Art: Remedios Varo, The Creation of Birds

Poem for slowing of island curses

What I cannot transform
into the seeds of any germinal paradise,
watered by my perennial fixation
on being the crow and the locust sprayed
off of ancient Aryans’ golden harvests born of their hard-work.
I will throw against the chattering wheel,
flame and flora of vanishment.

My sea-flower of mistrust, gift that returns,
Aruban seesawing bat from the poison date-tree
to its lurk in cave,
shakes bits of moon from its leather wings
after it baptized the fumbling
drunk sex of emancipated peasantry
under the trees, in the moon-made shadow of their Honda,
with a sea-rusted Honda star.

Rolled up Time magazines in a bottle
are broken against the shore by the naked sons of Crusoe
vanquished time. They spoke themselves sick,
their uttered curses strove to be eternal, like all malcontents,
and left not a shadow upon a passing wave.

A shark-fin glimpsed between eye-lashes, kissed a slave’s back with fresh
creek-water tears, outlived them all.

But now I nearing.
I am very near the quenching centre
of the coconut, I can feel
its water now, elixir to lick lick
This is why
I am near-blind with suffering
and anticipation now, like a man released
from island prison, island of men
island of men all named misspelled variations of Crusoe,
Croes, Croezé and delaCruz delaIsle others appointed by Death’s vicarious notary.

Deafening audio-book of life, as recounted by St John the Divine proto-nazi
of Revelations
was an Aruban phone-book. Not a literary work, not even a bon mot
ripped from Melville’s unread Golgotha,
perhaps the equivalent of a tenth of Moby’s oily tail
devoured by ruddy cheeked and vampiric Danish children with bibs for Vitamin D

And all the Time magazines on which a dolphin nearly choked,
broke the turquoise hearts of those men expecting for their maize
a suprize far more exhilarating on little l’isle
of the illusion’d. The coconut contains
an ocean, and they ignored her.

---

Reading Time Magazine Between Patmos and Aruba

The Greek orthodox church, according to the un-charred
pages of Time that escaped our savage roman-candela barbecue,
claim the cape sicilian mafia masterminded the refugee crises of brother-shipwrecks,
jackals in aqua BMWs, they’re in cahoots with the money-launderer Anoobis, as famed in Damascus
as in Rio, and the Carcassus.
The African traffickers of Anoobis have bought up
the ferry businesses of the fat Greek, Onassis,
at infernal self-righteous auctions held by the German bailiff in a wheelchair
who held up the bidding sign with his strong arm.

A featured article tells how the Greek orthodox church is causing a traffic jam
between unwise Athens, Salonica and the cemeteries
(kyrie eleison, kyrie eleison, kyrie eleison! They sing from the white cross-minaret)
the old Deacon dragons use their mafia connections
to lobby against crematoria.

And I agree more.
But the Greek Orthodox satin-frocked Sanhedrin,
(according to Time,* who is known to eat up a Zeus child)
wants to keeps its Mt Athos as it was founded
by God in 1803: woman-free, pure source,
first liberated from their presence in 3000 BC until
the Ottomans came along sullying the sacred borders,
Once the world was crafted from hay and dung
by a God whose sons spoke Greek,
who never waited their turn.
It is not a matter of my agreement or not. I have sought a way
Out
of Mount
Athos
(Sotha, elixir, ambrosial. Pathogen)
I have sought to wrap the amorous winds
in bestseller housewife novels,
to wrap the winds around a pair of hairless shameless legs,
(In daydreams I tell everyone I see
how I am the grand architect of harems,
Sun all schoolboys e mail their prayers to.)
I have been seeking
A great wooden key on which to float
wave by little wave
Pearl-buck out of Patmos, an island
reserved for St John’s cave-dwellers,
who wrote The End of the Byblos and mankind
and the orgasm.
The letter Omega has the shape and taste
of a pretzel from a child street-vendor.
The Greek orthodox sanhedrin
now want to sell mount Athos.
I offer them
kelp dollars.
They open a chest with the great flask of Cleopatra’s tears,
Pathogen toxin feared by the food inspectors.
And I tell them

I will not waste this rare Ambrosia
upon the subjects of Time magazine,
not on any of the Germanic masques of death, (like so many others
worn on the cover, worn on dollar papyrose)
None of Them
May drink of This.
For we are from a culture of style,
an island of flamboyant men, women and Flamboyan trees, and know
what is worn on the cover
is the very soul of the book,
secondary only to the spine.

---

Arturo Desimone, Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist. His poetry and short fiction have previously been in The New Orleans Review, in the Buenos Aires Reader, in the Rosetta World Literature Quarterly of Istanbul,  and in Counterpunch Poets Basement. He is currently working on a longer fiction project.