[Culture] the dead don't talk but the living sure do

[Benseraglio2]

o the diplomats strolling in pairs among the tulips in peculiar suits, bad ties, and vintage trenchcoats speaking odd Slovenian dialects animated conspiratorial deep in their plots among the tulips in the Katherine Hepburn garden   they're not looking for love they've found it already or maybe something better   here's a chubby young lady in gold plastic boots punkish, heavy breasted, obscenely juicy black black hair, it's dyed bright cherry lips her pudgy unshaved legs looking naked, pale and sickly untanned, but it's still early in April   she punches a number on her cellphone, then -- (loudly) "Sorry!" (pause) (cheerily) "Wrong number! (pause) (sotto voce, to herself) "Damn!"   she glances up at me to receive my penetrating imperial gaze and for a moment I want to rush over, embrace her awkward young heavy breasts give her my own phone number so she'll talk to me on her cellphone and never have to dial a wrong number again   then of course her awkward boyfriend shows up he's short -- bad haircut an obvious loser but they walk off arm in arm among the tulips hand in hand animated conspiratorial   they're not looking for love they've found it already or something better   the guy on my left chattering to his cellphone animated conspiratorial "I've just learned to keep that dude at arm's length -- yeah! -- all he does is talk about himself -- yeah! -- he's pathetic! -- yeah! -- 8 o'clock in the morning and he's like 'I've been a heroin addict for 6 years!' -- yeah! --"   the dead don't talk but the living sure do into their cellphones into the satellite waves into the cosmic Saturnian dust to their confessors, their co-conspirators to their handlers, their wannabe lovers   the living talk a lot but they might as well not another hundred springs and they'll be dead too for all that jabbering leaving not a trace among the tulips in the Katherine Hepburn garden         Ross Bender http://rossbender.org/mqrtoc.html