backwards

Ive been thinking about going back to colombia, and its made me ask the question why. I cant go back without answering it. someone wrote me a letter from la, and kinda patronizingly said "have you found what you were looking for" and I said, "no I wasnt looking for anything anyway"...but it has to go back to the ocean...my thinking...does the broken boat plank that ends up a board on the beach in rockaway, look for the black rusted paint can thathas become lodged into its core?...I told my friend from medellin to look for a finca for me in the hills above envigado...he was happy, but asked "Im interested, what did you find here?" It cant be the beatiful whores and the cheap gambling that draws me back to the chaotic epicenter of pablo escobars former backstreets.
a table of friends laughed at my hands, when I layed them on the table for inspection. I told them I worked 15 hour days from age 18 to 30, and that I didnt work anymore. they didnt believe me. A big man that was mixing concrete in the morning for a bathroom on the second floor, was drinking a glass of wine at the chair accross from me, and stuck out his broken paw. 5 fat digits swolen with blood ready to burst from the skins first abrasion. His wife a fat cook wearing a sweatshirt stood behind him slumped over his shoulder like a bag of rocks, like I had seen the old women carry in chiapas, and up the hills from the border of cheutemal, her own palms sat light as doves on the tops of his broken knuckles. "these are the hands of a man that works"
I have to think there is something I can do well. there is something about medellin, there is something about the desperation that is like the ocean. colombia jostles back and forth like a tide pool caught between rocks. It might be whores and cards that pulls me back, but it cant be to play them, it must be to deny them, to make something of them, to include myself in the desperation.
I dreamed about a steel strap cinch for 5 months before I wrapped one around a broken chair, and a boulder of foam I found in the winter piles in rockaway. when I made those to things stuck together, I felt powerful, like I could do something. I have to find something strong enough to cinch together everything I have found in colombia, the whores and the cards, and the donkey cartsdragging paper up the hill. liseths beautiful eyes, next to her mothers fear for her daughter. the deep blue pool of the intercontinental, the sancocho at 6 am in miniorista....my green laughing hands...shining the suns light on that broken boat pining for a painters can.

punta del este

Im staying at a cold beach house a couple blocks from the ocean. I walk up and down the sidewalks, theres no one here, the shops have dusty displays from last years season fixed to the floor with dried water, salt crystals, and an uncut inside air taught as a ribbon at the finish line. I think about sagaponic and other indian names. I think about long blond hair, flat screen tvs, white plaster walls rewarded with a diamond coat, olives, canvas couches, and glass block partitions. duran duran sings rio, in some adolescent quadrant, and I feel a proximity to exclusion that only a dark sky over the ocean can transmit. "I want flowers all days year, and a orange tree, for my husband he can make me juice" Ma-Ho, short for maria jose is flipping through a special notebook she travelled to the next city to buy, her fingers dawdle on sketches of cement block sheds that she pristinely mimmicked with her untrained hand, following the blue tiny graph squares, etched into the paper. On the next page scratchy curved wiggles denote a fengshui inspired flower garden. The same grid tattoo from the previous page agast from snubbery, stands mouth open, hands in pockets tuxedos taught over printed blue floss, looking apalled as they helplessly witness the twombly crayon trampling theyre metered gala. Im looking over her shoulder at the desk by the check in counter, in front of the window, where the cold water peaks over the asphalt hill, one street back from its curb. the day is over, but the sun is slow to leave. she smells like garlic from the kitchen. I havent told her anything about me yet, I havent told her I want to build a house one day, the way my grandfather did. she said it first. " I need a house", she said out of thin air, unprovoked, while I was standing there not knowing her, quietly looking out the window. she said it like a declaration of war against the lonely village that surrounds us. then she went to her room and brought out the notebook, that she opened on the check in desk. the sun was finally gone when I had looked at the last page. "whats this" I ask. Another page sewn into the swell, next to her research on winter plants, and a page she ripped out of a gardening magazine that lists flowers that grown in low light pasted onto the graph paper with glue stick that wrinkled the glossy thin sheet. After 5 pages of private dreaming I am used to the pictures of ceramic bowls for cleaning dirty hands, measured 2 boxes back from the rear door. I havent told her I want a wife that can be happy without me sometimes, or that the man I am now grew up running down the beach, in front of the house my father built with his father. I havent told her anything. "oh, thats another silly dream for decaration" I want to erase myself, so that I can see her from above, like a bird, I want to be an anonymous voyeur, but one who can play an instrument somethng better than dead. "tell me" I say, she looks at me now for the first time. like she was dancing by herself in a room alone, and realized someone was watching. I touched a hooker the other night who was framed in the doorway of a rent a room by the minute house, she was pumping in a mirror to a heavy drum beat, and when I put my hand on her waist she looked right through my head out the other side, the way only a child can do, some young part of her too strong to die. she was powerful and I wilted under her hip, like a man struck down by polio
"these are words for the mar, in every language, french is mer, ocean or sea. this is german, this is hebrew" her fingers were like brancusi delineating marble from wood. I felt the heavy brass orb, under my tongue. My father had collections of things that he would stack on a bookcase in the hall, there was a brass ball the shape of a quaille egg that I used to put in my mouth.
"where" I say
the hooker swiveled on a lower vertebrae, her head never moved, and her eyes stared straight like a compass bobbing in a glass jar¨
"I will paint them on the wall"
she has started dancing again but now she knows Im here, the lobby of the house is small but a door through the kitchen leads out to a glass veranda, with six big square windows that face the ocean, it was dark now, but I watched her dance around the tables, and pick up dishes. she had a blue halo around her body, a cerilean blue that didnt really have any reference to the night skies, Ive only seen that color in the waters around anafi, a small greek island that I stayed at for 2 weeks when I was 18, the cerrilean halo followed her in trails, all around the veranda, leaving ever table and chair blue, or with the remnants of blue...like a stain. I watched her there cleaning the tables getting the house ready for hot season. If your gonna be a voyeur you have to play an instrument

I was watching a man drink a beer this morning, and touch his friends hand. they started of pounding each others palms and trying to escape each other, but as it got more violent it was clear they werent letting go, this was at 8am near the market in san telmo. there was another old guy in a puma sweatshirt next to him, and the table was green. I had two cups of coffee that tasted like liquor they are so strong. argentina isnt what I thought it was going to be, Im leaving today at 330. I watched a light machine reflect off the metal flower in the park last night, and I stood in front of the speakers, I was with someone, a man I met 2 days ago, and we were supposed to meet 3 other people but they didnt show up, after a while my legs got tired standing in front of the speakers, and I wanted to leave, alone. Im sleeping in a small room next to a broken skylight, the bed is really a cot, and I pee onto the next door roof instead of walking down the tight spiral stairs to the bathroom. Im taking the ferry to uraguay. Montevideo is supposed to be more dangerous and dirty, Im hoping that will fix the way Im feeling

hot is gone

I had my hand on the brown burl marble counter when the concierge desk attendant said "diareah" there in the sparkle clean morning tonic of amonia and glass cleaner. The word seemed more vulgar than usual, and then perfectly colombian as well. I looked down onto the pool, the extra large square, that had a dark blue bottom with striped cushions on white plastic lounge chairs which sunk into the shallow end. they got em positioned so you could drop a toe or an arm into the cold when the sun got too much. I hate david hockney, but I felt like I was in his world, like I was living in the beautiful and clean eighties, like I was rich in palm springs. A porter scrubbed the pools edge with ajax, blue clairvoyant pitch peddling gaminas selling chicklets. Im a million miles from the mars bar on second, where you could lose a month just drinking beer. Im 34 now, too old for the 17 year old model I met last night, Im too old to make my hands seem worthwhile to her, too old to put my mouth where she sits. Im desperate for one last moment of really hot. "oh god" I squeal to myself like a fag, make that brown marble burl a virus that glorifies every inch of me like a david katz complexion. Give me a pool drink and a million dollars. "I dont care" I say. "I love them". Im eating my third granillia, Im addicted to the orange pear shaped fruit with its hard shell. Two in each hand Im cracking them hand over fist like a body builder stacking yokes. Inside is a white cotton sack, pregnant with these little gelly covered seeds that dangle on wormed glowplugs. I have a fluffy pod propped up between my top and bottom front teeth, and my tongue is diligently digging into the seeds, gently separating them from thier seats,like a lasoed loose tooth being slammed out of a babys mouth with a door. when the man said diareah my hand fisted against the brown burl marble for traction. I bite down on the gelly hard stuff and stare at his starched black jacket and tie. He´s a fat cadaver dipped in jelly bobbing to the tune of vivaldi. I was sticky from defrocked granaiia that I knew was not her, and it was never gonna be her again, august is over, the mars bar closed for transfusions. everything is new in that chlorine kinda way and I knew I was watching the last skid of really hot slide by