Blame it on Prima Vera
Flyin’ high in tropical breezes
Non-stop sippin’ the vino
Says she’ll be back to see us
When she damn well pleases
(by jesus!)
Blame it on Prima Vera
Flyin’ high in tropical breezes
Non-stop sippin’ the vino
Says she’ll be back to see us
When she damn well pleases
(by jesus!)
BLAME
Blame it on the woman
And her slow art as she slowly
Combs her silver hair
Blame it on the man
And the snow on the crossroad
Blame it on the air
Last night Dave and I
Mushed over to the Lynn Auditorium
Through 6 feet snow embankments
Up Monroe down Market into city
Hall where it all opened up for us
Behind the plush red velvet curtain
Swan Lake in Lynn! Black and White flutter-
Swan-dream- creatures court jester evil sorcerer
Enchanted lovers resplendant lush ensembles deux trois quatre
Romance death- strifed fate-mad star- crossed embrace
Dave and I entranced amidst an audience murmur of Russian and Lynn
Argot and exotic women in tightly fit over the knee black leather high heel
Boots and sensuous furry garments with tiny waists and big skirts
We bathe in a a snowy swath of swans we open our arms to the whole
Swanly affair and I remember my nine year old dancing self
When my ma took me to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
at the Bushnell Memorial in Hartford Connecticut
and the red curtain opened and parted
like the first red sea and…
I saw Alexandra Danilova prima ballerina
And her troupe of enchantment
And went backstage afterward with Ma
And all I remember from here is she took off
Her eyelashes and put them in a jar and kissed me
and for months after that I kissed each night
her autographed photo and I knew
I knew what it meant to be in the magic zone
and now at my austere and snowy age
I know ah oui… je connais encore
Signing off respectfully… e/liz: jazz poet of lynn
Against ornate, rhetorical verse
A poetry that’s natural. There’s a torrent here:
Here too, a dry stone. Over there a golden
Bird gleaming in the green branches, like a flower
Bright as fire on a bed of emeralds.
And here’s the fetid, viscous track of a gross,
Slimy, brown-bellied worm, its eyes
Two bubbles of mud. High above the tree, in a sky
Like steel, a solitary, steadfast star,
While underfoot, all around, roars the oven
Whose heat cooks the earth. The flames won’t quit:
Flames with open pits like eyes, tongues
Like arms, vicious as a man, sharp-pointed as a sword:
The sword of life, which flashes fire
Again and again, until it takes the earth at last!
The fire climbs out of its own heart, howls, and that’s that:
A man begins in fire, and ends on the wing.
But as he makes his triumphal leap, the reprobates
Go mad!–the vile ones, the cowards, the conquered,
Like serpents, like little yapping dogs, like
Crocodiles with their double rows of teeth,
From here, from there, from the tree that protects him
And the soil that sustains him, from the stream
Where he slakes his thirst, from the very
Anvil where he forges his bread, they come
Barking and biting his feet, hurling dust and mud
In his face, hoping to blind him on his way.
But watch: with one blow of a wing he sweeps the world
And ascends through the burning atmosphere,
Dead like a man, and like the sun, serene.
If poetry wants to be noble, it has to be
Like life: the star, the yapping dog, the cave
That wears the teeth-marks of fire:
The pine, in whose redolent branches
A nest sings in the moonlight.
–José Martí
(translated by Tomas O’Leary)
Moving toward Flagstaff I’m out
On the highway I’m hitching
And at night too, when the blurring
Lights hunt me down
I think about you looming
So big and imponderable
LIke a giant hulk
Dave looks up from the dining room table
Where he is doing something on the computer
He has that serious look that slow imponderable gaze and says
I’m looking up Flagstaff Arizona
Why don’t we go there and get out of this damn snow
Let’s go babe let’s go clear across tomorrow
All the way to Flagstaff Arizona
I see you America
I see you when Rozi
from Albania appears
Wrapped in your flag and singing
Oh Holy Nigh at the Walnut st cafe
or when Etheridge ambles in
from his corner on 4th and Martindale
and says no black man
can ever be a citizen can ever be president
so what the fuck, and I see you america
in my swamp yankee Dad
Who believed that any one could do any thing
aka any white man
if he worked hard enough no problem no prison
and I hear you when Woody Guthrie
Sings home the deportees and I hear you
On Sunday when the Somali women
Chant up a righteous storm in the storefront church
Right next to the Flag Pharmacy run by Russians
and now I am stuck in the Milwaukee Airport and it’s snowing
It’s been snowing all night and there’s a second hand book store
Here in the airport I’m happy
And now I am in Allston at a party of sex workers
All women and one Cuban pimp in wingtip shoes
and they’re scooping white powder up from a candy bowl
I’m leaving and Maria is crying her mascara is smearing
And I am right on time
waiting like Ferlinghetti
for a rebirth of wonder will I stay
Or go far away
All night it is snowing it keeps on
Snowing it will snow forever
I look up to my highest window
And I see you america
Tattered but still flying
I look up and look out my high window
And outside I see you waving America you bitch
Tattered and raggedy and lovely still waving
During the Night
Awake three times.
Knock. Tremble. Entry.
What more could I want
Before dawn sweeps in:
A diva in red
bearing revelation
like a ripe berry.
A long journey.
Home or elsewhere. Pre-verbal
Mutterings. Languor.
I climb to where you are.
Clouds are empty
With a whole life ahead.
Birds turn into
Burnt Flanks of horizon.
Give off some sort of internal
Heat.
In the backroom. Barely
Perceived. Realised. Slowly
Takes off veils of clothes
In slow-time. Watching me
Through sea-weed, sow belly lace,
solitary, hunger strike, the muslim brothers.
“Gimmee some meat. So hungry
I’m hallucinatin.”
“Naw man, just hang.”
Companero de la vida,
I have not slept beside you
For 25 years. The leaves turn. You die in my arms.
Pussy willow weeps. Solitary. Tears like
Black eggs. Lip-lap the lala moon.
All the way to the sea.
The sea.
She’s so shy now, see
She opened her mouth too soon
Now she’s quiet as snow
Diggin’ it dog/gone
Who knows what treasures emerge
Deep in the deep down