A morning in Jerez (Full Version)

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Escribano -> A morning in Jerez (May 11 2004 22:11:50)

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[:D]

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.




Miguel de Maria -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 12 2004 18:14:40)

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.




Escribano -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 12 2004 20:02:20)

Cool, that took me there. Fun isn't it, painting a picture?




TANúñez -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 12 2004 20:30:12)

You have inspired me as well.

Texas in the summer.

Hot as hell!

[:D] Seriously though. That's some good writing from the both of you!




bailoro2000 -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 13 2004 7:51:32)

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.




Billyboy -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 13 2004 15:19:57)

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




Escribano -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 13 2004 17:51:06)

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.




Billyboy -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 13 2004 20:27:42)

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






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LYRICS © JOHN COOPER CLARKE




Escribano -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 13 2004 21:27:12)

quote:

Half man half Bisquit


Cool, but weren't they a band as well?




Billyboy -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 14 2004 12:07:45)

Yeh I think they were, dont know much about them though, just love that name of the group
Dave




aarongreen -> RE: A morning in Jerez (May 14 2004 13:10:16)

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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