Bahia,
I drown without waking from your dream.
Like silk you slide down over my eyes
and it is dark as it should be.
Should we,
before the dawning of demasiado,
tip toe accross the waves
to dance in the streets,
I believe you will have convinced me
once more,
beyond the shadow of doubt
cast by the swaying trees,
to sink in your arms as you sing to me.
Bahia,
dulce Bahia.

Masculinum Hyppeastrum,
monstrum;
the man eating
botanica,
the endlessly flowering plant,
had enough of me.

Went to sleep,
or worse,
he perished.

I must have said something nasty
about his size;
doesn't flower anymore,
all dried out,
doesn't do a thing,
his onion is weeping.

Christmas roses,
as I call the girls,
lost the will
to live.

All my,
previously green, flora
is pointing her leafless finger
at me.

I've done nothing,
that's the problem.
I forgot all about my green plants;

the environment is wrong,
there is too much acidity,
and that's my fault.

I will search
under the garden snow
for snow drops,
I left to themselves
two years
February,
my snow tears.

For colour,
I have lemons and limes,
green and yellow;
sitting on a traditionally,
blue, hand-painted
Chinese china platter.

River Yangtze
is still running through my mind.
Chai,

Lemon tea and lemonade.

~
Author Notes
Flowering plants from Bahia : Hyppeastrum sp.
From the 1970s, many plant novelties from Bahia
came to light with the expeditions carried out
by Howard Irwin and collaborators
of NYBG (USA) and by Raymond Harley
from RBG-Kew (UK). This provoked a renewal
of interest, among botanists, in the flora of Bahia

(3-1-07)

You grew up
on the side of the road,
between sidewalk cracks,
in backyards full of
tall bahia grass,
pushing aside their
stems so you could
find the sky.

You grew up
beneath the sun
and out in the rain
and under every
booming thunderstorm
an Alabama summer
could throw your way.

Dogs ran through you.
Men, too, trampled you
but you sprung back up,
rumpled, but still bright,
unbowing, even when
they said you were just
a gangly **** that no
one would find beautiful.

(I found you beautiful,
because your face was
the sun, and I find it
everywhere.)

You grew up.
You had to grow up,
grew white and fragile
and one day the wind
came for you and
carried you away.

Fly far.

Pourrais-je un jour; réparer l'injustice
faite à mon père ?


Il fut à vingt ans caché par les bergers du village de Muna parmi de pauvres bergers qui vivaient aussi sainement que sobrement dans leur village parfumé de figuiers et sans route autre qu'un chemin à peine muletier quand l'ordre ****-fascistes tenait l'île sous sa coupe.  Puis mon père  fut mobilisé avec la jeunesse Corse apprit l'anglais sur le tas dans les forces françaises d'aviation formées alors aux Etats-Unis,
La guerre il fit l'école normale de «la Bouzareah» à  Alger puis nommé instituteur en Kabylie ou il rencontra et fut tout de suite Simone, amoureux de notre mère aussi institutrice mais native des Pyrénées,  nommée elle-aussi dans la vallée de la Soummam  ou débuta l'insurrection de la Toussaint 1954 (alors que j'avais sept mois et étais gardé par une nourrice Kabyle nommée Bahia). Mon père dont ses amis enseignants étaient pour la plupart  Corses ou Kabyles prit de sérieux risques en qualité de syndicaliste du SNI; «Libéral politique»   dans un temps porteur pour les  extrémismes et les surenchères   et donc à la fois cible potentielle des ultras des deux bords il n'hésita pas à  faire grève et m'amena manifester à Bougie/Bejaia, ou sur la route je vis une tête coupée qui me hante encore, lorsque sept inspecteurs d'Académie furent exécutés par l'O.A.S.

Nommé de l’hiver au grand froid de 1963, professeur de collège d'Anglais  dans le Comminges cher à son épouse, à Valentine, il n'avait pas encore le permis et sa fameuse  2 CV bleue qui devint légendaire et venait régulièrement nous voir Régis et moi,  qu'il pleuve et/ou  qu'il vente, sur une mobylette jaune.

Il perfectionna régulièrement son anglais tous les soirs en écoutant les programmes radios de la BBC et passa même à ses élèves  sur un magnétophone à banque qu’il avait acquis le succès des Beatles; "Yellow Submarine". Mais il ne comprit rien aux événements de 1968 qui heurtèrent sa vision structurée du Monde  et bouleversèrent tant ma propre vie. Qu'aurait-il pu comprendre, lui l'admirateur de l'homme du 18 juin à  cette  contestation anarchique et multiforme de l'institution scolaire  dans laquelle, il avait donné beaucoup de lui-même ?

Plus ****, ayant pris cette retraite, rare espace de Liberté personnelle, ce grand marcheur se mit enfin à parcourir de nouveau Maquis et Montagnes et ce n'est sur rentré **** le soir dans son humble demeure après avoir déjeuné d'une «bastelle» et d'un bout de fromage de "Giovan Andria «qu’il améliorait sa dans sa chambrette ayant sous les yeux le "dictionnaire de la Piève d'Evisa", pour redonner à la langue Corse sa beauté et sa dignité et restituer par ses propres mots choisis ce vrai temple de la nature et de la Beauté sauvage que forme cette île Méditerranéissime.

Paul Arrighi

Sitting here hoping you miss me
Cause things ain't been the same
Since that good for nothing city slicker
Keeps trying to give you his last name

Rolling into town
Like a brand new Cadillac
Well I'm here to tell you mister
I want my baby back

He may take you to far off places
Places we could never go
Like over there in Georgia
Where you could visit the streets of Rome

Or take you to a romantic dinner
With candle light just you and he
Toasting you by the riverside
In Paris, Tennessee

You can drive a world away from here
In his fancy sports car like it weren't nothing
Clinking your bottles of Lone Star beer
High stepping it out in Dublin

I even here tell he's taken you
To the sunny shores of Naples
Way down South in Florida
Something I was never able

But can he take you out frog gigging
Or catch fireflies in a jar
In all your worldly gallivanting
Don't you miss the way we were

Has anything he done for you
Been as sweet as chewing on a piece of Bahia grass
While standing in an open field
Watching the clouds blow past

Or listening to a Whippoorwill
Sing out it's nightly song
On the front porch you and me swinging
To it's rhythm all night long

Don't give a hoot about places he takes ya
That's about all I gotta say about that
After all this highfalutin society traveling
All I want is my baby back

The sun is shining
The birds are singing
The flowers are blooming
And the sky is blue

I am walking on the beach
And I feel the sand between my toes
I hear the waves crashing
And I feel the wind in my hair

I am happy and free
And I feel alive
In this moment, nothing else matters
Just me and the world

Bahia Blanca, you are beautiful
And I am grateful to be here
Thank you for this moment
I will cherish it forever.

If you want to know how I spend my time
RC Cola and a Moon Pie
Chewing on a stem of Bahia grass
Just in case you feel the need to ask

Skipping stones across a glass top pond
Blowing wishes from a dandelion off the lawn
Living the country life all inside my head
Before I find there ain't nothing left

Chasing Crawdaddy's in a deep wood stream
Playing hide and seek in a pile of leaves
Cane pole fishing for that elusive Bass
All before Summer's put to bed

Catching Fireflies in their flickering light
Counting all the stars in the skys at night
Stolen Watermelon always tastes the best
That's the part that I'll never confess

Skinny dipping for a living in a mountain lake
Jumping out of planes in a barn of hay
Kids being kids being life fed
Just in case you feel the need to ask

Roaring walls of water and crazed foam
Stubborn gulls
A complete and eternal gray
sea bear bellows

Here life is rude
pertinacious
inexhaustible
Here life gives us hope

Dig

We were nearly back to the house
when the front end loader shattered
the silence and back filled the hole
drove off some vireos and cowbirds

amped up seven whitetail browsing
the pine break above Calusa Way.
American Spirit *******
a new moon **** of mouth

the operator feathered the lever
while gathered together we grazed
potato salad, deviled eggs, sliced ham, rain
from the Gulf over to Melbourne

soaking the operator’s boots
ducking into his pickup truck
for the long drive home to Pedro.
It hammered the tin roof shed  

out back where your tools
tarps, trouble lights, line trimmer
home brew insecticide in unmarked
milk jugs, old spark plugs

a lifetime of nuts, bolts and washers
huddled warm and dry on shelves
ball peened the tamped sand lozenge
on the ragged fringe of the silent ranks.

It’s hard to find even with a map
Calusa Way coiling through the bahia grass
flowing past stone faced theater goers
house lights up well past their final act.  

Vireos and cowbirds
even the whitetail browsing
the pine break pay me no
mind down on hands and knees

undoing the honest work
of the operator, sifting handfuls
of sandy backfill for something
I might have missed.

To Drummond*

And now, Carlos?
I had friends, I had family,
I had peace and love.
I just didn't have time
to remember all.

And now, Carlos?
I was son, I was grandson,
I was husband and father.
I just wasn't boy,
boy to live unhappy.

And now, Carlos?
I learnt to speak, I learnt to rhyme,
I learnt to grow up and see the world change.
I just didn't learn to live
as everybody expected to see.

And now, Carlos?
I was born in Bahia, I was born in Brazil,
I was born in America and in the world.
I just wasn't born in the universe
(and this has no meaning).

And now, Carlos?
I'm old, I'm grizzled,
I'm useless and I'm a poet.
I'm just not a child,
because I disobeyed the heart.

he is having a adventure of a lifetime with every move he conjures
he is the soweto dancer
white supremacy on his throat and *****
he still moves
he's kept that secret space inside secret
no lynching of a thousand black bodies can untie his bond to his gas
he is of this earth
for he moves so seamlessly with it
he is the black dancer that has dazzled
time and time again
he is from brooklyn
ouaga
bahia
soweto
kingston
Marseilles
abuja
he is the black dancer
motion his breath
expression his concubine
juju his solemate
he is bojangles storyboard p pantsula
pantsula
pantsula

If you'd care to know how I grew up
It was in the shadow of country folk
Days spent on the family farm
Young and dumb, loads of fun

Swimming in a catfish pond
Having my toes nibbled on
Days on end spent in a rash
Rolling round Bahia grass

Hours of play in summer hay
As through my youth I made my way
Flying high on a rope swing
Are some of my best memories

An entire summer with no shoes
What came next, I had no clue
Half of what I did meant certain death
That's how you roll when you're a kid

Living life down on the farm
Empty fields at night beneath the stars
That's the best way I can show
Growing up in the shadow of country folk