The Poetry Lesson

Maybe it's the clear rhythm of the twelve-hours-of-light, twelve-hours-of-dark that's been influencing me, but I’m seeing poetry all over the place these days. There’s the obvious, a girl, another gringo, in my lit class, telling me that she loved to write poetry about wolves as she adjusted her highwaters and socks with kittens on them. There’s the poems my Spanish intensive came up with, after being told to write odes to exotic fruits (you should look them up if you don't know what they are, which you probably won’t, they are very weird. A translation might also be helpful):

Ode al Pepino Dulce

Oh, pepino dulce, con sul peil delicada

Te quiría aquí en mi ensalada

Con tús rayos de morada

A tú mi vida es dedicada

Ode al Taxo

Mi taxo pequeño que no es tan duro

Cuando lo abro dónde es mi jugo?

Con tantos semillas es dificil a comer

Y es tan acidisimo para darme placer.

There’s also more subtle poetry things going on. On Friday, Malcolm and I went to a birthday party of a cousin/grandchild/young relative named Manuela. She was turning 9. As soon as I saw the nine candles on the cake, I remembered the poem we had to memorize in 3^rd grade:

Nine is fine, without a doubt,

A wonderful place to be.

Of course, I’ve said that too before,

At seven, and six, and four, and three.

But nine is really fine.

Me and all these friends of mine

We walk all over the neighborhood,

yes, our parents said we could

we’re not babies anymore.

Were’s old enough to know the score

Now that we’re nine.

Most days on my bus route, I go past the giant statue of Jose Marti, who is a local hero. And he calms me down too, when ever I see his face on a poster on a bus. Like today, when I didn't get off at the right stop, and the bus kept going into South Quito which is very far away and inaccessible and definitely the wrong place to go. We were in the tunnel that separates the two poles of the city, me hyperventilating, standing behind the driver, wondering weather it would be better to fling myself to death or sure mugging in the tunnel, or wait it out. Behind the driver, with the rosaries and the tramp-stamp style stickers, was a newpaper cut out of Jose Marti.

· “Yo soy un hombre sincero

De donde crece la palma

y antes de morirme quire

echar mis versos de alma”

I stayed on the bus. I kept breathing. I got off, crossed the bridge over the highway, found a taxi, gave directions.

And then there’s the singing poetry stuff that we like. Chanting Misfits lyrics with ñaño over breakfast, Jamie’s Ipod with its endless new N.E.R.D. songs. Between classes today, when all the preppie kids where making angry eyes at us and making us feel horrible, Jamison and Iggy and I chanted the words to “I Will Survive” as Iggy slapped some chords. I don’t know why, but I know all the verses to that song.

And then Bob Dylan. Blood on the Tracks is the only thing that has any sort of meaning. Maybe I won’t be having a Mountain Goats album this winter, maybe it’ll be just his stories and harmonica.