me and frankie
dirty web footed turkey vultures are called to active duty as another set rolls in, black winged waves turning sand strips into puddled backdrops for the next tact. not for me, on the carribean, not for me in the chiriqui highlands. I have missed the storm, that soaked zicatella, that murdered poyopo, that took the breadth out of zonte. I have escaped.
yeah I didnt even know there was a storm until I read the weekly news section of the miami herald. the english speaking rag here in panama. Ive been off the pacific for 2 weeks or more long enough to get lost and not know where I am. long enough to miss the big storm that snowed in new zealand,and sent 15 foot swells, up into el salvador
Ive been in panama a week now. Ive been hanging out with this toronto art student named francois in boquette, some highlands town in the chiriqui provence. Its not much to look at, no colonial buildings, just a high altitude strip of dirt, thats cold at night, and has 4 traffic lights and eight bars with swinging doors and sawdust floors and small panamanian men in ten gallon hats dropping fiftycent beers hand over fist into gullets with barely enough rice to tease a cat. towns like this remind me of new england and a winter I spent in vermont in my twentys. the kid promises good times next week in the capitol. I met him a couple of days ago in the islands by costa rica, called bocas del toro, hes a student on break, Im broken. he drinks, I used to, we get along on that low level nothingness that binds two people together that are wrong. he’wants me to go with him to a resort on the coast that books its rooms in the low season for half price during the week, slumming panama style. he thinks drunk germans might tempt me. hes looking for the free food and open bar. the whole things not my scene, but Im bying time before columbia, no more chicken shaks and middle america. Im going south into the darien gap, into guerilla country, taking a sailboat through the sandblast islands, to columbia, to the carribean port of Cartagena.
I bought a maxim at the local grocery and checked out spanish speaking pinups, while frankie poured gin into plastic cups, in his under shorts. I gotta call him frankie. theres a part of me that dies every time I say francois. The twenty five dollar rooms got flourescents that rattle dust in the hollow ceiling above the beds, outside the black light behind the clouds splits at half seven, caught in the two lane main street before loping under the crunched pines. tailgating black coffee fincas and a seventy two bronco, that spits low octane out of a burnt manifold thats been lost as long as Ive been alive
I went into the mountains by myself to soak in hot springs that break out of black cranium boulders cracked at the base of the scull. I walked under blue hills along cow mud and faded tree light, like the maple groves in sugarbush valley. I rode horses in the mountains around caldera, drove cattle with a couple vaqueros my starved quarter horse stumbled in four feet of river and then fell on me, climbing the rooted bank, to dry land. jose the man who has taken me on this ride, smiles as he mounts an international bull from the back. “todos la natural” I am here and he is here, and the broken scull of another broken man, in the black cranium, in the hot river, in the cool highlands of panama caresses me, like a soft car crash, everything just like a year in my twentys when I gave up dying
yeah I didnt even know there was a storm until I read the weekly news section of the miami herald. the english speaking rag here in panama. Ive been off the pacific for 2 weeks or more long enough to get lost and not know where I am. long enough to miss the big storm that snowed in new zealand,and sent 15 foot swells, up into el salvador
Ive been in panama a week now. Ive been hanging out with this toronto art student named francois in boquette, some highlands town in the chiriqui provence. Its not much to look at, no colonial buildings, just a high altitude strip of dirt, thats cold at night, and has 4 traffic lights and eight bars with swinging doors and sawdust floors and small panamanian men in ten gallon hats dropping fiftycent beers hand over fist into gullets with barely enough rice to tease a cat. towns like this remind me of new england and a winter I spent in vermont in my twentys. the kid promises good times next week in the capitol. I met him a couple of days ago in the islands by costa rica, called bocas del toro, hes a student on break, Im broken. he drinks, I used to, we get along on that low level nothingness that binds two people together that are wrong. he’wants me to go with him to a resort on the coast that books its rooms in the low season for half price during the week, slumming panama style. he thinks drunk germans might tempt me. hes looking for the free food and open bar. the whole things not my scene, but Im bying time before columbia, no more chicken shaks and middle america. Im going south into the darien gap, into guerilla country, taking a sailboat through the sandblast islands, to columbia, to the carribean port of Cartagena.
I bought a maxim at the local grocery and checked out spanish speaking pinups, while frankie poured gin into plastic cups, in his under shorts. I gotta call him frankie. theres a part of me that dies every time I say francois. The twenty five dollar rooms got flourescents that rattle dust in the hollow ceiling above the beds, outside the black light behind the clouds splits at half seven, caught in the two lane main street before loping under the crunched pines. tailgating black coffee fincas and a seventy two bronco, that spits low octane out of a burnt manifold thats been lost as long as Ive been alive
I went into the mountains by myself to soak in hot springs that break out of black cranium boulders cracked at the base of the scull. I walked under blue hills along cow mud and faded tree light, like the maple groves in sugarbush valley. I rode horses in the mountains around caldera, drove cattle with a couple vaqueros my starved quarter horse stumbled in four feet of river and then fell on me, climbing the rooted bank, to dry land. jose the man who has taken me on this ride, smiles as he mounts an international bull from the back. “todos la natural” I am here and he is here, and the broken scull of another broken man, in the black cranium, in the hot river, in the cool highlands of panama caresses me, like a soft car crash, everything just like a year in my twentys when I gave up dying
posted by bigworld06 at 8:23 AM
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