“If you see me coming better step aside”
© Mike Absalom January 25th
2012

-If you see me coming better
step aside! the Passenger whispers.
I am quite unaware of his
weight across my shoulders
but infinitely conscious of
the figure I cut
in my crisp white imperial linen
suit.
Conscious too of the careful
topiary of my musk scented beard,
I sit brilliantine-ready
before the altar of a marble topped table
dipping croissants into my Turkish
coffee
with the sacramental dexterity of an ambitious altar boy
as I rate the variations in
the architecture of the women who pass by
and wonder if the purchase of
a packet of condoms
could ever be worth the
mortifying embarrassment of the act.

It is my twenty-second
birthday.
I am spending it in Teheran a
lifetime ago.

-If you see me coming better
step aside! whispers the Passenger.

A woman in skin-tight army
surplus camouflage moves past my table
and into the observation
quadrant.
She shimmers in the sunshine
like a muscular boa constrictor with added breasts.
When she has passed I notice
her silhouette has burned itself into the soft noonday paving stones which have
gone sticky and are starting to melt.

-If you see me coming better
step aside! hisses the Passenger,
who has just turned into a
boa constrictor himself.
-A lot of men didn’t.
That’s why I have a flat
face!