May 7, 2003

• Daisy Fay’s Green Haze

   

  We’re nothing but beasts of burden

  Like Janos’ donkey*

  He thinks.

   

  Some go up

  Some go down

  The world is Escher

  Tumbling every which way

  On stairs.

   

  But

  It’s a happy time for

  This jumpy speakeasy

  Where we’ll drink giggle water

  And watch the dancing flappers

  Laugh on laps

  Like they must’ve

  For Gatsby.

   

  We’ll be old and grey

  Wearing our old and green

  Laurels and garlands

    Pumping our fists

    Dropping our canes

    Watching the moon

        Wane over the sunset

        Three sixty and five.

   

  ——————-

   

  *not Janus but Janos in this case.  then again, that might work too.  hmmm.

   <smile>

   

  Random literary memory for you:  I remember the first time I read The Great Gatsby… I was so angered by Gatsby’s willingness to take responsibility for Daisy’s reckless driving.  Poor Myrtle.

   

  For Fitzgerald fans, This Side of Paradise is the Stuff.

   

  

  ——————

   

  lindy hop ’til you drop

   

  Baron Manuel bounced, freezing in a cold Channel breeze.  His goggles froze and cleared as the wind whipped sharply against his brittle face, the wise lines of an old countenance cracked with deeper grooves.  Laugh lines made vivid with forty years of apparent hysteria.

   

  He’d hunted large charging game in Africa.  He’d raced motorcars and motorboats on the streets and waters of Monaco.

   

  His own design, it was a modified tractor monoplane, painted blue with tiny crescent moons, decorated unmanly by his nephews and nieces.  The tailfins were painted a soft banana yellow and on it, faces painted with various expressions, angry, sad, exasperated, glad.  The frame was made of bamboo and ash wood, nailed together and painted in his backyard.  This would be his first crossing on a quiet, foggy morning.  Northfall Meadow was his starting point; near Calais, Les Baraques would be his landing.

   

  It was a custom made engine, roaring with the hoofing power of twenty-four tired horses.  He had no compass but minus the low smoky clouds, he’d find his bearings soon.

   

  Thirty-eight short kilometers were stretched dangerously long by an unreliable engine and fragile, water-heavy wings.  Somewhere over the lonely black floor of the Channel, outstretched arms of criss-crossing poles began to droop.

   

  Braced against the cold, his grandson’s scarf knotted tight around his neck, he shivered and thought of Kilimanjaro’s peaks and more serious, he felt lonely. 

   

  Rich with casual grey-haired elegance, he felt his cheeks go pink and numb under his trademark red checkered cap.  He tried to puff on a long ivory cigarette holder, the soaked and frozen tobacco a banned Good Humour idea. 

   

  In short view of land, the controls went limp and his flying creation listed to the right and then to the left.  Not quite one to panic, he wrestled the steering contraption but all to no avail.  Sputtering dark clouds of oily smoke painted his face with minstrel soot.

   

  Cows digested grass through multiple bellies as they stared at an aeroplane seemingly drunk on five shots of Murphy’s Gravity Tequila.  Coughing through thick engine emissions, he caught glimpses of a beautiful sun, poking its morning rays like golden fingers through the dark.  Quite right.  Quite lovely.

   

  The simple, ugly plane crumpled easily, folding in two.  The baron let forth a Tarzan shout as the I-told-you-so’s of Ozymandias looped in his head.  The saying becomes a song: the grass of France makes a man dance.  One shepherd claimed he heard laughter.  The lambs heard nothing but a whirring motor and snapping twigs.  Faces – sad, mad, delighted and perplexed – exploded in a rain of bolts and wood.  And down came the sprinkle of moons – souvenirs and reminders of visions that come at night.

   

  Rolling green plains sit rich like thick Seventies’ shag over precipitous French cliffsides where sheep bleat a quiet dirge, knowing a great strange man has reached his end.  The cows slap away groggy flies with lazy tails.

   

  ————–

   

  

     There’s a slow train pulling through the desert. 

     The colored cars pass quietly from sight…

     -Fernando Ortega 

   

     One of the prettiest songs you’ll hear.  Have a good one.

   

  ————

   

  Buckle up: This race is gonna get dirty.  Fine points, Fineman.  I don’t like Dean, sure, but he is the straw that stirs.  Cah-rap.  Link

   

   

  Matt11:28

   

  • 2:59 am
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