Untitled;

Or, After Miguel Coyulas Memories of Overdevelopment

Jnan A. Blau

There it is, right in front of me,
as if confronting me.

Fucking with me.

Messing with my state, post film screening.

Fuck you, faux diamonds on a license plate holder.
Go back to the fucked-up values from which you sprang.

Take your conceits elsewhere.
Your distortions, your false promises, your damagetake it all
far, far away from me.

The world of bling,
counterpoised
with revolution itself.

Shallow conceits, masking deep insecurity,
meeting up
with intensity, with deep injustice.

The hopes and dreams of a people, of The People,
living in the same world
as the hopes and dreams of the Very-Self-Important People.
The ones who isolate themselves, even as they surround themselves
with things, things, things. As if their fortress of crap stands a chance. As if the
edifice of their own self-delusion can sustain itself. As if the enemy lies without.

The messy, bloody affairs of the destitute,
the struggles of the disenfranchised,
the cries of the marginalized,
they present themselves
to me
as a collage.

A collage of parts and metaphors and juxtapositions and overdeterminations.

The post-modern world is a world too disjointed for me.
Too facile. Too unmoored.


Like a sick lung seeking clean breath,
like a flower searching for sun in a sunless landscape,
like sugar cane, imploring to be left alone.

Cuba, seemingly alone and forgotten,

holds the memories.
The memories of overdevelopment.
The struggle scars, the gaping battle wounds.

The traumas trouble, deep, deep trouble.

The fervor and the daring.
The ferocity of a hope unbridled, kindled
merelymerely!by the longing
for a just existence, a loving embrace between caring comrades.

That striving,
that believing,
that tenacious tearing
away
at the seams
of avaricious doings,
of corrupt connivings,
of self-interested violence
it whimpers now.

But that vision, that revolution,
that dream, too, is
perverted,
is burnt and desolate,
now.
It is not unblemished.

It lives,
now,
in the cynical heart
of a lonely, disaffected man.

Is it his faith that died? And with it his political convictions?

Is it the case that his sense of wonder has taken off,
landed in the desert
of a soul too tired, too scorched, to care anymore?

Are his eyes all that is left?

Is the welling up of tears




in them
the only way out?