Paradise to and fro

You think you’ve taken a step on
And it’s real, it feels right and yet
Cannot be tested against experience
It’s too new, not comparable.  

And so you surmise there’s no going back
Or round again, from this there is no return To the land of mist and fog and repeating seasons
This is a bit of the new world where the
Heat is always on and the people are always hot,
Like Tahiti.

And you think Yes, I’ve done it, I’ve let go of it all,
The past, the chains, the blame, the hates, the likes and
Lives and loves and that bloody whirr of helicopters taking
Sleep to A and E.  

Then, from this, this paradise, this wonderland where
Everything in your body and soul works like the most pitch-perfect
Beachboy song, you find that every now and then the
Coconuts sound like the old doubts and your vision blurs
Like Eve’s and everything you eat hooks your soul like bait.  

And so you swim and strive and spit and row out as far as you
Can while you spit and sweat and burn and raw your hide and
Hide your anger from the beauty and the sky everywhere  smiling back at you.

New Year’s Eve, now and then

Drinking sweet

Liquor rum

In my brain

Thinking of

Cuba and you,

Together. Why,

When you are

Here and now

And that was

There and then,

But somehow

Intertwined round

The same bend

Of year, this

February time

That should be

Winter and isn’t

Spring. This

Fuzzy hiatus

Before the year

Begins in earnest.

The Chinese got it

Right, ours was premature,

Christmas merriment

Still mulling

Recognition through

Old Lang Sine,

Sung too soon.

Febbraio en Cuba,

February in London;

Two thousand and nine,

Two thousand and ten.

Alone abroad,

At home, with men,

With you, maybe.

More at sea than

When the Malecon wall

Fenced me off from

Them, males with

Bright, tall sails

Bobbing, skidding, winking

Through the sun-hot sheen.

Now the year’s

Stacked up its freight.

Destined where?

No ship’s docked

Yet, while me,

A girl, a rum girl,

Waits.