Taken

It was all planned out, this strike to relax overseas -
sand and beach and parties and elements of dark
caverns, creeping toward lobbies brightly lit as the sun
stalks toward noon, inching closer to capacity, to
a renegade sitting quietly, sipping tea, ready to pounce.

If tracked correctly, history shows its face in tireless
banter eaten up by production crews, backing up
black cars, steely efficient, piercing windows, but
for the murmur of ex-CIA, it's all lost in translation,
in a number of exofficios, of passports stamped with
loss and fear.

Tirelessly we wait for the next browsing opportunity,
to take our magazine to chlorinated pools, but with
Istanbul on the doorstep, steps down to cobbling
together metal and clips, never meant for nothingness,
dreary boredom of souls, but of fear and spikes.

It's bloody to be taken and hunted and sought out for
bodily payment, but frightful to turn it off and wonder
the next graph can seem around a corner of scrabble and
hit men or just thugs who know not the power of 
persuasion of graft.

This is rather personal, you see, to look at it in the eye,
the nicest to a trail of red spots on the ground, a trail
of fire darkens to clots, wounds of the next tale, the next
underground ways to track peace and quiet and a low
steady voice that speaks easy adrenaline in the face of
death.

© 2015 Larry Ingram