ROUGH

By Twin Bodies

I rolled into town before dawn

Tired and hung over

And cranky

I had woken up nose to nose with a busty transsexual named Michelle

With whom I had downed more than a few litres of rum the night before

She had her cocaine in a test tube nestled between her tits

I did not imbibe, it's not my thing

Let me drink

Let me drown

We are in the heart of paramilitary Colombia and I should not be here

Nose to nose

Drying residue on my leg

My pants by the window

My shoe in the sink

Michelle had gotten into a fist fight at a drag show the night before

Rolling up her sleeves

She took me away in a little white car with her other transsexual friends

Into the night

Into pools of rum

And coke

And pesos misspent

I danced Vallenato with a crossdresser on a dusty floor in a bar on the black side of town

She didn't want to speak to me

So Michelle took me home

her home was a salon

Life imitating Art

And there we drowned.

In the afternoon I watched prisoners beg for their sanity in a building that reeked of shit

Barely enough water to drink

Tear gas in cages

Political prisoners or criminals

With homemade toothbrush shanks under pillows

Blood on the walls

Children in riot shields

A prison on an empty road

Topless men scaled the walls to bring buckets to parched mouths

Bodies self scarred

dial telephones pulled between cells on ropes

Broken mirrors poking through bars to see who approaches

Broken inmates

Broken guards

At home that evening,

I missed being nose to nose with Michelle

But she never called again.

#darkpoetsclub