My Last Will and Testicle

There´s a helium lion floating in the trees.
Dawn. A man lies prone on the lawn, grass clippings
cover his body. A wheelbarrow full of uncooked
chickens beside him. We have been up all night,
carousing along the narrow streets in old Pamplona.
The windows boarded over, boards that are splintered
and gored and dirty. Piles of garbage now. A man urinates
on the garbage. We move away. We´ve been drinking
Coli Motxo, a mix of red wine from a box and coca cola.
All night on this, and now it´s 6:30 and the streetlights
have been shut off. We´ve said goodbye to the women,
they´ve peeled away to get a spot along the route
to watch. We are staying, improbably, in a four star
hotel. We have yet to lay our heads down. A coffee
and we awake to our prospects. A candlelabra flutters
in a recess in the old stone wall. The bulls are waking
up. We saw them last night in a pen, or at least saw
the yellow bone of one horn pry through the gap in the
gatepost. A Spaniard spills my coffee and apologizes.
There is respect for spilled coffee. If you spill beer,
who cares, it´s just beer. The street is choked full of
men in white shirts and pants, red sashes. The cuffs of
their pants are black from dirt and urine. Our shoes
are ruined with urine. We crowd in together and wish
each other luck. We cannot move now, so jammed together.
Then there is a gunshot, and we begin to move. I am, in
fact, being carried along. ¨Dont fall over,¨ has been
the advice. A second gunshot. The pace picks up. There
begin the seeds of panic. The crowds leaning over
makeshift palings, people who have paid over the internet
to have a spot on a balcony above us, oh how lucky
and sane are they. The third shot means the bulls have
been released. In an instant speed dramatically changes.
I look back and see a wall of Spaniards, in a blur of
white and red, bits of their limbs crash into me at
an angle. A body slams into my hip, seven men pile over
my head and hit the stone wall. We lift a couple to their
feet but then hear the buzz and pulse of another wave,
wedging their way through us. A cry goes up, there´s an
old man at my feet, grimacing, his head split open. I
jump over him. And, airborn, I lose my purchase, and hit the
wall, just then I see the speed of a line of bulls zip
past me, their backs ropy and straight and unbelievably
fast. They are through and we run after them, into the
red throat of Pamplona´s bullring. And enter when another
pod of bulls thunders in. And now things have only begun.