The Merkin Distraction
Man walks into bar.

Willowy Russian meanly

smiles. Contact is made.
“I'll have a double,

and one for yourself my friend.”

A code is broken.
To be understood

he tips in old currency.

Russian approaches;
bartender leaves quick,

drink and bills lonely, untouched.

He gulps. She does too.
“You fucking fucker.”

Hat askew, trailing tassells,

she's slightly wrong, keen.
“You. You have something.”

He's slightly offended now.

A nothing brigade
marches in, then out,

trailing bromance and jerky

they can't even see.
He eyes her, up, down.

A pouch rests in her meek lap,

sculpted patch of muff
hiding her true aim.

Too late, he realises.

Distracted, she fires.

 
The Gelati Imperative 
Serious talking –

“religion is poetry” –

disrupts his dreaming.
He opens his eyes.

She's pointing at the window.

He can't move his head.
The Russian, Mirka:

“They all like the Before girls.

Ignore the results.”
Threatening, her mouth;

unsavoury with delight.

Cyrillic hate. Gorge
ous she may be but

none of this makes any sense.

He aches precisely,
marshmallow wound gapes.

He speaks their language, listens.

Shocked, they spin and stare
but she keeps eating:

a duty, without pleasure.

“You got shot. Not me,”
she clarifies quick.

Ocean roars majestically.

Light invades like thieves.
Industriousness

bellows from beneath his bed.

Another spoonful.
“How?” he says, his voice

clotted with enquiry. Sniffs.

He knows where he is.
Gelati longing

envelopes him. She's exhaust

ed by the task, doubt.
Then: volcanic smile.

“Found it,” she says, roll

ing the last taste, sure.
“The flavour is clue.”

In English she speaks louder.

Who is listening?
“We leave soon. Get him ready.”

A woman. A name,

she spits: “Rosemary.”

 
The Dolphin Dilemma
Sky imitates gems.

No armed spooks waiting today

on this street corner.
Still: him, lurching, sick.

Running, bucket on her head

to avoid attack
and recognition.

Misshapen rays of sunlight

pursue them also.
They're at the water.

Old souls, broken by our wants.

Despite this, with us.
Laughing or crying?

Trained for stealth and explosives

it is hard to tell.
Nonetheless, chirping

agreement, secret message

is soon organised.
Their sleek grey menace

makes her sad of their mission.

Mirka sheds a tear
for the animals

inside and outside ourselves.

“Message is end game,”
she says, loud, sniffing.

He vomits his painful Yes.

The sun takes the world.
A gleam, Rosemary,

descends on her doubt. And now,

the dolphins vanish.
Headlights. The boat ramp.

A fissure in dusk breaks free.

Boots. Guns. “They found us.”
 
Dirt Unit
In a noiseless waft,

she collects the collectors,

gathers the schemers.
Silence, the weapon.

“When the state moves quietly

it's more dangerous,”
she says, “Violence

and safety's illusory,

so practice your stealth.”
Learning on the job.

Language and culture distracts

them from Us and Them.
They belong nowhere,

to no one. Rosemary sighs

the grim surroundings,
and barely contained

joy explodes for her damp pores;

inhabits the room.
“What have we got here?”

Problems, no, conclusions reign.

The information
inhibits the room.

The Geek returns, flushed; smiling

pervy coffee stench.
“What you see there Rose,”

he exudes, sure, electric,

“is the only thing
that can save your friends.”

She stares, amid stares, amid

doubt. Can he be trusted?
[The leaders exchange

intimacies, never seen

before. Unheard of.]
Rose exchanges doubt

for hope: a new currency;

snatches photos up.
[Naked ambition,

naked limbs, torsos, countries.

They've undone the world:
moist diplomacy.]

Rose turns to the Geek and asks:

“Find Mirka now please.”
“And the Messengers?”

she asks, looking deep within.

His head slowly shakes.
She cries for the lost

and the willing and the safe.

Quick, she leaves the room.
 
If it ain't (Strad)broke …
Power of bacon.

The scent drifts to the morass

where they hide and blink
like starved animals.

Mirka and James entering

the room, worlds apart.
“Can you move Mirka?”

A loud stomach growl answers

him. And then, nothing.
He wriggles up, grunts.

The chattering of torture

accompanies pots, eggs.
Diamond eyes open.

Her back cracks like a new book

spine. Violated.
Broken teeth crumble.

She tastes pain and the season.

Broken wills, trembling.
Finally, “Yes. No.”

She adjusts expectations.

“James?” Moments. Questions
like vows, unspoken

but filling up the future.

Possibility.
“What do you reckon?

Where are we?” He asks to ask.

The different light.
Nature banished, gone.

People noise dominating.

Table animals
dumbly cluck away.

Unaware of their soon fate.

Next incarnations
gambling away now.

They realise together:

we've left the island.
Hanging, tauntingly,

mystery objects, but known.

Close, but can't reach. Still:
their faces, new names.

Peruvian passports shine

in the dawning day.
 
Darkest Peru
Rapid conclusion.

They're eating their toast and then:

a sound from outside,
thud, thud; human drip

ping from the walls, the ceiling.

The gore of rescue.
Mirka peers through gloom.

A very hard stare indeed

piggybacks on motes,
leaping the distance

like aeons in the fragile

universe – explodes
into their fragile

collective unconsciousness.

Beings on fire
with sunlight and warmth.

Their attacking attackers

propelled to the past.
“Mirka? Who?” James says.

A strange disgorging of truth

in those two questions.
But what he asks her

mind compels her to resist:

like love, the future.
Killing their own men.

Saved by their captors' captor.

A face she knows well,
transformed by fate and

the decay of blackmailing,

glides in. Not alone.
“Boobs are so random,”

comes the code phrase. Mirka and

James relax, collapse.
Their old enemy

made speechless by this vacuum

of power in which
he now resides. Grim

silent nod of release and

they're free to watch his
contempt linger in

the room like a smoking gun.

Rose walks through his ghost.
“You don't know the cost

of this debacle,” she says.

“Nor you. What I pay,”
Mirka assures her.

James recalls the bar, first drinks.

Never had a chance
to find out the truth,

or the lies, or the spaces

between such judgements.
The circle ends, be

gins. “Take them to the island.”

Stradbroke is waiting.