Buddhas and Bikinis - Vetbook

tortured type.’
Superman.’
Buddhas and Bikinis 20
‛Van Aken writes about love and beauty and historical revolutions. Hardly the
She kissed me goodbye, ‛You know nothing about nothing, that’s why I love you,
She slammed the door as she left.
I dragged myself off the bed, lit a cigarette and leaned out the window. Looking
down at the Union College canteen, I saw Hiroshi walking toward the car-park.
‛Hey, you! Pretty Japanese girl!’ I shouted out the window. She looked up at me. ‛I
think you are the craziest person I’ve ever met, and I want you to know something?’
‛What?’
‛I like you’re hat!’
She shook her head and walked off.
I whispered to the wind, ‛though our past be weighty, and future dread, I feel like
an angel weightless, to be wed.’
deception.
Even as the words left my lips, a darkness swallowed them, borne of distrust and
It is said that when a pick-pocket meets a saint, all he sees are the pockets. I felt the
same way about Hiroshi, and yet powerless to alter the fact. I was the pick-pocket who had
come across a most spectacular treasure to be plundered, hopelessly blind to the greater
treasures beyond his immediate grasp.
The following evening, I got her poem, Caterpillar.
‛Why’ hides an invisible thunder to daze my eyes
Sounds a huge inaudible sound, to deafen my ears
I asked myself how could you run to him with legs trembling
That night I kept talking with a relief of pain.
What I said that night won’t be said again
I remember he said ‛I like your hat’, but where’s my head?
Are we really who we are or is there a prophet in disguise
Between two on the beach
I cried and laughed with tears in my eyes on the phone
I wonder, why should I talk in this way - don’t you all know
Tomorrow is the end of the world,