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Posts: 6447
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
A morning in Jerez
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.
Simon, your exploits into poetry have inspired me!
Siesta in Barrio Santa Cruz
Black fans, with painted flowers long-nosed ladies fanning their faces pausing in narrow alleys, white walls rising high up, to a ribbon of sun.
An iron gate, green leaves nestling with the bars here is a cobbled end, covered with tarp Sun leaking through, flowers and greenery Tiles embedded in white-plastered walls.
The stores are closed by aluminum cages. The street is empty of taxicabs and the sidwalk is bare of passersby. The light flashes green, the crosswalk is clear. NO ME DEJADO.
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.
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
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.
Does anyone remember a group of poets called "Half man half Bisquit", anyway I found a JCC poem, with a Flamenco mention. "Make Mine Majorca"
fasten your seatbelts says a voice inside the plane you can't hear no noise engines made by rolls royce take your choice ...make mine majorca
check out the parachutes can't be found alert those passengers they'll be drowned a friendly mug says "settle down" when i came round i was gagged and bound ...for Majorca
and the eyes caress the neat hostess her unapproachable flip finesse i found the meaning of the word excess they've got little bags if you wanna make a mess i fancied Cuba but it cost me less ...to Majorca
(Whose blonde sand fondly kisses the cool fathoms of the blue mediteranean)
they packed us into the white hotel you could still smell the polycell wet white paint in the air-conditioned cells the waiter smelled of fake Chanel Gaulois... Garlic as well says if i like... i can call him "Miguel" ...well really
i got drunk with another fella who'd just brought up a previous paella he wanted a fight but said they were yella' ...in Majorca
the guitars rang and the castinets clicked the dancer's stamped and the dancer's kicked it's likely if you sang in the street you'd be nicked the double diamond flowed like sick mother's pride, tortilla and chips pneumatic drills when you try to kip ...in Majorca
a stomach infection put me in the shade must have been something in the lemonade but by the balls of franco i paid had to pawn my bucket and spade next year I'll take the international brigade ...to Majorca
Weird, I wrote a response and my computer seems to have eaten it. I'll try again!
Tom, I have been to Texas this time of year and know of what you speak. I actually spent the month of August in Alabama once when I was a kid. Very uncool, in many ways. Anyhow here is my New England response to your prose
New England Summers Tourists call it God's Country Where's He come winter?
The answer, Grasshopper, is he gets the hell out of Dodge. -10 degrees for 5 days straight? I'm outta here.
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