Jeff Klooger

Another Day

A mist of sand sweeps off the dunes.
Outside the lonely shack with the rattler’s tail
spinning in the desert breeze and slapping a tune
on the king of hearts, a bike leans on its own. Two more
will soon arrive, and the riders, hard men
with wild, flowing hair and death-dealing eyes,
will join their friend inside. That cop looks like a man
but talks like a woman. What does that mean? He/she will die soon
just the same, punched clear across the room
by a single round straight to the chest.
His/her partner too will die. Such things are
unavoidable out here, beyond the reach
of civil laws and customs. Later the cops will get one back,
blasting a bowser and a suspect together
in a cloud of orange flame. The burning man stumbles a bit,
confused at his strange fortune, then sinks down,
a heap of blackened evidence.

The next victim sings to his own tune, relaxed
and free at last in the back of a prison bus. In no time
the bikers arrive, shattering the day with hungry bullets,
tipping the bus into an oncoming truck, the twin behemoths
waltzing across the highway in a flurry of dust
and debris. Who would have thought our hero
could survive; but he does, he did, he will,
all the way to the sweet (not bitter) end, when he and his partner
will solve the whole damn mess with a few deft moves
and a shit-load of ammunition. It’s like that here
on the mean and hilly streets.

Elsewhere in black and white, a woman imagines
she’s in the presence of God, prays and dances and writhes
on her lonely bed. She blows a kiss, peers back
at her feet, trembles and rocks, tears off her clothes,
arches her back and sighs. It only ends
when the voice stops, when the apertures
that let the men observe her torment
slide shut.

The truth is we are all voyeurs, recording
the symptoms of night’s untreatable disease.
A convoy of limousines will close the deal
and lead us at last towards tomorrow’s thrill-packed instalment,
armed with a raft of brand new hopes and dreams, some pale regrets
and a brain-pan full of old obsessions.