That was

you, was it, sprinting from the police station, stuffing bundles of vending-machine popcorn up your jacket, collapsing to giggles on the pavement, and handing them back to the man bounding up, who was swearing something in Dutch; that was you, was it, finding someone's Volvo outside open at night, and falling asleep on the front seat, after a spliff, and returning to the waking world to run off with a child's kite, buried at the back of the glove compartment, that you never flew and that is now lost; and that was you, was it too, at first light giving the taxi directions, and then simply standing there, at the open car door, silent and statuesque, until off he drove with another fare; and you, staring across the massive Maas on mushrooms until each wave, each detail, became an undecipherable blur of shape and size, the image growing larger than all life before retreating to a point; and you lying on the grass and lighting another joint as the pigeon lady came, covered with bread and standing in a cross like Christ for the masses to peck, as down the pack swept, or was that a dream; and that was you, was it, infatuated with the whores in the window shops (that one with those glasses, black bra and panties, can at most have been 17), one after another after another; that was you, was it, man of leisure, man about town, there with no other guide than Allen Ginsberg and your best friend from School - he whom at 10 looked up 'existentialism' in some dictionary or other other, along with the dirty words, and concluded that 'utterly free in a meaningless universe' was he; and set his soul on Holland.

Holland, where now, like me and maybe you, he sends out electronic messages from behind a desk in an office; he just emailed me this, and is somehow still laughing unchanged, Hahahahaha, to a you that was.