here’s a poem i just found in my notebook, i wrote in rio in october 2002; i remember thinking at the time that it was really stupid, but now i kind of like it. i wish now i hadn’t round filed all the other ones from that trip.
On the Ipanema shore,
Sultry, savage,
In a manner strange to the south of France,
No F. Scott here,
Under another universe’s hand of stars,
In the gaping arms of our Lord,
Upon one of one thousand egg shaped falaises,
Who nourish ropy trees and striped monkeys;
On the edge of the dark faced sprawl,
Building upon building,
Old and dirty like ancient Europe-to a relative reckoning-
There roars in the calm tropic Atlantic wind,
On the Ipanema shore,
“Hoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh,” he greets,
He stands basket and all, five-eight on his feet,
Steady as a totem he has and will screech,
An established organic beach icon,
Since the ebb and flow of 120 moons,
I am made to understand,
So many to come;
To buy a pineapple or no,
Is neither here nor there, nor inventive, nor dull,
So why not screech?
Basket, smile, knife, pineapples, all,
He comes to you and screams to enthral,
Your testes shrink and five little hairs go white;
Perhaps if you give him only the blink of a tortoise,
Upon five nations and their people a blight.
So you smile and nod, to him a yes, oh, man, yes!
While he skins the fruit tortoise of its shell,
with knife and cheer,
You know there is something of gravity here:
While there are those who walk robed and suited,
Hand on a phone or button or lever, they wear a ring of power,
With the pass of a finger and a flourish,
A shadow passes over the worlds of which they know not,
They manage like Pharisees to keep so many mooted,
They choke you with words, bundled up poisonous weeds,
Who stand nothing more than in your gut to rot-
While they too are neither here nor there,
But seeds of my anger and under my stare-
The pineapple vendor will have none of it,
Save to walk on its periphery and scare the latent gentry:
“–Whoooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh-”
Who knows after all,
Whether in the end
It is better to be the well–suited lender
or just the screaming pineapple vendor.