This is prose I wrote while serving in the Peace Corps in Bolivia.

Does fire have weight? If it does this match should topple over any second now and drip fire all over my table.

I still have plastic covering on my mattress that is sometimes revealed when I roll and turn, toss and readjust in my sleeping bag.

So I was in a Peace Corps like office setting. I had gone upstairs from buying tickets. I saw bags, nifty and well-sorted for traveling. They were lined up like I’d line ’em up in a wooden cubby. Somebody’s parents were visiting. There were momma bags and poppa bags and sister bags and brother bags. It couldn’t have been my family. I don’t have the latter two and my parents aren’t coming til next year.

I was in a line in a big cafeteria with metal counters made of bars so you can slide your tray along with your hip while you search for your money. The cashier’s always in a good mood. Usually wearing an apron – navy blue. Or black if they’re trendy.

Went upstairs and it was dark. Hard to see my watch because the damn Indiglo is busted. Finally a street light or something glinted across and I could see it was time to go. We were going to miss our bus.

“Tiff! We gotta go,” I kind of yelled, emphasizing her name and trailing off at the end.

“I know. Give me one second,” she said from somewhere distant in my brain.

Then time skipped forward like it does and I was talking to Mark. I didn’t recognize his voice at first. I haven’t heard it or played it in so long. I was on my Nokia phone and suddenly Chris Scott was there rough-housing with me making a conversation definitively impossible. But I didn’t care because Mark wasn’t there when I previously thought my life was more important than his.

I mercifully let Mark go. Chris continued to wrestle me into submission. He’s a lot bigger than me and he’s always been able to handle me physically if he wanted to.

My right hand won’t stop shaking in certain positions.

He’s got me in a vice grip laying on the part you normally sit on on a couch. His legs are propped in the air against the part you usually put your back on. He starts to grow an erection and it’s obscenely touching my thigh, but there is nothing I can do about it. Oh yeah, I made one last desperate move. I wasn’t going down without a fight and after I hung up on Mark I had both hands free so I tackled Chris into the position we were in now. Tiffany was standing on the other side of the coffee table which completed the couch’s tandem.

I was thoroughly disgusted and told him so, but was helpless to move and he just did that Chris Scott chuckle. That makes (made) me want to bite his nose off and spit it back in his face. Can’t even do that now I’m so pinned.

The scene changes like someone turned a page in a book and I’m packing my stuff hurriedly because now I’m making us late.

Something happens here. Spooks me. Can’t remember now. Maye it’s outweighed by what happens later. Maybe Chris Scott’s boner thing was enough to trim me with warm fuzzies.

All of a sudden I gotta go pee. So bad that I can’t quite hold it and little spurts and dribble are seeping through despite my best efforts to hold them off.

One candle just went out!

I reach down and grab myself and run sort of crab-like to the bathroom where I proceed to tap dance while I unfurl my urine-clogged member. Out it comes like a broken and destroyed dam. I’m relishing the release of pain when a pebble or some sort of airborne object that came from an impossible angle due to the geometrical shape of the bathroom. I was sure that it was supernatural and quite vindictive. Being exposed didn’t make things easier. Thus I screamed, “Who the fuck is there, goddamn it?!?” Which woke me up into a room full of unfamiliar, thoroughly foreign darkness. I had just enough time to realize I was laying on my right side in a long rectangular room with the head of the bed nuzzled into one corner. I thought to myself that it was odd to have screamed in my sleep. “Never done that before,” I thought. Just as I began to go over what had happened in my dream that would elicit such an unprecedented behavior a door in the other corner of the long shoebox room opened and a backlit figure came in and walked straight toward me. I thought it was Tiff – maybe I had fallen asleep waiting for her and now it was time to go, but she was letting me rest. After hearing me scream she came in to check on me.

Nope. Not that.

As the ambiguous figure approached, the light from outside started to fill in the room and my eyes began to adjust. Whoever the fuck it was was wearing a black robe and had their face painted like a clown.

It was impossible to tell if it was Tiffany. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female. I didn’t say anything, waiting for some trigger of recognition to fire. My surroundings, this person, something. Nothing. Clown face leans over me, my breathing quickens and puts both hands on my shoulders and gently, firmly holds me down.

“Tiffany?” I ask hopefully.

Just a shake of the head slowly.

I reach up with my hands to its arms. Definitely man. Definitely strong and inescapable. My vision has finally adjusted and that white paint fully occupies my vision. I am overcome with horror and fear.

I open my eyes and I am in Huari. But it doesn’t really click. They close and I’m back. It’s face is even more demented and terrifying. I open my eyes again and my conscious memory spins into action and quickly reminds my mind and body that the first opened eyes did, in fact, see home. My eyes opened for good this time and I breathed, but did not feel safe for about ten minutes. Almost called Tiff to ask if I could come over. It’s after 1am though and I’m a big boy.

A dog barked more eerily than I probably would have normally thought. I finished Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle before going to sleep. Don’t see how that would figure in.

Then rolled on my back to see a black shadow in the corner of the ceiling like a huge bat turn into liquid and slide down the wall reviving my sense of uncalm.

My eyes are my enemy tonight.

Light some candles. Write it out of your system, I commanded myself. Peace can envelop me now anytime. Just gotta fix my bed so the plastic isn’t showing anymore more and blow my nose first.

While visiting my family for Thanksgiving I came across a couple of notebooks that I used to keep notes while in Bolivia. A couple of the passages really struck me. It’s interesting to me to read these journal entries five years after I wrote them. Frankly, it’s hard to believe I wrote them. I’m going to share a couple with you. I’d love to know what you think.

My hair fros out when the snare goes out
and the kickdrum kicks like a flare shot out
sandals flippin’ and floppin’
bodies always droppin’
a veces me pareces in my movies at night
just might help the bodies be re-animated
COME BACK TO LIFE AND CHASE ME
Someday I’ll be painted while I sit or while I sat
displayed in a gallery for Mallory
for only twice than less than half her salary
plus one calorie
burned from her hypodermic intake insulin pancake.

Mix that shit up
put it in a cup
then throw a one-way sender all into a blender.
Lose the love of your life thrice,
think twice and go on a bender.
Mind closed off, men working here.
Peers peer well into the well
and smell shiny, twinkly, sparkly glistening darts
of refracted light during lite diets and flying sideways.
Get a grip.
Not manual
E-manuel from the Bible.
A grip of friends?
It all depends if those feet can dig deep
and ribs rise and fall without a care.
Swell.

I want to die running away from someone, anyone
preferably a law enforcement agent of some brand.
I’ll be running slow motion
when their pistols open fire and catch me mid-stride.
My path to glory and supposed destiny will only be
a few visible feet in front of my divide.
I’ll reach out for it with my dying breath,
but will be unable to grasp what is left-
what I wanted to achieve for no more than a few escaping minutes.
The love of my life will, of course, bear witness
to this entire tragic affair.
Tears will be streaming down her cheeks-
her ragged cheeks that are simply exhausted
from loving a man who loves her only second
to the worthy cause for which he has been fighting for decades.
She’s been there since the beginning though
and she knows she is integral
to the fight
that he selflessly continues despite
his family’s best interest.
The tears flow while she tries wholeheartedly,
yet it is indescribably futile
and she knows mere moments remain before everything,
EVERYTHING they’ve both dedicated their lives too
ends in a cacophony of gunshots
and a symphony of deep seeded tragedy and what nots.
She’ll press her hand to the gaping, spurting wound
her face to his to hear his final struggled breaths.
She’ll swoon.
Her hand finds his and interlocks with ease.
He is strong, but not as strong as once before.

Once before on a bright, sun-drenched day
he won her back on a stroll around an algae
encrusted pond in an obscure park
tucked away in a functional-
at least it seemed to them at the time-
suburban neighborhood.
They’d been through the wash
and had each taken a turn in the dryer-
mangling and testing each other’s feelings.
Sending each other reeling
through space and rhymes for various expanses of time.
But they always came back.
Sitting together on cylindrical pylons of cement
watching parents watching their kids play they feel deep within them that that would be them on some distant day.

So they fought each other tooth and nail
resorted to tactics unbecoming of one another
until one day in 2015 everything settled into place.
It seemed that the race was finally over.
The crowd that for so long had played a part
in off-track betting and proselytizing and hedging
and interfering had up and left.
They were deaf
from the silence that surrounded them without a sound.
Finally they were alone.
Just one simple not-so-bright light shone
down illuminating their faces that were already known
and written-more likely grooved into their bones
and DNA strands.
The scents and smells of the other was like a sixth sense-
their very own clone.

Tragically they would not-and could not touch.
They tried at first, thinking it was a cruel joke to be so close.
Finally, physically and visibly within reach
with no contracts to breach.
All the saints dead and alive tried
through prayer
to clear the air
that stood defiantly by and between
unseen.

“Let them know peace,” a voice said.
And it was mine.
I narrowed my eyes
and focused my concentration.
I beamed thought rays from my forehead to hers.
I lost every single one of my nerves.
I blathered and sputtered.
I couldn’t accept the end lying there
in the unconscious eyes, ears and arms of my long-lost best friend.

But just then
I heard
the sound of a cricket chirp which assured
me that the Earth
was still passing by while the universe expanded.
I’m nothing I thought, and exhaled seeing my love above me
smile and recede into sounds of rustling branches
and shaking leaves.

Since then
it’s just been
leaving the sink on
to let the water run, brush my teeth and get ready for bed.
Try to silence the thought marathon
currently running through my head.
Other people fuck and make love sounds
in the rooms down the way.
Can’t stop ’em though.
Feelings on the sidelines are never allowed to play.

Walking a line and drying clothes all at the same time.
Wandering outside, taking it in
Mars has tracks on it from landing craft,
but I can’t keep track
of expanding paths and synapse math.
There’s something surrounded by bone up there
that wants to go home down there.
But where?
I can’t stay here anymore?
I can’t stay here anymore.
Can’t you just stop?
But where does it end?
I have to keep going.
My homing signal has been assumed missing
and while you keep guessing I’m out here in the clear
totally tamped down and flattened.
Sometimes, you see, I’m re-animated by free wit, will and stimulation.
But it doesn’t come without proper accreditation.
Change the laws and just let. Me. Be B. Brandon.
I’ve written my name a lot.
So. Have. You.