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1 februero 2004
12 moon 42 winter 48 spaceage
SATURNIGHT PARTY
Suppose you were here
suppose I were there
the exchange
interchange
words fantasize and
let
go
.
Amber dreams Cuban drums
give way to Santana remix
or someone else ?
Black magic woman
this moon hangs high
waxing gibbeous
goddess
music over the line
imagine imagine
que la musica that the music
echoes over rooftops at the border
that is no line is net-work
radiant fibers
claiming their mercantile power to
dis- conect
disconnect DISconnect
at the fence where green trucks wait in
shadows behind brilliant lights
listening noise from nearby distance .
Tambaleante castillos - trembling rods of steel
stick up neighborhood buildings
reaching sky
toward growing moon .
In the patio, the party has begun.
Ceramic horno oven
burns hot wood fire
against the chill winter night
California Mexican frontier .
I think these pages can burn,
too, not like the
electric
web
this
shall
publish
to the ends of the earth
where perhaps the
Marquess of Bath
measures life in west England; or
far India where the great-grandson of Gunga
Din takes steaming tea from further China glass .
If I may point an imperfect rhyme
remember letters and quests and
woolen mills my ancestors sold
long after king Alfred beat back
those
Danes
these pages I leave behind
where I scribbled before
imagining electrons around the world north
atlantic bridges from far Mexico frontier
that will burn in your eye
thought
read
-ing
here .
The poem must be thought
and formed into perfect
-ion
wrote Geoffroi de Vinsauf
in his "New Poetry"
800 years ago :
Si quis habet fundere domum no currit ad actum
Impetuosa manus: intrinseca linea cordis
Preametitur opus, seriemque sub ordine certo
Interior praescribit homo, totanque figurat
Ante manus cordis quan corporis; et status ejus
Est prius archetypus quam sensibus.
If someone has to build a house, his hand does
not impetuousely run to achieve it: the internal line
of the heart measures the work, first, and with certain order
man prescribes the complex within himself and
the hand of the heart figures it all before the
the hand of the body, and its first state is
more an archetype than object of sensation .
Latin long before my accidental embrace of accident
child of dada and surreal spontaneous stream of consciousness write whateverthehell
flows from your pen you can clean it up later
or not .
Those two poetics medieval and modern
cutting across worlds
this is not a house
this is only a page
this carefully nurtured accident of paper and ink
to revise into this embrace of electron
and cyberspace
this moment of scribble scribble in the border party patio
silent gringo off in poet corner scrawling scratching
in the night where Spanish flows and
washes and wraps around me between the music
dancing from Cuba and Brazil
in between in-between
on this border between
language
and langage
tongue
and
TANG
(R)
the astronauts drank it and
look
the moon is
still
there
circling around us
circling around me
circling around you
circling around John Glenn and Gunga Din IV
and the marquess of Bath
both, troth
until in the middle of all this poetastry
comes Elizabeth to the party
shining beauty poetess
who will dance
and turn
into the music
like Sappho
and comes Antonio to the party
and you greet them
one then
another .
Forget the moon
Forget the
animals
of
distant Longleat
forget your ancestors
poet
who fled
from Wessex four hundred years ago
forget all that now
there is
only standing up
to embrace first one, then another
of your Mexican friends .
Later, while Elizabeth dances
the madman Antonio will move
toward the buffet table
and begin to talk
of German cannibalism
popping bits of ham into his mouth
speaking lines in English
- a small price to pay
for such a delicious piece of flesh - .
Ay caray quiero ponche I want another
glass of punch
yes
sweet tamarindo on the tongue
without a single hint of
bitter alcohol .
No hangover
tomorrow,
no.
Yes .