Current mood:	buzzed
Current music:	Weezer

What You've Missed:
- I've Had

Downtime

We Called that morning the very end of our night. Yawning, scrubbish, unshaven and rank with spilt beer, body shots, the club sweat of the hundred nobodies we'd rubbed against in the past 24 hours. Taking stock of ourselves and the filth we were in, we congregated at a dumpster behind the K-Mart.
The dumpster, our bathroom, hygienically unsound but completely in sync with our nigh and final digs, the Mercury rental. We cleaned between the seats as children do their bedrooms, reluctantly and with refreshed memories of moments connected to each item we put away. The "sack-full" that we split while Heg curled infant-like and comatose against the window, front passenger side. The single barrel whiskey that began Ingram's hoots, girl-chasing obnoxious one-liners, and his ultimate disappearance from the broken stucco and cobblestone streets of the riverfront. We tossed out the bright red hebrew-lettered Coca Cola T-shirt that had marked Paul for bar-room and dance hall bouncers, jerks and short mexicans, each coming from nowhere to spoil his drunken grindings with and romancings of the half-dozen "ladies" he'd met. Empty beer bottles, food wrappers, spit cups, used towelettes, all piled like stewing grass clippings to be mulched with pasteboard, plastic wrap, and styrofoam....

Dirt to Dirt
Men, the valley of dry bones
clods of muddy sand strewn in
clumped and broken
sin-gular granularity,
Details and the infinite compiled
and cast aside

Haphazard
Fractilating, vascillating

Blood clotted sand
blown
and stomped
treaded traded flown
Tasted
and burnt.

Like the sands of south Georgia tracing back to tobacco stands
Settled cultivated and invasive
in boots, socks, earlobes
and scattered by wheat brooms and screen door breezes.

-ADAM, having walked round the world,
sewing curses
from dirt to dirt

soul born sand

bare feet and infinity
- bring us back

dust curses poured forth
on lands abandoned by Hezkhists and dervishes
holy men and wanderers
bandits and terrerists

Holy Empty lands -
We the Gobi
We the Sahara
We Red Sands
We death Valley

Babylon minus men
- bring us back

to dirt from dirt

Alone
Clumped together
Broken
Made whole

Absence Minded
Even as the doldrums of FOB life pass by at their own hateful pace, dragging stress, nagging and sluggish; I come round to thoughts of Parchem, somewhere unshaven and openmouthed, dumbing down and bellied up to the corner table of a titty bar maybe. A handful of ass and a cold one. He could be anywhere, unhindered. A private bathroom, mediocre yet meaningful - passing his movement without the constriction of concrete walls a scum-fungused curtain and dirt. He could be hitching his way north. I-16, I-75, I-285, I-20 AND GONE. The sun rising and falling on feet that walk instead of march. No one to the fron or the rear. A shoulder. A median. Cross country. HIS choice. I envy him that AWOL freedom, but he could be in cuffs....

Holy Daze
To be truthful I maintained only one distracting thought the whole time I've been away. One lingering meditation resting at the base of my skull, reaching forward and up, consuming grey matter, sparking synapses and chemical changes. The thought sat patiently day in and out, claiming attention when it could, flashing silently like an indicator light when it couldn't. Check Engine. Oil Low. Doors Open. Fasten Safety Belts. That thought was M_ . On St. Patrick's day I called in favors, told lies, and ran. I caught the Blueline from post, having looked up the number on a library computer, and dialed a borrowed phone. I went bare bones. No plans. No alternatives. And a tight schedule. I had to meet her in Savannah and I had to be back on post. Officially I was on an afternnon and evening of endless details: Humvee wsahracks, weapon cleaning, barracks cleaning, laundry, police call. At formations I would be counted present. At bed counts I would be checked off. I was covered. Unofficially I sat for multiple hours in the upstairs window of Bayou Cafe, sipping longnecks, watching pool and well filled jeans, just waiting for M_. Passing time amongst a green clad mob of bead winners, frat boys, and policemen making out with grateful and inebriated parade watchers, with my borrowed phone , volume maxed out and vibrate on...

Observation
And peaking between the scrub and wildflower...
pressed sage and sandstone gravel mark the place I laid
Daydreaming, sun baking, dry chapped smiling.
I was coon eyed and frozen in the shade.
Subtlety is the desert way.