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A morning in Jerez
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Escribano
Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
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 A morning in Jerez
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I started to write about Jerez, this is as far as I got. I may finish it one day but I hope you enjoy the first page 
At Five In The Morning
Part One - Las Fresas
Hammers and drills, mopeds as bees and trucks, rail-loose trains.
Around and around the hermita, the steel moat ran; some streams ran off here and there up to roundabouts and lights that stopped nothing but peatones, frozen in cheap shoes.
It was the siren that awoke Oso in the early afternoon; in a boxy, cold room. An old joke about ice-cream vans passed by. A small bed of tissue-thin sheets and curtains that filtered the shy sun of March, like cheap sunglasses.
Spain.
Las Fresas live south, outside the old walls of Jerez. The strawberries. Oso could not figure this name for apartment cement.
All the cab drivers knew them. Some had been there, but most had just heard it on their radio. “Donde están las Fresas? Si, si, ¡No! ¡Hah!” When they steered their Seat for the strawberries, they already knew. Like a dream.
High in bloque dos, Oso stirs. Itching his itches and smacking his lips.
A Spanish siren? How European, so Clouseau. An amateur. It’s really trying but it’s not being doing this long and anyway, it used to sell ice cream.
Andalucia.
He retired at seven that morning. Talking to himself, weeping a little beside the cobbled stream home. Struggling with the wrong key in the wrong lock of the wrong block. Arguing with the lift, falling out forever with the fridge. He had texted his latest report to Carmen in London.
His mind was still wobbling on its axis to a clapping. A clapping to a dancing. A strumming to a strum. Across the strawberry fields, an animal was calling. He had wanted to **** something; not a woman, not a man but a thing. a force, a wall. He could taste it on his flaky lips. Something had surely ****ed him but nothing was sore.
Flamenco.
_____________________________
Foro Flamenco founder and Admin
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 11 2004 22:11:50
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bailoro2000
Posts: 93
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
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RE: A morning in Jerez (in reply to Escribano)
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Simon the scribe strikes again ((-:
Nice going amigo. I love to read how flamenco affects other people. Here's an offering I did some time ago. Hope you like it and others will join in:
Tell me of flamenco:
Tell me of white walls, baking heat, the lingering smell of cooked
cabbage mixed with mule manure and the scent of bougainvillea. And a
guitar playing somewhere distantly from behind faded shutters, whose
flaking paint fights a ceasless and losing battle against dazzling
sunlight, in the silence of the Andalusian afternoon......
Tell me of black garbed old ladies with leather faces, whose walking
sticks keep them in contact with their beloved tierra, and tap out an
unknowing and instinctive compas, and whose faded brown eyes gaze in
wonder and regret at the memory of what was. Of mule handlers whose
faces are wet with perspiration and grooved with the contours of
life's ceaseless grind, and whose clothes are a little removed from
Armani. Of cobbled, winding streets whose shades are islands of mercy
against the sun's glare, and where the soft, tinkling splash of a
public fountain is the most welcome sound on earth.
And tell of the oldknife-grinder's ocharina pipes announcing his services to humanity as
he labours at the pedals of his museum-piece bicycle. Tell of the
unknown ancient, pushing his wheelbarrow of vegetables around the
market place, who is capable of breaking into cante in a voice that
rivals that of Chocolate in it's very flamenconess.
Then tell me of the arrival of fusion: The distant bass roar of
traffic and the international intrusion of snarling motor-cycle
cajons from Japan, Italy, Germany and England. The cello of the
cement-mixer and the taconeo of the road drills, and the new and
sometimes confusing choreography of progress on an art that lives on
in tiny hamlets and hillside pueblos, protected only by their very
remoteness and inaccessibility: Of the market place rumba and
sevillanas that hint of a new alegria lifestyle, where once soleares
was the only option and the mule the only means of transport, and the
palmas of cash registers that announce to the world that the land of
flamenco has arrived in the millenium.
Ah,...tell me.
Jim.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 13 2004 7:51:32
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Billyboy
Posts: 389
Joined: Aug. 18 2003
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RE: A morning in Jerez (in reply to bailoro2000)
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This poem reminds me of Salford, a world away from Jerez, and got nowt to do with Flamenco, but a great poem non the less by the great John Cooper Clark
Outside the take-away, Saturday night
a bald adolescent, asks me out for a fight
He was no bigger than a two-penny fart
he was a deft exponent of the martial art
He gave me three warnings:
Trod on me toes, stuck his fingers in my eyes
and kicked me in the nose
A rabbit punch made me eyes explode
My head went dead, I fell in the road
I pleaded for mercy
I wriggled on the ground
he kicked me in the balls
and said something profound
Gave my face the millimetre tread
Stole me chop suey and left me for dead
Through rivers of blood and splintered bones
I crawled half a mile to the public telephone
pulled the corpse out the call box, held back the bile
and with a broken index finger, I proceeded to dial
I couldn’t get an ambulance
the phone was screwed
The receiver fell in half
it had been kung fu’d
A black belt karate cop opened up the door
demanding information about the stiff on the floor
he looked like an extra from Yang Shang Po
he said “What’s all this then
ah so, ah so, ah so.”
he wore a bamboo mask
he was gen’ned on zen
He finished his devotions and he beat me up again
Thanks to that embryonic Bruce Lee
I’m a shadow of the person that I used to be
I can’t go back to Salford
the cops have got me marked
Enter the Dragon
Exit Johnny Clarke
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 13 2004 15:19:57
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Escribano
Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
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RE: A morning in Jerez (in reply to Billyboy)
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quote:
John Cooper Clark
Now you're talking. While we are on the great alternative poets, here's my favourite, "Eddie Don't Like Furniture" set to music by John Hegley:
quote:
Eddie don't go for sofas or settees (na-na, na-na),
Or those little tables that you have to buy in threes (na-na, na-na, na-na-na):
The closest thing that Eddie's got to an article of furniture's a cheeseboard.
Eddie doesn't bolster the upholstery biz,
There's a lot of furniture in the world, but none of it's Eddie's;
Eddie don't like furniture,
Furniture makes Eddie really miserable.
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na, na-na-na).
Eddie offers visitors a corner of the room,
You get used to the distances between you pretty soon.
With everyone in corners though, it isn't very easy when you're trying to play pontoon
Or Happy Families.
He once got in a rowing boat,
They offered him a seat;
It was just a strip of timber
But it wasn't up his street.
He stood himself up in the boat
And made himself feel steady,
Then he threw the plank onto the bank
And said "Furniture? No thank you".
"Les meubles? Non merci".
(Oooooh wah)
When it's on a bonfire furniture's fine;
Any time that Eddie gets a number 29 bus,
Even if there's seats on top and plenty down below,
Eddie always goes where the pushchairs go.
Does Eddie like furniture?
I don't think so.
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na, na-na-na).
Eddie quite likes cutlery,
But Eddie don't like furniture (na-na na-na-na, na-na na-na-na, na-na).
If you go round Eddie's place and have a game of hide and seek,
It isn't very long before you're found (na-na, na-na-na).
And in a fit of craziness,
Eddie took the legs off his dachshund:
That stopped him dashing around.
(Na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na)
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na, na-na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na, na-na-na).
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na),
Eddie don't like furniture (na-na, na-na, na-na-na):
If you give him some for Christmas,
He'll return it t'ya.
_____________________________
Foro Flamenco founder and Admin
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 13 2004 17:51:06
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