argentines want to drink my beer.

I am walking on clouds
high above where
argentines want to drink my beer
that i sip through a straw
& they confuse me with
my passport
& see me as a name they can't pronounce
consonant clusters which
are so natural become
unnatural
unnaturally broad & slender

But I confuse them too:
with friends & enemies
with words & ways of walking.
Why see difference
when you can see sameness
& similarity?
Why take when
you could receive?
& in giving a dollar or 4 pesos
what is returned?
what is the value of experience?
of jumpstarting braincells to
take in stimuli?
It is the returning which teaches
us to open.

But the argentine who wants
to drink my beer
still picks fights with me
from 5000 miles away.
I tell him "if you want to go
outside that's your problem"
& he says "do you wan' to go ou'side?"
I say "no, I want you to go outside-
I paid to be here"
& we walk away from trouble
but not from the problem.
Later in the bathroom after
5 handshakes
he tells me my presidents fuck
his country (with no specifics)
I'm holding my dick
& my tongue
& rolling my eyes.
He thinks he's educating me
But all he really wants
is the cigarette I don't have
& the beer I finished.
he doesn't want to fight
he wants to talk about it.
he wants to demonstrate
in the street
every Thursday & 2nd Sunday
of the month.
"When you go home you make change"
he gave me no specifics
but cardboard & a fence post
can't change much.

Now I'm riding much
closer to the ground
at home where
other people will want to drink my beer
& I will give it to them
If they will only ask.

PDM