All were following the training guide
at the table of teachers
The middle pages had fallen out
Or were ripped
I couldn't follow it
I had arrived unprepared
my book was falling apart
A colleague tried to share their book
The images confused me
The looks and voices confounded me further
The sunbaked courtyard heating the brain
I Followed through the ripped pages
Half diagrams and texts
So lost and disoriented
What was a teacher to do
Just hoping no questions were asked
Me on the street cooling off
last night's rain has formed
today's long mirror like puddles
Looking back at me on the way to buy bread
Soon they'll dry up
leaving coffin stains
all the way up the sidewalk.
For last night the streetlamps were gurgling
Drizzle filled them
the scattered spray turned to begger drops
One by one their yellow mouths drank
While the mendigo mariner
leans out of his hangover
What's missing in the true believers today
They have no paraphernalia
No deep rooted symbols to identify with
Not those cheap and fleeting trinket trends from a one dollar store
No look at middle east and their cultural beliefs
The heirlooms the traditional cups and sauces
Elixirs and herbs and spices, tapestries and carpets
The tropical zealots have none of these things
The wannabe libertines cling to cliches
As if they have evelasting meaning
The zealots cling to rapid austerity
Both diseases age them fast
And to replace the old relics
Printed flags and slogans iconic tropes
Seeking to achieve those American ideals
Snow and Santa Claus in December
Yet it's summer in the southern hemisphere
Less interested in the origins of thing
Curiously ask if the european celebrates chrismas
Not knowing the concept was created there
Face in the brick work
two hundred years ago
the man who passed away whose face lay against
The hard granite
In the hush under those big royal poincianas
falling apart and held together by bromeliads epiphites
Old kite string and hanging succlents
Also the matted mess of abadoned nests
The face stares out of those shadows
The Paraty phantom of all things
It's soul a piece of the landscape
forever observing the strange human activity
The day severs dreams from my waking reality
memory unwilling to grant me their secrets
The strange craftiness of their nature
The sweet depth of their journeys
Cut off from the mellow warmth
The colors and emotions that blend into one
The secrets and epiphanies
That noone believes
My heart and brain both long to experience them
But the mundane wall of the expedient has risen and dried
Blocking those secret worlds
Only bowing for the new day's sun
Clapping hands
The wish for new things to step inside of life
The unwillingness to make them happen
Beautiful fantasies leading somewhere incredible apparently
The future you desire
Is found in flat routine
Days that trace the same deep lines
made from the tyre tracks of yesterday
Such big things suddenly happening except not
overwhelming events come up except don't
The oracle is cardboard
The soothsayer a tarot hack
Don't answer the question
Take the worm off the hook
the life line is going deeper
dragged down by the sinker
Carp perches on the rock bottom
Above oily black seabirds get snagged
On old fishing nets
The past such a web
your personal racket
Volume and mafia
Scratching backs
and pro quos
Body bag
Concrete weights
Boat all blood stained
slumber in the deep
Carpe diems
Flock conformity
left feeling like idiot beggers
Hats in hands hoping for quarters
Never coming up for air
Afraid to give away too much
Thinking the secret is safe
Alas its all out in the open
Never answering the questions
And up the sleeve just enough ammunition
So if cornered
you can tommy gun around the magazine
A story re-enacting itself
inside of the head
A bubble of pride
formed from years of pretend
