Benjibopper

into newness
or return to formerness,
with a twist;

from charged brown hominids,
some having orangey fur
bubbling like whitewater brooks
with magic-8-ball eyes -
scorn or desire;

from tough roads, jungle trees,
an island of effluent not affluence
food not polystyrene
service not manufacture
haggle not hustle;

from water clear as floating plastic
with a fulfilled destiny
lacking destination;

from thunderous motorcycle crashes,
loud and harmless,
idiots abroad facing
adventure not danger,
sunburned in a hot spring,
then painless goodbyes
with liked ones;

from foggy horizons,
bubbling ashen brews
viscous green goos,
easing down mountainsides
like goats
high on Bob Marley
and his kaya philosophy;

into Big Booming cities
of magazines, expensive cigarettes,
sweet sin and egotism,
books of great magnitude,
where newspaper salesmen
would fly but for the time -
so much pornography left to sell;

into newness:
the sweet, the stale,
the curvaceous, the limp,
the shaking, the et cetera
of this vast living’s
eternal march.

Labels: 2000, Indonesia, Poetry, Travel

Woody Guthrie, a great Road Warrior, box-car law breaker
wondered who could guess the secret of the Sea
who am I to him, unknown poet
to not yet forgotten ghostly sage?
but I’ve heard a story perhaps Woody missed
of a Sultan, a goddess, and me

My wedding story is borrowed from the ocean’s blue
a brand new tale of a timeless age
The goddess has secrets unbeknownst to mortal human
of murky clarity hidden plainly but deeply
written on no dry page
but in a dotted land of mystics and charity
is spun an ancient story of love and glee
where honest people make minimal wages
the tale of a man privy to such secrets
of life and adventure unimaginable to we

His wife the sea goddess holds him in her cage
but once a month at the full of the moon
she paints the Sultan her mermaid cartoon
She collects from the shore her funny prince
a tourist of the sea
the would be King of a magical land
reduced to this impotent rage
but what fascination must lie in his eyes
before he’s returned to the place that is dry
and hailed as King is this former buffoon

The secrets he holds he does so close
he tells us only what not to wear to the sea
this alone is what makes him a sage
and gives him his historical page
his secrets of the sea
but I’ll tell you this one I overheard
from a talkative royal loon
were the Sultan a President of the United States
his secret would tell like this:
we spend more on searching for phony skies
than understanding what we see
with our own naked eyes

Perhaps this is the secret of the sea



[I wrote that in 2000 while I was in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. It was inspired by this song and stories I learned in this place and things I read about this place. Hard to believe it was seven years ago.]

Labels: 2000, Indonesia, philosophy, Poetry

In 2000 I visited a very poor village in Makassar Indonesia, where they fish using traditional boats but not so traditional methods. Their boats carry dynamite to bomb reefs for fish. Cyanide is also used to kill fish for an easy catch.

My co-researcher and I walked along the harbour, which is filled with big pretty fishing vessels, and passed a whole slew of tiny fish, only a few centimetres long each. We climbed down the docks into the village, where the first sensations are the smell, then the sight, of a huge pile of garbage.

The houses there are tiny wooden huts with thatched straw roofs. They have two floors each, the bottom one for sitting, cooking, and eating, the top for sleeping.

The children went crazy when they saw visitors, dancing all around and smiling at us.
We were directed to a certain house where we met a very pregnant woman with runaway teeth. She was surrounded by beautiful children. We had to wait there a while for her husband to come. At first she would not talk to us without him because he is a very respected member of the community. But while we waited, she spoke to us about the well-water, which is salty, and costs 25,000 rupiah per month, which is a lot of money for a villager.

The house had a concrete floor and was very dusty, like the rest of the village, which is unpaved but also unplanted. The only light in the house was a very large television. There was a baby hammock hanging from the ceiling, and in it was a 4-year-old. He just hung there sleeping for the whole 90 minutes we were there, completely unconscious despite noise that could deafen the dead.

When the husband came, he talked mostly about money, or lack of it, and about tough times in the rainy season, when most fishermen take loans and have trouble covering them with interest. Being a boat-owner he was in better condition than most of the other villagers, who work on the boat for a small wage.

When I asked him which 'environmental issues' most affected his fishing, he did not understand the term in English nor in Indonesian.

While we spoke to this man his wife, who had been very friendly and talkative in his absence, was suddenly very quiet. According to other researchers I’ve talked to, this happens all the time. You can meet with a group of 30 women and one man, and the man does all of the talking. Have the man leave, and the women all contradict whatever the man has said. They’ll tell you he doesn’t know anything about the day-to-day running of the village because all he does is fish, eat, and sleep.

[You're assignment, fair reader: write a sentence with the word 'slew' in it.]

Labels: 2000, Indonesia, non-fiction, Travel