[title below]

Red Man and White Man Dance Disco on the Street Corner near the National
Mall under the Watchful Eye of Crazy Horse's Statue

Across the intersection the white man says, "Walk," as the red hand
cautions perpendicular: "Wait." The red hand warns, "wait," and another
white "walk." The cycle repeats, people crossing on white command, stopping
chilly-nervous at the specter of red-man hands.

White men all over town, all over the country-all over the goddamn world
for all I know-guarding gates of progress, giving the wink-nod, the go-
ahead.

The red man's hand warns young tourist "Wait. Stop--please," talking mortal
danger, talking storm clouds and destruction, but he walks on,
not a future of halogen hallways and dizzy dormitories, a future of
concrete cubes or charts and graphs...
but the future of horns and sirens and white-walled hospitals.

Tuesday tourist walking with I-didn't-knowses and nobody-saw-it-comingses
tucked tight into the tattered back pocket of summer cut-offs, hems sewn
with thread and love and raw-wrinkled hands. He walks.

The carousel car sees green.
Green means go; green means a lot more.

Van screeches, spotting evil kismet, fatal error, swerves off course.
Determined to slow, determined to stop as the high-school-coulda-been-
president-or-business-exec-or-philosopher-or-financial-analyst-or-shut-the-
fuck-up-Martha-whatever-he-puts-his-goddamned-mind-to walks into
pieces. Two of them. Confetti halves twirling in air, landing on opposite
sides of German ingenuity and American steel.

The boy walks on, a ghost on stilts, tormented, damned to watch each blood-
red-coyote-custard warning and all the walking-onses and real-worldses and
the no-one-knewses.

He passes tar rivers and feathered beds, passes steak-knife towers and Tri-
tip skies, swallows all, choking, sputtering, passes the salt statue of a
wife outside city gates, looking back.

I wish death were like that.

Clouds clear. He fords across the river of ravenous night, eyes glued to
parched pavement, lumbering shamefully beneath the smile of a knowing moon.