Gaikoku Deadbeats

Chris, our Sinatra, moans. Or maybe
his feet make the noise. This is
her entrance cue, her . . .

. . . stockings run like the small children that
we have become, under lamplight.

"Whayoowan?", she says, her hair true brown,
not unnatural, a true gangiro.

We are drunk but not horny;
she is gentle and not whoring,
yet here we stand, bathed in
spotlight, with pained chocolate eyes.

It is Kobe - afterhours -
and our youthful fuel has
closed down the clubs,
wandered into steakhouses,
laughed at $60 filets,
eaten cheap beef bowls,
drank rice wine (for warmth),
scratched at crevasses,
scoured for hostels,
and now this.

It is after the quake,
and the great ferris wheel,
rebuilt, wharfside, casts a
shadow on the bay.

Last night we slept on the train station
floor, the manager poking us with
a metal rod usually reserved for
stabbing garbage.

Rousted, we stagger through seagull
streets, homesick, smelling salt water
while (i am) dreaming of San Francisco.
Our smell repels, gaikoku deadbeats
that we are, receptionists
shutter their doors at the sight of us;
it is in her eyes, and our:
She has been shuttered, too.

A place? To sleep? She smiles.
"Don't need one", she says, "salaryman
pay me well. I am Christina, born
in Brazil."

My adopted town has this too;
refugees from Sao Paulo, Recife, Rio
Branco and the countryside,
living in the foreign block -
my block - smelling
of linguica and techno and wavy hair,
producers of PS and Pajero and
things unaffordable as they wire money
back to their families.

Christina makes more in an hour than
they do in eight.

Maybe, Christina says, I have an idea.

We are deep in the heart of
love hotel country,
where paper thin walls separate sub rosa lives,
where couple copulate, lovers fornicate,
and businessmen just plain fuck.
She guides us by moonlight -
she knows these streets well
enough that if she weren't home here
one couldn't tell.

Alcohol lubricates Chris and he talks-walks-
sings. Only the night is stronger than he.
And Christina? Well, lubrication for
her means other things.

Furious puffs form, adding to
the stench, of our smoke-circle,
cockamanie plotting, naked
without the rain.

The name squints our eyes with
it's garish green glow. Arcadia.

Desparate and stinking,
delirious and smirking,
the biggest body enters the lobby
as five crouch low under the
lip of the counter.

Engaging the desk girl,
she slides me-body the key,
I hand it to Chris,
crouched next to me and
gleeful, delirious,
he stumbles up stairs
running devil-may-care,
low super-stealth style,
Christina last in her silk
stockings, running from
despair.

We chortle cleverness and
deadbolt the door, hide under
bedframes & behind closet doors
but we hear steps rise behind us,
a knock, and
a voice, just as Christina,
kneeling behind the bed,
passes a picture of her
daughter, three, to me,
under it:

"Two - only two!" the voice says.

Hidden in closets, in bed and under,
all sense time is short for our
love hotel plunder.
Giggling and hissing,
uncontrollably missing
one crucial fact -
we've been sighted by
cameras from both front &
back.

The street welcomes us with
a cooling blast of the breeze,
and we follow it,
save Christina,
down to the train station
by the bay where the marble
is soft and strong heads
may lay.