Skip to main content

Paradelle for a Proud Argentina

“Argentines have watched, horrified, as the meltdown dissolved more than their pocketbooks. Even the rich have been affected in their own way. The tragedy has struck hardest, however, among the middle class, the urban poor and the dirt farmers. Their parts of this once-proud society appear to have collapsed -- a cave-in so complete as to leave Argentines inhabiting a barely recognizable landscape.”
– Washington Post, August 6, 2002

Morning climbs up the sleek skin of skyscrapers.
Morning climbs up the sleek skin of skyscrapers.
Our broken bourgeois dines on cracked china.
Our broken bourgeois dines on cracked china.
Sleek china dines on the cracked bourgeois.
Broken of skyscrapers, morning climbs up our skin

Proud Argentina sleeps with a growling belly.
Proud Argentina sleeps with a growling belly.
There is food on the freeway and it’s still alive.
There is food on the freeway and it’s still alive.
It’s a proud freeway still growling with food.
Argentina is there alive and the belly sleeps on.

My tiny planet simmers with a fever of billions.
My tiny planet simmers with a fever of billions.
How can the good fortune fatten so few?
How can the good fortune fatten so few?
How the tiny fever of fortune simmers, so
My good planet can fatten with a few billions.

A bourgeois planet dines on morning. How good
is the growling of food alive. Fortune sleeps
there on a tiny few and our skin simmers
with the cracked fever of broken skyscrapers.
Still China climbs with my sleek Argentina.
Its proud billions belly up so the freeway can fatten.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid19 Journal Entry 13

April 3, 2020 Today’s idea – I want to follow a suggestion of looking at my situation through different lenses. A macro lens magnifies my considerations of things, hopefully so that I might notice what I’m overlooking. Peering through these eyes, I see life slow down and seem more intentional with the extended solitude of quarantine.   The introverted place in me is mostly fine with this state of things, until the longings for companionship or just hanging out with friends stirs up unruly emotions. These vex me because they take on the old voice of negative self-talk.   In this head space I can turn normal feelings of missing my family, particularly sons and granddaughters into an old loop of “they don’t mis me so much anyway because I’m not around like most good grandmothers are.”   I’ve even given myself a moniker, VAG, visiting aunt grandmother.   Somehow it makes me feel less consequential but still adorable.   We live out our choices and our strokes o...
Post a Comment
Read more