chasing war with Cognac

or a party for the dead
.
As it turned out, the explosion was one of many in my mind that no one else heard and though I frantically searched the ashes,I found no one bleeding and no one dead.
.
We chased the Valium with Cognac in celebration of my imagination, not to drown out the war.
.
I drove sober from Pristina through the sheets of rain and did not notice the cliff on my right and I did not think of the lorie heavy with UN tarps that lay crumpled at the bottom of it. I curled around the missing bomb-sized pieces of road (US shell sized) and I did not think to myself
.
"how romantic, to die in an explosion" because no one dies in explosions here or anywhere-
.
I found no one in the mine-rubble in Kukes and I was driving us straight to Athens like westerners, just for something to write about, Kerouac, Miller, Swift, etc. chasing
.
the dead girl's Valium with Cognac in celebration of my imagination, not to drown out the war.
--Kosova 1999