Written in Cuba. Number 1

Cuban Poems Pages 1 to 16
 
April 27 to May 11 1995
Heading For Havana
In the thin blue air
In a thin silver tube
Suspended on crystals of ice
Lit by the sun

3 hours from Stanstead
Still shaking
Even when the Illushin isn't
My catharsis is my pencil
(Or perhaps the free glass of rum)
Everyone is laughing
Laughing in a sort of Spanish
Is no one else nervous

When there is no turbulence
You could imagine yourself
On the top deck of a whispering bus

But when the bumping begins
You remember
You are 35,000 feet up
A place where no man should be
A place reserved for clouds and dreams

The Garden of Eden
Is a long way below

Departure And Return
On an advert
I saw a map of England
Surrounded by sea
Showing routes to New York

Very strange.
Why strange ?

It was just England
It looked very odd
No Wales
No Ireland

Was this a promotion by ardent nationalists

The really weird thing was
The next time I saw the ad
Wales and Ireland
Were back

Just as well
There could be retaliation

Wales all alone
Looking like
A one armed version of Scarlet O' Hara
And Ireland
Indistinguishable from Greenland

I know what you're going to say
What about Scotland
Was Scotland missing
Did it return

Sorry
I didn't notice

Just In Time
OK so I am always rushing around
But I just can't stand being late

I arrive at the booking office
The train is only 5 minutes away
There are 4 people in the queue

In the front 2 Japanese girls
Almost speaking English
Argue with the booking office clerk
They point at the head on a 10 pound note
Maybe it has a resemblance to the 'Son of Heaven'

Eventually agreement is reached
They do not buy the station
But settle for the hire of a seat on a train.

The other two ladies let me through
(After a few jabs from my pencil)
I purchase my ticket
And dash onto the wrong platform

Joke 1
What do you call a sex toy
In the shape of an armour plated reptile

An armadildo

Stopover
Ganda's bloody cold
At least the 200 yards
I ran across was

Snow dancing on freezing puddles

We ran from one warmth to another
On the way back
I made a ball of snow
The pretty Italian girl screamed

I wasn't going to throw it at her
I just wanted to grab
A handful of snow
A handful of Canada

Diary's End
The salsa class is going to Cuba

I begin to write a diary
But it is flat and boring
It will lie with countless photographs
In eternally darkened drawers
No
No diary
Cuba will be in my poems

Lucid Dreaming
 I could fly
But that was easy
I made rocks grow
Then bananas
Out of the ground
I don't remember why

I played an amazing organ solo

Then there was this girl
I told her to undress and come to me
She said no
I told her that if she didn't
I would wake up

'Allo 'Abana
I step off the plane into
The Heat
The Heat tries to push me
Back on board

There are two Havanas
Inside the bus it is cool
Outside pairs of people pedal
Pedal through thick air
On Chinese bicycles

Inside the hotel it is cool
A piano echos among the Spanish colonial
Vaults of the dining room
Outside slim dark girls will do anything
For a pizza
Small children play with hoops
After midnight

Inside in my room
The air conditioning and the TV hum
I sip iced water
I looked for sheets in a metal box
In the wardrobe
(Yes it was a safe)
 I didn't sleep too well
I am still half in East Finchley

Outside where there is no air conditioning
A Cuban chicken
Tells me it is time to get up

First Night
I was bored
Couldn't sleep
Had a shower
Adjusted(broke) the air conditioning
Switched  lights on
Switched lights off
Thought about the cost of hiring a safe
Then it hit me
 
(No not that
I know grammatically it's that
But not that)

I suddenly got excited
I gave up trying to sleep
I would write

Si y No
Cuba si:
The warmth of the climate
The warmth of the people
The architecture
The revolution
The fruit and ice cream
Batidos
Rum
Salsa son meringue

Cuba no:
Children begging
For pens
For soap
For money
Crumbling facades
The food
Salsa son meringue

Revolution Museum
A dictator's palace

The story
First Chapter

A handful of men
Some
Killed
Some
Captured
Exiled

Second Chapter

A handful of men
And a boat
They had little chance
But....

A van filled with bullet holes
Filled with memories of the student's revolt
Che's hat
Fidel's Land Rover
A plane from the Bay of Pigs
The wreck of a U2
The pilot's body lay frozen.
15 years later the US of A remembered
He was American

A handful of men
And a boat
And the people of Cuba

Pen Pals
They came up to me in the street
Asking for 'stylo'
Little black boys
Little brown boys

I only brought 12 pens
12 pens from Muswell Hill
All the way to Havana

And now 12 young Cubans
Will be able to
Write
For a a little while longer

Price
In Havana
$140 will buy you
40 bottles of beer
And
100 bottles of iced water
Or
A conga drum

Cheesus Cake
If I wanted to be religious
I know which religion I would choose
There are drawbacks of course
You have to wear white
Shave your head
Dance or drum
For hours
Or even days
But the God -
The God
Is the God of Food

Them And Us
I have just passed under the bridge
The bridge that divides the pool
Into 2 circles of blue
The pool is for the pampered
I am one of the pampered
No Cubans come here
Except to serve

I quieten my conscience
They need my dollars

This place is a paradise

To get in
I spend
One third of the monthly wage of a teacher.
One night in this hotel
Would cost him 4 months salary

Our guide today used to be a teacher
He said that he couldn't afford
To feed his wife and sons
On a teacher's wages

So he became a criminal

He shows us round old Havana
For two hours
Instead of teaching for two months

He has knowledge
We see
Spanish forts
English cannon
And a statue having a wank

A bar where Hemingway's daiquiri was invented
He gave us the recipe;
Cool four glasses
Take
4 soup spoons of lime juice
3/4 of a cup of light dry 3 year old Cuban rum
4 large crushed ice cubes put in a blender
To make small crystals which musn't melt
Add to the mixture which should be cloudy

Serve to 4 drunken writers

We sip our drinks in a bar
Reached by a spiral iron staircase

Havana is a place the Americans would love
Why do they prefer to hate

Eating At The England
The food here is pretty
Awful
I mean you could be addicted
To stale cheese sandwiches and treacle cake
Every morning
For breakfast

And
Who knows you might enjoy
For supper
Every evening
Cabbage and cucumber
Followed by rice and chips
Who knows
OK OK so I do exaggerate
But only slightly

Addiction
I am addicted
I sit in the Inglaterra
Mechanically playing cards
A little bored
The pianist plays
Dreary echoing music
At present she is playing 'Eternally'
Or does it just seem like it

It was a good day
Wandering through old Havana
Going for a swim
Getting a pizza
But now I'm a little bored

Whoever first coined the phrase
"Shoot the pianist"
Must have stayed here

Hemingway would have
Screwed her on the grand
Lorca would have
Written a sad poetic play
In which
The pianist
The audience and
The piano
All die

I'm still feeling a little bored
Then I make a discovery
A layer of coconut cake
Chocolate sauce
2 scoops of ice cream
Small chunks of pineapple
'Capitollo ice'
I am addicted

El Gruppo
This party I'm with

I wish I wish
Jane were here
Or Jim
Or Anna
Or Annie
Or Michelle
Just somebody to talk to

I can talk to the Cubans
When they speak English
Or even talk some Spanish
But the 30 or so words I know
Don't add up to much of a conversation
Cuba's a great place
And I'm never alone for long
But oh for somebody to talk to

One Less Time
I think she deserves a whole poem to herself
She's not exactly bad
She's not exactly anything

She plays the same tunes
In the same way
Day after day
Shuffling the same pack of cards
Only the order changes

She is as predictable as the air conditioning
Which by comparison
Is fresh and exciting

Her music is
Always sad
Always correct
Like the talking clock
And listening to both for an hour
Has the same effect

May the blessed Saint Ceclia
In her infinite mercy
Give the piano legs
Life
So that they may run away
Before the tape rewinds again

Blue Plaques
I'm noting very carefully
Where I sit in Havana
When I write

They sort of know
Where Hemingway drank
Which bar Lorca preferred

Now if I become famous
It will be extremely easy
For interested historians

I am constructing a map
Showing precisely where I sat
While writing each poem
Also
The time
The date
The weather and
What I had to eat

If I don't become famous.....?

Extremely Warm Canines
I sit under palm leaves
Beside the pool
Eating dos perros calientes
Sipping hugos
And thinking of ways
To murder the synth player

After all she is murdering the music
At present she is destroying 'The Godfather' theme

She should be warned
The East Finchley Cossa Nostra
Will not be insulted

When she wakes in the morning
She will find beside her on the pillow
The entrails we have ripped out of her
Drum machine
And
Her head

Animals Of Prey
A hawk sits on the wind
I float in the blue

They have all gone
To get covered in sand
And bitten by flies
I float alone

I know how the hawk feels
He hovers
Sees his prey
Drops
Dinner

I smell my prey
Swim down to the shallow end
And climb out

Language Problems
A Spanish gentleman
Who spoke some English
Died
After sitting on a bee hive
He shouted
" Vugger.  My vum as veen vadly vitten vy  vig vees "
Unfortunately
No one seemed to understand him

May Day
In Havana
The sun is shining
(what else)
The date is
The First of May
7-15 am
I fail to find the market
Where my 40 pesos will by me
40 oranges
or
17lb of tomatoes

(I only wanted 20 pesos
For my dollar
But the guide yesterday insisted
He said I'd paid for the tour
And bought him a drink)

Crowds with banners are gathering
To march past
8am
Perched in my eyrie
I gaze down at the Central Square

Then I join the people below
Brass bands
Salsa
Children chanting
"Fidel Fidel"
He isn't here
But his brother is
I acquire a CDR placard

I get into trouble with the police
They tell me
Not to climb on the scaffolding
Supporting the TV camera

This is my only conversation in Cuba
With a policeman

Clumsy
I broke two glasses today
It wasn't my fault

The guy who designed the torture chairs
Also designed the table

The top is shaped like the world

If you put a very large glass
On a slippery world
It would start to slide
And would fall off the world

What......?
Fuck gravity
This is a metaphor

So I put this glass on the table
And
Crash !

What......?
Oh I just trod on that one

Quiet
I am Kirk Douglas
In James Mason's submarine
19, 999 leagues behind us

The cool breeze
Dries the sweat on my muscular body
The engines hum
And Peter Lorre
Is being helpful
But sinister

Then the leagueometer stars to roll backwards
The numbers stop at 225

Room 225 hotel Inglaterra
Havana Cuba
The air conditioning
Cools the sweat
On my not very muscular body
Engines hum
Lifts thump
Drunken Englishwomen scream
There are rectangles on the ceiling
Squares on the floor
And how I long for
Silence

Miguel
All Cubans are charming
He was no exception
He picked us up outside the Inglaterra
Showed us round the market
Helped me spend my pesos

He said he was a musician
He said he played in a band at the 'Oasis'
He said I could visit his home

There was no band
Possibly no home

He was a con man

He got from me;
4 ball point pens
5 bars of soap
10 dollars
And a free t-shirt
That Anna was given but didn't want

I got from him
A picture of Che Guevara
And this poem

The Pool
In the drawer was a hotel brochure
It said that the swimming pool
Could only be reached by means of
The pantry lift

What I wondered was
What is a  pantry lift
But it didn't matter
There was no swimming pool

Dance Class
Sweaty dancing
Rhumba salsa son
Bodies vibrating
In the still air
Moisture dripping
Floating upwards

A black dance master
All in white
A white dancer
All in black
Rhumba salsa son
Sweaty dancing

Ice
Coppelia gardens
Best ice cream in Cuba
We just had....
Not we didn't
There not serving tourists now

Music
Inglaterra hotel
Old Habana
Surrounded by chickens
Tiled bedroom floors
Cake for breakfast
And the lift
Plays a salsa bass

Departure
Leaving Havana
I pack
Check the room
The cupboards
The drawers
Finally I look
Under the bed
Only 3 legs are upright

Captain Who ?
Heading for Santiago de Cuba
We rise with the sun
Sardined into a Russian tin
We get a boiled sweet
A cup of
Caliente Azucarado Fuete Espeso....
The temperature on the ground is 36
And the captain's name is Bonzo

First Day Two
Lazed away a day
Day 1 in Santiago
Swimming pool
Playing pool
Sun hammers down
It's too too hot
I pray for rain
But here there are
Different Gods

Main Attribute
I've got nice what ?
Oh yes
I know
I've heard it before
Here...
Have a plaster caste
Of course signed
No problema

They told me the blonde at the Inglaterra
Was staring
Fascinated
Unbelieving
Such beauty

Well all I can say is;
I wish it didn't end there
And went all the way up

Englishman Abroad
Don't care what the books say
Don't care if it is 95 in the shade

Among the clothes I take
To Cuba
In May
are

3 pairs of trousers
2 jerseys (1 made of Shetland wool)
Track suit top
Track suit bottom
A warm vest
A warm jacket
2 hats
1 scarf
And
A pair of gloves

Actually
I didn't take the gloves
But
I did think about it

Steady
Tonight no ear plugs
The sound is steady
The sound of wind
Of water
Of the receding tide
In Havana it was lift salsa
An erratic rhythm section
And out of time chickens
In Santiago the sound is steady
Tonight no ear plugs

Early
The best time
The sun has got it's wake up call
But can't quite make the effort yet
It's almost cool

I'm not the first
There are footprints
No one is here now
Well
Almost no one
I swim in a new way now

Then I see it
Shining black
I leave the water
I approach with an almost
Religious reverence

FLASHBACK
I am in the art Museum Havana
 

(Contined on page 17)