Tropical fever

This land is nothing like that which I have known, the familiar, if faint, of South America--Central America's bite back. I am most adoring monks on motorcycles, orange flights with sun speckled umbrellas to protect their heads. Temples tickle the senses in Phnom Pehn, send all eyes up to the sky.

Of course, I have been feverish and seen very little of the city. What I have witnessed has been by tuk-tuk, a motorcycle driven carriage with padded seats. It reminds me, somehow, of a carousel ride, with the same pleather on cotton as those red seats that twirled. Here is instead a modified game of chicken that rules...there are no stop signs or lights; I have taken to looking away when we enter crossings, my eyes at the temples, eyes at the skies.

Men and women eat at street carts, hot stews and rice warmed by relentless sun. Women in pajamas dance hip-hop in street side parks. Taxi drivers wear real rayban sunglasses and boys smile with overwhelming reluctance.

My desire for coconut milk has already been satiated in these days; and I am certain in saying that my father would faint from the incredulous amounts of lemongrass in the national dishes. Frozen lime sodas and seafood stews make me swoon.

And still, the echo of the past remains. It is as eery and altogether tortured as a past impenetrable by us, outsiders. I stay so far outside of that world, no matter the ache it awakes inside--those ghosts awake and alive in the streets, in the airs, in a generation of men mostly missing, unmistakable.

Even with fever, this city opens up a world to glance within, of tropical fauna and gold turrets that cannot reach beyond the glare of ghouls.

Poison and Wine

The lyrics linger, fat with the words I cannot speak or even own. Rather than sorrow, I feel sorry in this melted, morning sun. So I melded my dreams, sharp jaws with no escape, now cracked open with crevasses to swim out of, just big enough. The bruises are everywhere, top to bottom, lips to toes--and most importantly of all--the in betweens. I wonder still how swimming pool slides morphed into floods and flights of tears? How bookstores beckoned with coffee-scented sweats, too touched by the salt we could not escape? Driving down New York City streets, locked inside... I see how, in those fresh water pools, kicked the only hopes, the only moments made out of our heads. To forgo fantasy, not feigned but a harsher hopeful than any lived day, permits a feast on a single past, so coldly cast in this gray goodbye.

Berlin

Its the sand I miss, a pool above the ocean where I could tip my toes. There beside antique shops and drunken Berliners, a most precious beating, burning of the heart. Why suddenly do I see myself there--the blue of silk and sweated nights I cannot look back upon without regret, a flash of flowers held to my heart, dry discovery that broke all of my pieces, in pieces, in pain. And yet, even with the trouble, those childish, "nymphet" eyes look back at me, to me, as they are of me. Alive only in lyrics of those I loved, so swallowed by the sea.

That sea, however, was built of concrete waves and wistful wildlife; it consumed me, pawed over my resolve, both buried and bled my reminiscing, writing, raw adolescent self. Still, I hear the music of those strings, a door unlocked first in downtown New York and later by Alexanderplatz, once too soft and purring for my taste.

Now, in the glimpse of photographs, almost foreign to me now, I yearn for a time I suffered through. I yearn for glass shelves of pastries and my first bicycle, being lost, of and in trouble, and yet so sure of love. Love that feigned or fainted on the pfaueninsel, love that shed my dreams; the quicksand sort of love that leaves wilted but still sharp spiderwebs to reckon with.

I am trying to remember these days. The past two weeks blend into few moments, not dim but dry eyed, wide eyed wonder and a type of tip-toeing I have never before practiced. When I close my eyes, I see straw. I see the hottest skies, wet mud, bruised eyebrows, plastic bottles and the sheen of chip bags inside out. Those were the only leaves flying in the winds.

Why there was no romance in those mountains. Beautiful, yes, but empty of promise, and empty of angels too. Places where coffee is grown but cannot be bought; a river runs through but cannot be fished; rains fall fast but can harvest no more than a single, pricey spice.

In this, my worries seem but small and somewhat solvable. All sprouting from too many choices, too many possibilities that compete in my head, my hands. It is not that I have chosen wrong in life, but simply that I have not chosen.

While, from afar, choices seem to pave roads or impede them, maybe--and I should know best--we cannot choose what is best or better. It is chosen for us in small salutes, never in promise but instead strong actions that lead to sounder sleep. Yes, to find somewhere a sweet, sweatless sleep is all to hope for, when biggest hopes cannot be fulfilled, but desire too cannot be buried. An inbetween of peace.

Bald, sugar

I know if you were here beside me, we'd drink coffee with bald sugar sticks at its bottom. Days would pass idly and sat by the sea. I would read my book in hammocks while you fried fish and laughed at skiddish iguanas jangled on a hot tin roof.

Waking in Guatemala, on my birthday is pleasant and coffee scented. At 5 AM I was ready to press a cup to my lips, to call back memories we had no chance to make. I want to see the mountains that you too ached to archive in your laminates and dream photography, no roses grown here but instead great, green wings. I want you to smile upon me, not only inside of me, to practice the words I am only now bringing to my lips.

Still, I believe (although I do not know what I believe) that you have brought me here. And I imagine it another way, where you spice empanadas and link my arm into your own. I am glad I am here, and glad I am here for you, as a part of you, because my own green wings are those of rolling Rs, planted, harvested by your devotion.

Caged birds

We arrived in Antigua to pastel houses in rows that opened--bright, voracious gardens I could not conquer with my camera lens, nor my eyes. It was exactly what I had imagined, an avid reader of Marquez's life, still sweet on the dreams my father described--rainbow hammocks and spiced chocolate; caged birds that neither slept nor sang.

I could see him there, in the mountains and muted colors that crept up, as remembering times I had not lived but, rather, heard. The smoke of the volcanoes both curled and calmed me, the high grown grass almost enough.

Just as in my city streets, those streets of jade could not assuage the yearning; not the velvety cocoa wrapped around tamarind; not the fireworks; not the burning skies.

Still, I am glad to have tasted the fried tacos of his past; I am glad to have walked along the streets he wished for me and wished to sit beside me. To have inherited his eye and heart for beauty, pretense of thick skin and taste for sour, for life's bittersweet stains.