Buenos Aires:
a train ride over the rainbow
by
Paul Perry
Published by Night Publishing, Smashwords edition
Copyright 2010, Paul Perry
ISBN: 978-1-4523-4653-3
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All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.
To discover other books by Tim Roux, please go to http://www.nightpublishing.com/id21.html.
Review of ‘Buenos Aires: a train ride down the rainbow’ by Paul Perry (first published on Speak Without Interruption)
I first saw Paul Perry’s poems on a website called Speak Without Interruption which is an international space for writers to post whatever they like. The four or five poems Paul had posted in a blog there (‘no damn Yankee’, ‘waiting on a train’, ‘a babe on the subway’, ‘love this place’ and ‘towards’ – all present and correct here) grabbed me immediately and were the main reason I asked Bob Grant, the owner of SWI, to be allowed to contribute to the site myself. So I not only have Paul to thank for his poetry; SWI has several absolutely outstanding writers and has fed me with some of my favourite novels of recent years – Bob Ellal’s ‘By These Things Men Live’, Mel Nicolai’s ‘The Case’, George Polley’s ‘The Old Man & The Monkey’, Steve Sangirardi’s ‘Moday Afternoon’, Minnette Coleman’s ‘The Blacksmith’s Daughter’ and Bill Hazelgrove’s ‘Rocket Man’, not even to be exhaustive.
This was my comment on Paul’s blog at the time:
“I suppose all poetry attracts, repels or fails to touch at all because of some alchemy between the poet and the reader. I wasn’t really coming on here to read any poems – I clicked a link at random to get a sense of the site which seems to be a high quality literary blog site which I immediately find attractive (bookmarked it, anyway). I liked the “yeah i´m a yankee” refrain, and the reference to Jerry Garcia of course. The other poems are like poetic blogs – provocatively reflective and they slip down nicely. Which straight male hasn’t done ‘a babe on a subway’ – what else is there to do? I remember sitting on a subway crouched over a book and a very beautiful girl tucked her legs almost under the book. I gave them 50/50 attention, which I thought was fair, but she soon got up and sat on another seat. Thanks, I’ll look out for your poems which seem pretty reliably enticing.”
Looking back I am impressed by how prescient and discriminating I was and, when Bruce Essar and I set up Night Reading in February 2010, I immediately went after Paul to publish his poems, not realising just how many he had (nearly a thousand, apparently).
While I get quite smug about some of my own novels from time-to-time, I have no illusions or delusions with regard to the quality of my infrequent poetry and I don’t even claim to understand the formalities of the genre – rather distrusting the work of anybody who does, in fact.
Paul, an American living in Buenos Aires (Argentina) writes about real things right at the bottom of Abraham Maslow’s ‘triangle’ – the need to eat, the need to have sex, the need to have a place to stay, and the struggle to stay sane and optimistic in challenging times. I am not sure that Mr. Maslow specifically included an enthusiastic thirst for alcohol and a ritual appreciation of ‘the weed’, but Paul appears to have those too, in imitation perhaps of the lifestyle evoked by Malcom Lowry’s ‘Under the Volcano’ set in Mexico.
Above all, though, Paul has public transport – the train, the bus and the subway (perhaps we can persuade the Buenos Aires authorities to post some in and down there) – as exemplified in his poem ‘getting to class’ where he takes umpteen rides on each in one day. This typifies how he describes Buenos Aires here, not as a tourist, nor as an insider, but as a commuter who passes by urban scenery on his way to a meeting, which is often cancelled gratifyingly in his case.
Paul’s poems above all tell stories about a man who came to Argentina from Philadelphia in search of the Land of Oz and who is still clinging on there half in love and half in exasperation and despair with that city. From the look of things, he survives by teaching people English and landing the odd acting gig, gets mesmerised by any passing beauty (so long as she is only passing through), and writes incessantly even when in motion. So, if you happen to be in Buenos Aires and a guy taps you on the shoulder asking you urgently to borrow your pen, it is probably Paul. Please be so kind as to comply with his request but remember to grab an autograph when he hands it back – it might be worth it. You could be in the presence of greatness.
Tim Roux, March 2010.
no damn yankee
yeah,
I’m a Yankee
but at home I listen to the Redondos,
loud
real loud,
and then I’ll put on some Sumo
and Charlie
and blend it in with a little Garcia of my own:
Jerry style.
yeah I’m a Yankee,
and sometimes hit BK or Mickie Dees,
but at home call me porteño,
sparking up the parilla
and whipping up those asados and choris.
yeah I’m a Yankee
and grew up drinking that Bud
but at home call me porteño
drinking that Quilmes ale
or uncorking a bottle of five peso Vasco Viejo.
yeah I’m a Yankee,
and Philly nostalgia sometimes comes along
but it's this backwards southern town
the place I call home.
love this place
it's sometimes a cold city
where people move in cold circles
where friendly smiles are easy to find but hard to take seriously
where streets are overcrowded with mirrored faces
where everyone wants to be something they are not
and deep down inside they hide from what they really are.
it's sometimes a fake city
where the only national pride lies in the hands of the national soccer team.
where streets are wrapped in an imaginary setting
where women act highly important and men think they're twice as much
where happy hour is a growing trend
but people don't know how to drink
so they double up on coffee.
it's sometimes a sad city
where people cry on the daily news
where workers in the public sector go months without a paycheck
where innocent people are shot on the street everyday and the cops are doing the shooting
where millions don't know how to vote
‘cause each candidate is worse than the other.
it's sometimes a strange city
where the winters are hot and the summers are cold
where people put out plastic bottles full of water to stop dogs from peeing on their trees
where subways crash head on then they raise the price of the fare
where common sense doesn't go a long way
and stupidity awaits with every passing step.
it's sometimes a happy city
where I'm free to sit here and write
where beer and whiskey are cheap to get, and on sale everywhere.
where I got a job that I get paid for not doing most to of the time.
where I found a cool beautiful woman
that can't cook but brings home a paycheck.
in love with a stranger
I’m in love
with eyes I’ve never seen
I’m in love
with a voice I’ve never heard.
I’m in love
with lips I’ve never kissed
with a girl who’s never uttered a word.
I’m in love
with skin I’ve never touched
I’m in love
with a girl that I’m not sure exists
but whom I’m certain I will meet
and I write these words
hoping that they’ll find her
and in turn she’ll find me.
in the meantime,
I’ll share my love
at random
with someone who loves me.
bottom of the well
walking through the Recoleta always depresses me.
for I feel the contrast between rich and poor bear down on me so heavily
and as I walk along
hungry
broke
I see the classy people
eating classy meals
in classy joints
and my hunger and frustrations grow
as I feel my ribs pressed hard against my skin.
I see the pretty ladies walking past me
and another kind of hunger grows,
this hunger too out of my reach
so neither can I satisfy
neither can I afford
it’s cheaper to just vanish
or slip into the villas across the tracks
and mingle with the feeble minded,
the intellectually poor
yet I feel like my time is at hand
feel like glory is long overdue
feel like it’s time I reap the seeds of genius I have sown
time to do away with the mediocre budget
my constant feeling of nutritional abandonment,
I’m feeling like the dawn of a new day is before me,
now
as gloom seems to want to swallow me up
and spit me out
into the same tomorrow.
*villas = argentine shanty towns
deadly kiss
the tall thin girl with the face of a sparrow,
stares into her boyfriend’s eyes.
she looks like a real bitch
her boyfriend like a nice kid.
and I can’t help to feel that he will suffer
as I watch her eyes seem to want to pierce his soul.
he is helpless
at the mercy of his testicles
and peanut shell brain.
she wraps her thin arms around his neck
stretching her sparrow shaped head,
neck
long bony legs,
slithering
as she prepares to devour his soul,
with a kiss.
hey you, on the subway!
I was in a daze on the metal boxcar,
and at one of the stations
I notice a young man get on.
I can tell right away that he is sort of strange,
he is thin,
has a bad haircut
and wears old raggedy clothes.
at first he just seems like another nut
and I watch him walk past me and sit down by my side.
after only a few stops, he gets up and stands close to where I sit.
by now, the subway car is slightly packed,
and as usual, the air starts getting thick
and the different perfumes and fragrances that hide man's
natural stench turn the air into sweet smelling poison.
I watch the guy as he stands,
noticing him start talking to himself
and moving his fingers and eyes very quickly.
he is definitely mentally unstable in his ways.
a station later,
I see him move over to the doors
and stand there looking out into the darkness of the tunnel.
suddenly the train stops half way to the next station.
I look into the fed up eyes of the commuters.
I look at the man
who stands twitching more feverously.
I wonder what is going through his mind
as we all sit in our enclosed madness.
then out of nowhere,
he starts yelling,
kicking,
pounding on the door.
"let me out, out of this fucking hell hole"
I watch and wonder,
why is everyone looking at me?
my old self
I ditched the shirt and tie
the nice shoes and classy pants
and I'm back to the raggedy old clothes
and sweat-stained eagles cap.
someone I barely know said that I look like my old self again
and I said I felt like my old self again,
broke,
hungover,
puffy-eyed
and woozy,
smelling like the party I had been to the night before
stale fine wine on my breath
and tobacco seeping through my person.
I was my old self again
so I put my old clothes back on
then I looked in the mirror and saw my aging face
unshaven
pale
noticed a few wrinkles under my eyes
and caught sight of a receding hairline.
back to my old self again
perhaps for the last time.
getting to class
today I took a bus
then I took a train
then I took a bus
then I gave a class.
then I took a bus
then walked thirteen blocks
then I gave a class
then I walked six blocks
and spent 3.50 on video games
then I took a bus
and walked six blocks down a shady street,
then gave a class.
then I took a bus