Lost Again in Mexico

Those quiet hills looming in the blackness
Might have been herding us from the desert
But we were already flying over the sand.
I have seen eyes blacker than those hills
Slip away from my own just as silent
As the stars I see dropping down the night
Flaring and fading too quickly to share
Too quickly to prove even
But I watched the people turning away
And in their faces some emptiness arrived
When I leaned into our divided company.
But the matador has abandoned me
On these brooding streets of Juarez
And I am lost again in Mexico
Where I can't even share the hooker's joke
She shouts to the place where I used to be.
I have a handful of pesos jingling
In my pocket and a quarter for the bridge
Across a river that divides stars
Into signs of hope or desperation.
'Each to each' I say into the darkness
And I enjoy the shiver of satisfaction
I feel as the Mexican dust falls from
My body and the last yellow drops of
Tequila burn down my throat.
I turn toward the drunken shouts of gringos
Crossing back over the same bridge I will take
Into the random heart of America.
Siga no mas I say to the black eyes in front of me.
All I need is a quarter.

— James Norman Kerns
Juarez Mexico, 1999