Fast Day 230 October 30 2011 {River Phoenix}

Mississippi River and Tributaries

River Phoenix

I googled "river" and they gave me River Phoenix, whom I had seen in "Mosquito Coast", a long time ago...
on the banks of a muddy water, flowing by stealth to the Caribbee, a sulphur sheen of unbroken surface...
so I stayed with River Phoenix, and I did not rerun my search.

River Phoenix is just like the memory of a river, or a tree, if you prefer;
since he has passed away, his image forms a substrate in a portion of our minds,
just like the gingko tree raped by a backhoe
by your living room window
when they came to widen the roads... to make things better...
nowadays they are always making things better...

The Rio Negro is one of many rios negros;
it is the river of the Mosquito Coast, itself an image and memory...
a river which miscegenates with the wide, broad Sea beyond the harbor
and the Jesuit churches cloistered around the Largo da Palacio
where incense rose like morning fog...in colder climes of time forgot.

--
I just sort of kept a beat going, changed it around at times, and wrote stuff out and tried to leave out the individual stanzas... sort of like reading an Ancient Greek inscription: all boustrophedon and run together with no punctuations.

Fast Day 75 November 7 2008 {Shooting Film in Baghdad}

Shooting film in Baghdad...

cruising down the Tigris,
pretending to be an exile
in the Babylon of today.
Obama won the election - cool,

Nausicaa, sweet girl.
and Socrates the pimp...
So's I go to drink a cup

in the bar of foreign soldiers

and chat it up
with the blackness of a girl called
nuit noire,
pretty Layla Sawda'
and see a blond
sunrise on my Felluca on the Tigris:
o, delight of my eyes!
dancing obeisant in the court of the sun!
a skillful Lyre who deceives
with enchanting music
like a symbol of bewilderment!
**So, sweet Lesbia, no Tigris flow is this,
but the antique Nile odalisque that
flows beneath us to

our very urgent bidding.
And I am the turgid and fullness Wind
that swoops down in an arc
to kiss the full bosom
of your billowing sail!