AMSTERDAM -3- RED TEARS

Red Tears

Just like the big apple:

Non-stop hustle bustle, narrow roads,

beautiful gables reaching the heavens.

I look up to the sky:

Clouds ablaze with a beautiful red tinge,

and hooks: Elevators for goods,

hanging down from elegant gables,

gables of homes of “Herren”

old, four, five  hundred years.

Oude Kerke rising with her proud towers

toward a sky now aflame;

old and wise and confident.

Sky is red.

Water is red.

Clouds are red.

Lights are red.

District is red!?

Encased in the crowd,

I am in a narrow alley.

Two-story homes along the alley

reach across the space

to an embrace.

Alley full of life, the houses not.

Red velvet curtains conceal

signs of life.

A door open, red light flowing out,

or spilling down?

Red fluorescent bar above the doorway.

In the doorway, a slim beautiful body

as white as snow with

a black bra and a slip as small as can be.

I am now aflame.  

My blood rushing into a revolt

just as the unabashed pleasant smile

on her face registers in my mind:

As pain.

As lost innocence.

As torture.

As la belle indifference.

As the god of profit

claiming everything

as good for sale.

I am sorry sister,

I am ashamed of my kind,

allowing you to be there,

I can’t look you in the eye,

in fear I may see how you feel.

In fear, I may understand

where you want to be.

One more house with red curtains;

dead or working; the same after all.

One after the other.

Another framing a Caribbean beauty

walking from within

“adjusting” the black bands

from chocolate shoulders

to a crotch.

Snap! Snap!

I can’t raise my eyes to her face:

I don’t know what she looks like,

I don’t know whether she smiled,

I don’t know what was in her eyes.

Words of my mind in frenzy:

Body, privacy, ownership, work, instrument, sex, sale…

I don’t know if she will ever remember me,

I know I will remember the snaps.

Forever with pain.

Red homes circling the Oude Kerke,

seven hundred years old.

What an irony..

Curtains red,

Fluorescent bulbs red

Lipsticks red

Lights red

Red Light District!  

Home to homes with everything red.

In the middle a church that is old.

My thoughts red

My feelings red

My tears of pain red

My anger is bright red:

The Flesh has Dutch ID.

The flesh is legal.

The flesh is insured.

The flesh has fair rate.

The flesh can unionize.

The flesh can’t be pimped.

The flesh is free!

5.24.2012 - 7.28.2012