Pol Pot, infamous leader of the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the killing of thousands, died peacefully in his sleep April 15, 1998. His body was burned on a stack of old tires, tended to by a few exhausted soldiers. In the midst of the burning the fist of the corpse saluted.
The dark was thicker than dark. I was a stranger there. It was a room
of ten thousand strangers, in a city of millions more.
The park across the street was heavy with new leaves
with an unbearable sensual drift
I had been sleeping for a few hours, and the room was thick with time
and ash. I wasn’t dead though I was traveling
through the dark. The lower gods pounded the pipes for my
attention, the bed swayed with the impact of unseen
energy. No one saw it. No one saw anything
because it was dark and in the middle of the night and it was just
a hotel room, one of millions of hotel rooms all over
the world, filled with strangers looking for refuge,
sleep, for sex or love. We were a blur of distinctions,
made a fragrance like a glut of flowers or piss on concrete.
Every detail mattered
utterly, especially in the dark, when I began traveling.
And I was alone though the myth of the lonely stranger is a lie
by those who think they own everything even the earth
and the entrails and breath of the earth. This was the end.
It was Cambodia or some place like it, and the sun
was coming up, barely over the green in the restless shiver of
a million singing birds. Humans were wrapping
a body for burial. It stank of formaldehyde. It was a failed clay
thing, disheveled and ordinary. They rolled it
into a box and dragged it to a stack of trash. Why have I come here
I asked the dark, whose voice is the roar of history as it travels
with the thoughts of humans who have made the monster.
The fire was lit
fed with a wicker chair, a walking cane, and several busted
tires to make it hot. What I had
feared in the dark was betrayal, so I found myself there
in the power of wreckage. There was no pause
in the fighting. The killer’s charred fist pointed toward the sky,
gave an order though no one heard it
for the crackle and groan of grease. The fire was dark
in its brightness and could be seen by anyone
on the journey, the black smoke a dragon in the sky.
This was not the end.
I was attracted by a city, by a park heavy with new leaves,
by a particular flower burning in the dark.
I was not a stranger there.