main hub (where the pools and women are located), he asked "Why" and replied to the reply "that's stupid" and the cycle began anew.

His Mutual Funds account was accidentally wiped out and is now in the process of being located. It is lost somewhere in the digital muck of the super dependable internet highway.

The only email address which contains documents of his mutual funds account is bogged down by slow servers. When he finally got his account displayed, it was locked out.

Things I've seen Milky Do:

Fucking round house kicks!

His eyes cross when he gets frustrated, which is a lot.

He's lost his keys, wallet, ID, cigarettes and coffee at least twice everyday.

Toilet OCD. He must use the same toilet after every meal. No other will do. Don't ask.

Significance in a Sign Shop

Here is a pit. A gash, paralleling the Iraqi border as far as I can see both ways east and west. Jumping across the pit looks about as easy as kicking yourself in the nuts which is as hard as finding something to juxtapose against the previous comparison. Our mission? Throwing things at poor, Iraqi children. They’re supposed to catch it—even if with their face.

We drive down several kilometers with our treats bouncing around in the rear compartment. The desert is never a smooth ride. The desert is anything except comfortable.

Several mud huts pocking the landscape on the other side remind me how far from home I’ve ventured today. Gardens and goats hug close against the desiccated homes. The winds and the rains have stopped. The dryness of the sand, indicative of how the weather may not have deigned to slum upon this peasant soil. Weather, she can be a haughty bitch sometimes.

The children spot our sandy plume and I can see them running for dear life on an intercept course. We stop the SUV and whip out the treats. The kids skid to a stop at the lip of the manmade canyon.

The yells of the sandy ones are shrill and immediate and incomprehensible. I don’t speak the language but my own anthropologic studies suggest a possible translation, “Gimmegimmegimmegimmmegimme
OVERHEREgimmegimmegimmeoverhere
gimme!”

We pitch our charity skyward. Our charity is made up of hard things like Gatorade, candy, soda, toys and whatever else we could grab—stuff no one should have to catch. We underhand throw our American products across the barrier to the poor desert children on the other side who ran out of dried mud for anything we care to give.

I wonder if maybe I smacked a little girl with a Tropical Punch Gatorade tossed about twenty feet across to clear the gap. It may have ricocheted off her face. She smiles as she picks her prize off the sand and jumps up and down yelling for me to toss her another one. She’s a tough one.

A couple of adventurous catchers almost fall over the edge trying to get at something thrown too short. Someone in our group gasps loudly.

“Do they even like any of this stuff?” I ask the Kuwaiti Sergeant who just pulled his Army vehicle up behind us to see what’s going on.

“They will not keep any of it” he replies with a smile, “They will sell it all and bring the dinars back their family. Look, that little one is asking for your watch—oh now they all want a watch.”

Look back and every one of the children is pointing to their wrist. More gimme.

Feeling like a Good Samaritan yet guilty for not bringing more, I drive away back through the border purgatory to get back to base. My mind should rest in an ease of post altruistic harmony but I can’t help but wonder what those friendly little kids will grow up into. Will their adult forms hate America? Will tossed M&M’s be the catalyst that creates the next Iraqi I-Atota-Li Hay’t am-Erican or will that yellow bag be an emissary of good will that grows into a Sheikh of benevolent import, halting the measures of the Antichrist as he sews his seeds throughout this sandy region in search of a Revelation? Will they inherit or make more mud huts and be happy enough?

As we drive past, the shitty parking lot remains still and another fly lands on my lips.

This time, I really want that fucker off my face. I strike fast and hard. I wince. It retreats. I pursue. It must die. The parking lot gone past, my mind still on the pest and the desert encroaching, I want only for the death of this tiny life.

Squash.

It’s done.

Driving back to our encampment, I feel heady from the day. I’ve seen too much today my brain whispers. Then I spot the camel laying a few feet from the road. She’s on her side and a brand new baby camel tries rising to her feet. Mommy camel looks wiped out with a trail behind her. Did she drag herself or did someone drag her to that spot?

Now you’ve really seen too much today shouts my brain. It’s just way too close to be shouting that way.

I drive away from the scene with death and rebirth and politics and symbolism and life and cyclical forces spinning up dust in my mind and bug guts still stuck to the palms of my hands.

There’s an epiphany out here somewhere for anyone with enough energy to go hunting. Right now, I’m way too self-absorbed for that kind of thought.

Sympathy From the Desert

I speed along on 80.

80 is referred to, by many, as the Highway of Death. There are two such roads with the same moniker. Iraqis stopped up this main artery recoiling from American/Coalition Forces during Desert Storm. They knew retreat was their only option left. So they did. Announcing their intentions to comply with UN Resolution 660, they abandoned Kuwait and clogged up two of the only roads back the way they invaded. Filling all available lanes, they jammed upon each other and waited in their vehicles like commuters in morning traffic. Someone cursed a last breath as the missiles shot into the jam and burned them all silent.

Two thousand people incinerated as they waited and waited for someone to get out of the way.

Tanks, supply trucks, tactical, non-tactical vehicles alike and even civilian cars formed burnt out husks littering the landscape after the jets flew away from their devastation. Smoke, wispily waving after their delivery boys like the passage of so many souls rose into the wind.

The Highways of Death are now immaculate, with hardly a scar of their namesakes as I break speed limits toward our next mission.

Raindrops make slapping sounds of clashing against our windshield and run in rivulets away from the wind. The wet weather is an abrupt change from the sandstorm that tried to tear our paper quarters apart last night and for the past two days.

Sympathy from the desert. From the sand. From the dying.

A fly, trapped in my vehicle all morning lands on my hair. I slap the top of my head like I’m special. I miss.

The radio stations are still playing in a state of mourning for the Emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah who died just weeks ago. With an I-pod radio transmitter plugged into my PDA, we avoid the country’s radioed self condolence with The Mars Volta, Wolf Parade, Mattoid and a bit of the Sufjan. But I know that beneath Take the Veil, Fancy Claps, Rat Poison and John Wayne Gacy, someone is singing a song of sorrow in honor of Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

My Commander sits uncomfortably silent through the tunes. I know he dislikes my music which puts a slight dent in my enjoyment but not much. Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter is much better than suffering through his eclectic schizo-mix of Beach Boy pop between Gloria Estefan’s Greatest Hits and Bette Midler’s Biggest Shits.

At the encampment we work through patient after patient and after we’re done, the Commander says he wants to visit the border. He’s nervous. I can see his hesitation and hear the fear in his voice. The Iraqi border looms just beyond the concertina-wired sand berms and at night, gunfire picks different angles from which to snap and the occasional mortars booming through the tents, shaking in sympathetic vibration scare the shit out of skittish soldiers.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t feel like it” he suggests.

“I don’t mind going back there, sir” I reply, studying my Commander’s nervousness.

He looks uncomfortable in his Battle Rattle (flack jacket and Kevlar).

The zone between the two countries is a purgatory of Customs officials and various military authorities that one should expect to see in a place such as this. I drive slowly. We stop at the desert’s shitiest parking lot and the sailors I’ve brought with me dig out their digital cameras. The parking lot is a holding station for wreckage coming out of battle that must first clear customs through whatever paperwork tanks and humvees are supposed to have after they’ve been IED’d to shreds. The shit part of this lot is what we’re about to see.

Our escort, a Lieutenant Colonel, tells us where these vehicles have been and how long they’ve been waiting to enter the country.

“Seven days” he says in a deep military tone of disgust.

A fly lands on my face as his friend buzzes the tower. This isn’t altogether unusual considering the closer we get to Iraq, the more flies we meet. They bunch together in clouds and the atmosphere here becomes cloudier by the minute. I’m reminded of starving Ethiopians with dead, asking eyes on TV. A narrator admonishes me for my money as obese flies treat the bony faces of Nun’Knu and SeSay La’ki like pedestrian walkways while I search desperately for the remote. I shoo the flies away with a swipe of the hand.

“These six vehicles here are so tore up and melted shut that there are still pieces of people stuck to the floors in there” says the LTCOL in a resounding voice. The presence of my friendly fliers makes more sense now. So does the smell.

More wrecked humvees, tanks, trailers and trucks and it’s time to get out of there.

It was time to go the minute we arrived.

Next Piece is . . .Significance