La Fabulosa

Nica Pintura

My idol walks. Behold her beauty
born of Nicaraguan night
summoning poetic duty:
tremors of volcanic light!
Clouds of ash and lava dropping:
I come back… I going shopping.

Sounding her primeval waters
crater lakes, her green lagoons,
fabulous—this diverse daughter’s
humid palms and storm-tossed moons;
ascending up her jungle mount:
Transfer dinero to my account !

Stone-faced idol, pre-conquista;
rice with beans or sacred maize
labyrinthine Latin vista,
cumbias and sacred lays.
Hurricanes and quaking earth:
Gringo, what your dollar worth?

She who left her quaint dysfunction
reeking of colonial woes
for the multi-culti junction,
holy in her porno-pose;
scowling like exploited nations:
How you say… congratulations!

Gushing like a flow of lava
running down her placid gaze,
ripened flesh; the scent of guava,
passion-fruit in paraphrase…
Monkeys howling, torrents pouring:
Poetry to me is boring

Rubén Darío’s wonderland:Flor de C
Flor de Caña the anesthetic.
Marx’s tropic reprimand:
Sandinismo as emetic.
Verses don’t impress this lass:
Please—the car need fill with gas.

Lost in hurricanes of thought,
pounding the roof, God pours, it rains.
What was it, really, that I sought
In her land where the poetry reigns ?
It’s love. At times I long to shoot her:
(Why you waste time on that computer?)

Zpatera

Dario
logo-napowrimo

 

Latin Alliance: No Man’s Land

Latin Alliance [1991]

De Nicaragua yo vengo directo / vengo en efecto 
decilo correcto / contalo que es cierto

Telling the truth about where I come from NICARAGUA
the Lyrical Latin is a Central American
telling the story of the glory of the land
a once beautiful country now free of command
but something went wrong
with a strong form of government  –
they tried to give it an adjustment

Así comenzó la guerilla  / donde matan a sangre fría
Cold-blooded; not giving it a second thought
the love of freedom was the reason that so many fought
The start of corruption and the destruction
when given an order – you follow that instruction.
This is the place where everyone takes command: no man’s land…

No man’s land / meaning no exit or entry: place of no choice / wishing and envy
Force of this kind / brainwashing the mind / families split apart and left behind

todo comenzó con la revolución / gente no estaba satisfecha con la función
that the country had  / and the system it was running
plans were now made and war was now coming
tiraron los Somoza y entró el Sandinismo / cuando pasó eso entró el comunismo

my people use their own people
they got greedy with the power to not treat’em as an equal
this is the place where everyone takes command: no man’s land…

♪♫♫ MUSIC ♪♪♫ 

Niños tirados a la guerra / también mujeres peleaban como fieras
so many people were tortured and killed, so much pain / so much blood spilled
I can’t believe / no lo puedo creer como la gente cambian cuando tienen poder
colors of the flag replaced in fact: the red means blood and death means black
and in the center of the flag: F.S.L.N / la bandera Sandinista se sostiene

hopefully one day we’ll all be at peace
and all of these countries will soon be released
so we won’t sink into the communist quicksand: no man’s land…

flag of Nicaragua      FSLN


 

Nicaragua to Mikey Dread

 

I just posted Nicaragua by Darío to the Español page.   I always think of primitivista art when I read that short poem.   Darío mentions tigers in the poem, which is strange since there are none in Central America.  My Spanish vocab words for the day [from the poem] are zahareño  (“untameable, wild, unsociable, intractable”;  I always thought it meant “Saharan” and Darío was merely being exotic  but I was wrong) and peaña   (“pedestal”,  for a statue or art object). The part  about the idol reminds me of the idolos de la isla Zapatera but they are not on diamond pedestals so you will have to imagine your own.   Since the human heart is an idol-factory, that shouldn’t be too hard. My lovely wife is from Nicaragua, and I have sometimes placed her on a diamond pedestal—and so another connection to the poem.

On the reggae side of things, I linked my reggae poem to a Mikey Dread dub song only to find out he passed away on my birthday in 2008.  I had not known that.  I always loved his dub music and he seemed like such a positive Rastaman. The stuff he did with the Clash on Black Market Clash was great (Armagideon Time) but my favorite is Beyond WWIII.  I still have African Anthem –  on cassette!  Since he passed away 3 years ago you can see I am really on the cutting edge of Reggae news these days.  Well, we are already in eternity, so what’s  three years here or there, right?