THE JOURNEY CONTINUES…


9

I waited in the car
Only to be blinded
By headlights of a truck
It parked about the 10 meters away
And a human being
Descended from inside the machine
The person walked
Towards the threshold of the mini market
And the florescent lights revealed
A prison guard’s uniform
Being worn by a woman
She was large an strong like a lioness in Africa
But that night belonged to the Arizona desert
And her hunting was done
Inside federal prisons
Entrenched in the isolation of the sands
And I tried real hard
Not the be a cynic
I fought the urge to mock with my thoughts
The apparition before me
And even though we were about equal in size
I knew she could take me out
In hand to hand combat
The way she walked told me that much
I remembered my neighbor
Fighting with his wife
And how he mellowed out as soon
As two policewomen arrived at his house
They were twice his size
And when he looked at them
He became very still and composed.

10

The future bearer of my offspring returned
When she opened the door
The desert air entered the car
I waited for her to say something
But she was silent and comfortable
In that peculiar style of hers
When I was about to ask
She said everything was funny
They way the clerk smiled
Showing his bleached teeth
As he gave directions
And it seemed as if he had been there
In that ascetical and legendary refuge
We followed the green arrows
And stopped at red lights
Even though the road seemed empty
We drove away from town
And its concentration camps
I followed the instructions
Given by the night clerk
Thinking to my self
If he sent us in the right path
The night was like snow
And we were an accelerating sled
I felt the strength of 8 cylinders
Running towards the darkness
To the back of us the electric glow
Got smaller with each mile traveled
Until we could only see the glow of the moon
Paisano is the name of the road
We were looking for
Paisano that Spanish word
That signifies fellow citizen
We were searching
For the paisanos of earth.