Never Give Up, Never Surrender

The weirdest thing happened last week right after I got back to Draino:

I was walking from Cityfear Bus Station to the downtown post office. I cruised past one of those nasty pawn shops and something caught my eye. I thought, "No way," but it was! My freakin' Marin mountain bike, which was stolen by methwhores 6 years ago, was sitting in their For Sale rack. I went in, told the manager, who was a prick and threw me out of the store. I called ol' Reno 911 and eventually a perky cop, who looked about 15, showed up and rescued my bike from the clutches of the pawn shop.

What was highly irksome was not just the fact that when I'd reported it stolen I'd had the serial number, but that the pawn tag on the bike said it had been sitting there since BEFORE I left for Colorado in May. Grrr. So now 911's doing a shakedown and they're trying to find the last known tweeker assmonkey who pawned my bike and I don't know when they will release it to me. This all comes on the heels of my selling my other bike in August to a Burning Man artfag because it was too big and it was killing my back. But one good thing did happen.

On that note, another over-blown poem inspired by lengthy stays in international airports. There's nothing like sleep deprivation and sudden climate changes to bring out the poet in me:

electricbluesydney

This was my life abroad then:
the P.C. detritus from a peace rally,
woe-begotten mongrels in tweed
and his mistaken sexual cant.

Lurid Sydney with brown-stone Victorians
lit from beneath.
At night, best viewed from
ascending
or descending
jet planes.

My gaze clings to the receding skyline
as a spoiled child to his mother’s knee.

I am outside the posh shop in Wooloomooloo
with all the mirrors and white seashells
looking in.
I am 11,000 miles away
looking in.

I turn into my fever in sleep
but really my cold is like
the slow, chill Paramatta River
when the tides slip.

-- Mz M.