Jiggity Jig

ABOUT EIGHT MONTHS LATER...

OK so, I finished that essay I had been writing, and without the need to procrastinate further, dropped the ball completely in terms of travel updates. Rather than attempt some kind of clumsy retrospective of the time between the previous post and our safe arrival home, I present for the purposes of enditure (a stupid word that isn't even real but is still preferable to closure) this series of "poems" for which I used our trip as inspiration for one of my classes later on.

POSTCARDS FROM BRAZIL

Disneyland

The doughy dream

Is coming for the rest of the world

And it’s riding a motorised scooter

Peru

Trapped in Lima

On a laptop from Taiwan

In pants from China

I long for Brazil

Guarulhos International Airport

At the exhausted and unwashed

End of the Odyssey

We find in our remaining luggage

That the credit card is missing

   

São Paulo

The city enormous

Transforms us to children

And our hometown a distant embryo

Every goal against Santos

Sends up fireworks for Barcelona

And it’s as if from this building

The whole city cheers

Hai

In the spare room

I hide from the housekeeper

Naked without the ability

To explain what I’m doing there

Juliana and Marco

Beautiful friends

With your twin smiles

You are never more Brazilian

Than when you hold each other dancing

Corcovado

Exiting a chapel

Small and serene

I say at the feet of a stone idol colossus

That if Jesus didn’t want me to drink,

He wouldn’t have put a bar here.

And in the afternoon

We bathe in His shadow

And sáude over laughter to a love

Ours alone

Premier Copacabana Hotel

Spaghetti marinara

Twice in two days

A litre of rum in the minibar.

At the desk

I write an essay on Love

And in bed

We perform the field work

Rolling in transplanted sand

Rio

On one side of the street

Antique opulent dollhouses made real

They face the stacked shanties of the favela

This road through the mountain

An augmentation scar

Road Trip

From shacks of corrugated debris

Between explosions of bamboo

Happy families sell papaya

To the highway 

Universo Parallelo 

As long and wide as my forearm,

Stems of marijuana visit in baskets

Our shade is drawn from bamboo halves and palm fronds

Thirty dollars for a home at Pratigi Beach.

The sun becomes hungry, 

Its yawning bite between the green

chased by the waking-draping.  

Protection for sleeping bare legs

as the Atlantic waits warm.

Every body

 a touring exhibition 

The etchings on a skin spectrum, 

Chalk to coal.

Our teeth go numb

In our efforts to elongate time,

Adam and I.

But goodbye is patient

And when the New Year blooms

We all speak the language of kisses