POETRY

Mark / Ma Ke / 马克

In eight months I met him maybe five times

He was the other white guy in town

No, he had a white roommate too

But the roommate was a closeted homosexual

A closeted drinker too

This roommate had a wall-sized collection of video pornography

He would sit there in Pingdingshan and watch Hollywood blondes get banged
25,000 miles away and probably 15 years after
like a hostage taken by his own collection

He was a closeted human being

I wanna get to Mark

but this roommate character

He was a real piece of work

He would fly out to southern cities

on his weekends

To meet so-called girls that he’d met on the internet
as if our town hadn't any

He was almost more interesting than Mark, actually

What was his name? 

It was a gay name, whatever it was

Mark and I spent our handful of evenings in the 2046 bar

Mark never had money

He was a cheap ass and I bought most of his drinks

Despite the owner’s wishes

But the owner figured I was helping my countryman out

So it was ok

Until Mark would get shit-faced and fall off his stool

At that point, his fellow countryman

Me

was solely in charge of getting him home

Nobody else wanted to carry that fatass down the stairs

to a taxi

At some point

I became the only person to socialize with him

After he wore out his welcome

Playing drinking games with the locals

And the neighborhood cop who played ping pong with him

And the local TV station jerks

Who would always bring in some talent chick

Some prima donna lush who teased the hell out of everyone

I’m actually glad he gave her so much trouble

But the bar owner fucked them all

Mark was from Saint Louis

Missouri

He had serious emotional attachments to American music

I saw him cry when we were listening to Otis Redding

He had a scar on his brow from a Pakistani in Turkey

Who attacked him with a beer bottle

“Totally Unprovoked,” Mark said

in his eternal slur

in his trademark disconnect of subject and predicate

always finding something unintelligible to put between them

And when I bought his poor ass a harmonica

He played that thing like he was talking through it

Like it was his silver little dictionary

Pocket translator

You know, that metaphorical type shit

He would punctuate his statements and elongate his questions with that goddamn thing

His gay roommate had told me once that it drove him insane

“Why did you ever buy him that stupid thing?” he said.  “he plays the fucker from dawn ‘til dusk.   It wakes me up in the morning.”

I thought Mark played well

Probably because he wasn’t so good at talking

Mark wasn’t just drunk, but all tanked out on painkillers too

He’d acquired them from a female in the pharmacy below his house
So he was always falling over
first a slow lean, then a panicked look, then a tumble over a curb
then his shoe flying off in one direction
He was always missing one of his flip flops

Mark.   His chinese name was 马克.   Ma Ke

We laughed our asses off when he wasn’t around

Ok, I’m coming to the point

I actually miss the guy

When I hear Jeff Buckley

Or Otis Redding

sittin’ on the dock of the bay

He is the Midwesterner that I rate all other Midwesterners on

Once I got really plastered in the 2046

The boss man wouldn’t let me play my guitar anymore

So I invaded the stage

While  some guys were singing their karaoke

I started inventing my own chinese pop song

I must have used the word for “homosexual” about 20 times

Some Chinese brothers came up to depose me

I started swinging

God knows what at

I was taken down in a matter of seconds

I was lucky they adored me

But I had crossed the line

The last time I saw Mark

He had the boss call me to get me down there

Mark had lost his phone down a toilet

On day one

But this day he was really broken up

A girl he had gone on a date with

Threw him off

He had been flirting with her best friend online

Sexual talk and such

Not having the slightest clue

But he was really broken down

It was near the end of our contracts

We’d worn our bodies down quite a lot

On a diet of mutton, bread and beer

Finally, he perked up

He spoke as clear and concise as I’d ever heard him

“So I heard you started throwing punches the other night,” he said.

“I did?”        It was the first time anyone had brought it up with me

            “It sounded really pathetic, man.”
             That’s what he told me

             Then he played his harmonica