Locked behind walls of glass,

  by chance.  Many metropolises have such safeguards.  

  Pre-surveillance state-of-the-world, survivors of situation might find themselves harried, hurried, dragged along.  The carnage then smearing itself across the innocence of being born human in the modern world.  

  Tight together in little rooms.  Ramshackle, interior frame construction.  "Like we are in ovens?" A lady got it and melted into a mixture of hyper-ventilating and sobbing and as she looked whacked by the Holy Spirit and was about to scream, a Pastor's fat football hand stifled the tension into the sweat of situation.  A little knot of hallah bread then.  So says the goya.  "Get in the tank Helen." The machine guns paused.

  "I will ask you again.  What the FUCK were you ALL doing in Turkey?" 

  "It is complicated," a woman changed into uniform palm-slapped in slow motion the bathroom key back onto a desk top.  "I guess.  Am I correct?" 

  "Zzzzzzashaaa.  Zeep it." A woman's scalp was literally zipped back into place.  Some curious looks brought a shoulder shug inside perfectly quaffed lips, "They started to hack me into pieces.  I figure'd to keep the purse up there."  The gold d'bloom, not bloody.  The pair of earrings, pure fake diamonds.  "They put us on a train in, of all places," she air-lit a cigarette, "Mongolia." She stood to stretch her thighs, smoothed layers of long skirt over "legs to die for", "since World War One; she's too old." The woman growled.  "Ah, the curse of the prince, I'm doomed." 

  "Like the world wasn't doomed since Adam and Eve."  A man lit only by yellowing 'lectric lights in the backroom of a cocktail lounge groaned.  His belly jiggled as he dry-sobbed.  Then dry-heaved.  "He's gonna puke!" Someone called out.  

  "SHUT UP!  SHUT THE FUCH UP!" The long legged man crossed the tiles to the movie set.  "What's this?  You gonna sit in the corner and blubber Bible verses now?" The man almost choked.  His body writhed a bit and he produced a boiled egg from down below his throat.  "'Snack for later,' was the last," he panted, "Thing I was," panting, "Seen on tape telling them." The man rolled his head on his neck and cracked the bones in there.  Steadied himself with an arm outstretched on a table for four.  "At," he stood and made air-quotes, 'the cultural thing,' what was it?" 

  A woman walked to the table and put a revolver down.  Dug through a messenger bag/sachel, "I have the brochure."  

  "We gottah go," a thin man in a long john shirt and leather suspenders had poked his arm first and then his head through hanging beads in a doorway.  "Anyway, some sort of World Heritage event."  

  That was how they got us.

     "My friend, why are you crying?"  The lady went over and almost kneeled at the legs of a slumping over with grief man on a bench.  The man could not stop.  

     People gathered about him but said nothing.  Someone did say, "I'm so stupid.  I should've spent the travel money on my kid's education." Then the man's sobbing slowed.  And slowed again.  He seemed very far away.  When he did stand, he seemed neither here, nor really going anywhere.  Someone remarked that we should think of sustenance, food.  "I don't know if I can." People streamed out of a museum exhibit.  "Not very hungry."  The woman with a bag for sneakers and a purse looked at her feet.  "Where are my shoes?  Where are my shoes?" Another woman looked her up and down and pointed to the sneaker bag and mimed, maybe in there.  

     The man's shirt front was drenched with sobbing.  He went toward the Wailing Wall.  But then stopped and just stood there.

  For a long time. 

     Yelling prayers at the moon?  

     Don't come any closer.  

  The ranting went on and on, pouring from the man.  Several days later someone asked him, showered and groomed, "Were you angry?"  He sat himself on the edge of a lobby chair.  "Not anger.  Outrage."  

  "We had just seen lunatics with swords and chair legs beheading and beating each other to death.  And, we're told this is quite common.  It made me upset.  So upset, I could not pray in the old way.  The ways of the old ways are not working."  The man looked at but did not touch a magazine on a table beside the chair.  World's Sexiest People.  

  "So what's next?"  A woman with one sneaker and one shoe stood beside the chair.  "You don't match," the man said without looking up.  "Nothing's matching up," she said.  "But this way, I'm ready for anything.  The familiar old shoe world, or into the future."  The man gently nodded I understand, then shook his head nooooo.  "I'm not ready."  The woman knelt on one knee and re-tied the sneaker.  A businesscard was perched in the laces.  "Call me when you're ready," she plucked it and handed it to the man.