El Deseo

17 April 2014

And so it was that I went to see

Lit off with fond emptyness and those faint sketches of spain

And how the music hit hard that night!

And light washed us all

Wooden floors, dark wine, and fine figures

In good, broad strokes

Two by two

The motion of back and side and back

5-6-7 carried with it such promise

Oh, we knew then

Wrapped in cloth of perfect time

The secrets of long-dead mambo kings.

In the old room upstairs with the wooden floor

Beating up against syncopated soles of shoes

Syncopated souls we, of the beating hearts

And beading sweat lit off by spanish sway

With trembling steps

And trembling hips

And the quietest eyes

I went to see about El Ritmo that night

Where the last drop of espresso counts to get you back in one piece

Where the barometer holds steady

Tucked in stately glass

And rebirth comes to you like distant trains

Past barns and chimneys crouching under open sky

In the bricked new england air

To brush against something

Against everything

In the room with the dark wooden floor

We brush hesitantly now;

If only we could do without words like this

If only, mutely, we might brush our way through life.

Silencio!

Not another word.

Crowded now, we laugh from the hips

We laugh, for new friends

And for less-new wine

Welling up to the beat of bass, and oh! the music hits

Her smile hits

A fine dark frame held well and close by the soft crush

And somewhat less well by you

As back and back you feel the space against you quicken

These broad blushing strokes

Can we yet insist

We are separate wants

In the slow-swaying

Slow-dimming light?

Warm bar-wood salsa sweetness

Swells with 1-2 tide of cungas, brass and breath held up between us

I went for to see El Ritmo, oye!

And there I met him, with his beautiful daughter beside him

And too soon gone, I met his brother

Tradition, El Maestro!

In a line of dead kings

The wind at my back

I was humbled in sound.

The wild wind

A strange bloom behind me

Lofted as music to guide my return

Tomorrow another little missive of power,

Tonight a fresh sustaining want,

And I:

A broad stroke in a line of broad strokes

Stretching back to dance

As the great mambo kings of old.