i once went to see a fight,
welterweight i’m sure, in New York City.
Madison Square Garden, no less.
MSG! The majic aji no-moto?
duhhh… YES-moto!
No ringside seat. Nowhere near, in fact.
In fact, from where i sat i could just about
make out the shapes of two figures
bobbing up and down above the heads of
two lovebirds making out in the seats
in front of me. There’s no telling
what will turn a couple on. Every now and then
the stadium would erupt with a roar
or a boo. Clearly one of the boxers wore
the White Hat and one the Black. On the whole,
it wasn’t much better than online SmackDown.

The fighters themselves were both airbrushed
a wholesome shade of tan in the promo posters,
which advertised Hispanic-sounding names
a little more flamboyant than Tomas O’Cruz
and Pedro Lopez. i remember that one of them,
to wit Señor O’Cruz, looked more Dera Ismaili than
anything you’d expect to crawl in to the Homeland
from south of the border.

Thus it came as no big surprise when i read
one evening in The Times (The New York Times,
of course), that a prizefighter by the name of
Tomaso el Fuentes d’Cruz
aka The Craven Jackal
aka Maulvi Badtameezuddin
aka Kunn-toot-ta Shehzada
aka Sheeda Kharpainch
had been arrested in connection with the spate
of suicide bombings which had rocked
the foundations of the Motherland
back in late ’08. It went on to say that the
Packy regime had initiated extradition proceedings,
to which Homeland Security had not responded
favourably. Yeah, well.

i might have shed a tear or two, in memoriam,
if anyone i know had been blown apart in
that awful killing-field-spree. But what the hell,
i’m a Citizen now. Have the passport and
voter registration card to prove it. My parents
weren’t born Packy, and i won’t die one. Hallelujah
with whipped cream and a cherry on top!

i turned to Joe Kyoto,
the twenty-something Afro-Chinese
trainee bartender at my local,
and asked him to pour me a
double shot of hundred-proof tequila.
This i quaffed sans lemon or salt
or chaser or cheer
to celebrate the triumph
of something or other
over something else.

minos – octomber 2008