Our Man in Europe/now in Belize/Dave Delacroix: "My Brilliant Career!"

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "My Brilliant Career!"

(dedicato, orig. genius Australian LADY WRITER, 1901, Miles Franklin, who described AUSSIE-OUTBACK life expecting no recognition. U can buy/read HER book or SEE the Australian MOVIE: "My Brilliant Career" on Utube with Aussie star-studded cast. THIS, my Blog Post, a Salute to HER, a righteous Artist, not to be forgotten.)

"My Brilliant Career." 

(This a longish post so U might want to make a sandwich/put a 6-pack of beer/bottle of Vino on ice/roll 2 or 3 cigarettes/turn off your phone...then RElax.)

"My Brilliant Career.)

DO NOT DO TODAY IF U CAN PUT IT OFF till Tomorrow. Sheep shearing? No worries. Leave THAT GIG to the experts. Logistics, Politicians, your needy In-Laws awaiting your demise? At some point they'll go NUTS not knowing if they're gonna inherit! The Sheep? They'll stay WOOLLY/buy tickets to a LED ZEPPELIN arena concert. S-what Sheep do.

 Meantime?  I DON'T invest in a "sure thing" & if her daddy got NO Money, even less: "When tomorrow comes" (Carole King) & if her Pappy (local Sherrif) rides me out of town? OUCH! Like OVID (Roman Poet) who had the same problem with Augustus-Caesar who exiled him from Rome to RUMANIA for writing SMUT...A disrespectful Family can do that to U too? (People R SO finicky!) Why is the act of fornication exhibited/masturbation for that matter considered publicly taboo? The Etruscans, according to Greek observers never had such qualms.

(AHA!!! And Facebook - Censorship! - these days/2026) ...despite my Classical education and, alas I am now voluntarily self-exiled in BELIZE/by Mexico & I haven't even re-written a SMUTTIER version of OVID's "Metamorphosis"!... But leastways the CHURCH (?), American COPS/ICE/the USA's Imperial Guard, Canada, countries I've been kicked out of, down here they can't CENSOR or bust me! (Haven't spent ONE NIGHT in jail down here!) Age 70, drinking less but still wanna YAHOO!!! (Thinking of relocating to CUBA: Career move).

(CICERO:) "Only a FOOL will DANCE" though out THERE there's always a prancing Rudolph Valentino or 2; and in THIS - Rudolph Valentino/Silent movie star 's -case he had a zillion fans and ONE classic star-struck "Groupie"/Lover? One in particular, (probably Natasha-whoosits) always cloaked/black veiled-graveside placed anniversary flowers ON his grave and, I guess later joined him asunder in Loves eternity a 'la gossip, romantic legends, old "78" scratchy records, the Gilded Age.

... Even today, her identity, somewhat unknown: No "Selfies/Fotos" of course. The Paparazzi in the 1920s was in its infancy. Nobody stood STILL long enough. (Early Photo-techie-thingy?). "Selfies", amongst the "smart-set" probably VERBOTEN! Today? U wear disguise. Ice-Hockey Goalie mask. (Even at funerals!) "Molto Romantico!" -Think-Caruso on a bad night. Or Maria Callas in embryo. Concepts/projections-SWIRL! -Privacy in Death - "sans Hollywood" I suppose. In repose U can still make $$$ for what good it does U. Ask Micael Jackson.

Still. IN Love's eternity, Homer's Ulysses, Gaelic/Norse Sagas, "Romeo & what's her name?", 'Le Chanson de Roland", "Zen & the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" a 'la "A tale told by an IDIOT full of sound & fury" to the HULLABALOO of generations pompous trumpets and now CINEMATICALLY, still THEN to blaze, to dumb down the masses to an empty cerebral place: An Irish Dray Horse, fed just enough to know it's still hungry, Fames' Night of the Locusts:

 A "Molto romantico Socio-Cultural Thrift Store. One step UP from a pawn shop where the Prophets, GODS (?), those man-made JU-JU-MEN as true as Cicero's non-Dancers in the sky wearing RAYBANS! The BLUES BROTHERS maybe, with Angel wings! (Nothing incidentally has changed?):

And: "Will U still need me? (The Beatles!) Will U still feed me? When I'm 64?" Ya gotta wonder? (Pawnshop: How much do I get for this TIMEX watch?) The 1990s band ABBA: "SELFIE ME-SELFIE U! -AHAH!!!" -WotchagonnaDO? The simpering hordes will always queue up outside Hollyweird's whoosits Chinese theatre for any glitzy premier?

DIAMONDS AIN'T - JAMES BOND - actually FOREVER when U got none! TWIX the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante & the full LOTUS seated BA-HA, the sayings of Confucius; the repetitive ravings of: "Do not put your faith in Princes/Never trust a man who doesn't DRINK & keep one eye on the non-smokers, likewise old Brothel Gals NOW main-street ladies "with issues" who HATE SMOKERS", Virgins BEWARE!

In hindsight, pity I didn't meet JULIET when I was 20! SHE was too - a nonsmoker -refined & I was inconstant-as is the way of frivolous Youth who knows too much too soon. (My excuse.) And all bets R off when U start playing guitar 2-Chord Blues! Her harmonica playing incidentally, was also atrocious! (Could-a formed a Band? We'll never know.) She married some clown with a serious Pocket Book.

World War 1 Soldiers song: "Pack all ya troubles in your old Kit Bag & Smile-Smile-Smile!"

Life, TIME! It marches on. So! Now! As raw-souding as singer JOHNNY CASH or like a Soldier from the GREEK-ALAMO, the Grecian THERMOPOLAE battlefield, wounded but groaning who after a couple or 6 Ouzos might say: "In Folsom Prison/scratch that/...Traveler, who pass on by", from Istanbul to Damascus, London to L.A. (getting verbose) & now with ALL the AZTEC astronomical wisdom THAT star-studied culture applied... pant-pant...which we interpret day by day; richer or for poorer, haunted yet rejoicing, far from the madding crowd, mostly comfortably numb: my brilliant career. OUR brilliant sojourn. With autobiography it's hard to know how to GET YOURSELF IN?

 A conjurer's domain? Destiny's sleight of hand. A Caravanserai to the end of Time. Do we still yearn for Yesterday? Our brilliant career... on this pesky road all souls must travel, regardless, MUSTING in our living oblivion but borne to accept we just "mosey" along? Or do we RAGE till our last breath and IN death TATTOO, a prehistoric hieroglyphic on some desert rock for later generations to find? I wonder. Yours & mine. Our brilliant whoosits.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. (F.Y.I. Back in the mid 1970s having read Miles Franklin's "My Brilliant Career" I formed a London Band: MY BRILLIANT CAREER and released a 12" long-play Single. (Message of Love). It made it to No. 1 on the U.K. Radio Play charts.)

There's a THRIFT STORE awaiting everyone's life. One step UP from A PAWNSHOP magnet, the nuts & bolts/your demise/abandoned life-long souvenirs.

Our Man in Europe/now BELIZE/Dave Delacroix: "GENGHIS KHAN!" (People will talk!)

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "GENGHIS KHAN!" (People will talk!)

(...a continuation of my TIME TRAVEL/ Fantasy-Blog/not telling the CHINESE - blog posts that R probably worthless/yet mildly amusing: - see previous 3 TIME TRAVEL blog posts: This is No. 4:

"GENGHIS KHAN." (People/THE HORDES will talk!)

...MY TIME-TRAVEL GOVERMENT MASTERS launched me ONCE AGAIN INTO THE PAST/sent me to - TIME TRAVEL visit/encounter TAMBOULINE/'historical-Dude who WARED & didn't take prisoners. A battlefield of corpses & amputees. But MY OWN Government/Scientific T-T (Time Travel) co-ordinates were off-center, so I ran into GENGKIS KANH, and I (my fool T-T/Time Travel-mission masters) had me wrongly attired. My T-T tailoring, dressed in a white Tuxedo/Gieves & Hawkes bowtie, Turnbull & Asser silk shirt, yet TIME erases/all Cellphones and wore DOWN...

... my own TIME- TRAVEL accoutrements leaving only the rags I am presently wearing dragged out of Life's dirt: No good with a BEE-GEES soundtrack -I landed on the MONGOLIAN TUNDRA, overdressed though on the "ground floor":(People will talk!) Still. T-T! (TIME TRAVEL!) I showed up. (Sometimes T-T/Time Travel? -It's what U gotta DO!) Sometimes Ya gotta show up looking new? TIME-Thingy!!! No Internet. Leastways not in 1352!...

(People will talk!)

Nighttime, massive camp campfires across the Siberian plains, & I was asked to STRUM my own damned song, so I did,  a "cover band" -rendition by a Persian Poet named HAFIZ, a version, before the ISLAM SCOURGE, before our intelligent Middle Eastern Ladies, Teachers & Scientists, our new MOMS & DAUGHTERS who must now scatter & cloak in a BURQUA &/OR be silenced: So I strummed  HAFIZ's "The road to Damascus. Fates appointment!"...I might have got a few words wrong. WE POETS R not perfect. TIME-TRAVEL of course - no pun intended - does it in fact WARP a mind. Today's (Persian?) MULLAHS can't take "Freedom of Thought." They don't know How-to get OUT of their religio-structured-brainwashed mind. 

(People will talk!)

.... In MY SAD-SAP Case: Got to THINKING they sent the "Wrong Man", (Henry Fonda/Film Noir), they sent the wrong TIME-TRAVEL DUDE or some "Our Man in Havana", an idiot SPY without a plan. (Pension Plan Application?) AS FOR GENGHIS-KAHN, what's to know other than he - never conquered - but traversed/ravaged the WORLD, built no citadels nor a monument to his - transient-lifestyle - Mongol grave. Makes U wonder what they'll put on your OWN gravestone, less U get butchered in a Civil War ditch: "Here lies some poor bastard/culled by the Mongol hordes, his bones on these fields lie scattered in the wind. Did he piss in the wind? Did he offend ALLAH? Can U look his mother in the eyes?

(People will talk.)

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "The Last of the Dumbfucks!"

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "The Last of the Dumbfucks!"

 - (continuing my Fantasy/History themed TIME-TRAVEL blog posts from "The RE-Charge of the Light Brigade" & T-T No. 2: T-T Misgivings.)

"TIME TRAVEL No. 3: "The Last of The Dumbfucks."

...IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES; it was the worst of times. In the Colonies, late 1600s, Governor SPOTSWOOD made several expeditions into "darkest/territory unknown" of what is now known as Pennsylvania, a U.S.A. State renown for coal mines & George Thorogood ("I drink ALONE!!!) Roadhouse Rock & Roll, a State which is as oblong as Texas is wide.

Writer Fennimore-Cooper parked out his novel (The Last of the Mohicans) of this wild/untouched territory (British colonial era) where some Colonel got his TEST-TACKLES ATE by attacking MOHICANS; pre-PUNK ROCK "sans" electric-3-chord guitars, a precursor of the later British - The BEATLES - music invasion where-in (the Mohicans?) the locals too might have remained SEX PISTOLS "pretty vacant". Hard to say.

TIME-TRAVEL MISSIONS are "wearing" on a T-T Man. I'm thinking of asking for a pay-rise. Meantime, the T-T LORDS landed me HERE on this colonial/lyrical/frontier. We R talking C.I.A., K.G.B. MOSSAD, & M.I.5/as long as the CHINESE R kept in the dark in fear they initiate MASS T-T Travel & screw up World History... Still, my mission's purpose was quite illusive. T-T management never overload U with details full knowing, but never intimating, T-T isn't a day out with Simon & Garfunkel to Coney Island!

And YES! Pity Mio! What was I supposed to do? -Overloaded with music by THE CLASH never mind more than one ERA'S culturally ZONKED brain? And never mind the Mohicans, what about Governor SPOTSWOOD! Do I tell him about FACEBOOK, trips to DA MOON or Taylor Swift?...

I guess my T-T Masters got (Time-) wind of my confusion & "DUST DOWN-TIME-EXTRACTED" me, pulled me out my T-T dilemma which is supposed to eliminate/eradicate all memory of any Mission. Yet in anticipation of my Sinister T-T Masters, I hereby Post.

Anyhow. Water under the bridge I suppose. Nobody SCALPED ME!!!...My next T-T assignment? (I submitted my Pay Rise Application): "The Assassination of Julius Caesar!". The assassination of J.F.K. I guess, the "powers-that-be" were keeping buried for when all conspirators were either dead & gone or their descendants had squirreled the pay-off into banks on the Caymans? 

What do I care! I'm still waiting on my T-T Pay Rise approval application. And AS for Julius Caesar's demise. through this particular mission I would also meet - through this singular T-T mission - a Roman goddess, the only woman I ever loved. Her name was Cleopatra.

...U don't know the meaning of T-T heartbreak folks? But that's another story!

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Time Travel, No. 2. /T-T misgivings."

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Time Travel, No. 2./T-T misgivings."

(dedicato: Loic X.)

...IT WAS THE BEST OF BARS (Cafes) it was the worst of Bars, Fat YA-YA or Old Fat Magot who - long ago - captured Aristo-Beaus between their thighs might have given them a "dose" which they then passed on to their future wives. (Mandatory for the European Grand Tour.) My TEST-TACKLES on this occasion were quite safe.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. RAIN-RAIN-RAIN! -Paris-France in September, my government sponsored - TIME TRAVEL/undercover Dude/GIG - landed me in the1990s so I'd patioed myself in Montmartre at the CAFE RDV (Rendezvous) des Amis a-table with Mon frere Loic De X who I had actually met in "real time' decades before.

Time Travel enables U to encounter a myriad of living - or dead - folks. Most, U never heard of. But some R innate enemies, some instant friends! Some to fleece U? Some, to defend! Some R sharks of course. Some, just plain Losers. Your wallet, the shirt off your back? One eye on the angled mirror over the bar.

In Time Travel U R plunged into an emotional quagmire of regrets, hauntings, GHOSTS all shrouded in some spinal yesteryear. Past lovers? -who R barely above the grave with complexions (think cheese) like Rochefort/Stilton/Brie-gone-bad and a withered withdrawn demeanor for just who desires an ice cold ELGERA kiss, a maggot or 2 on her lower lip?

...And necrophilia not being your "bag", U justifiably attempt to FLEE in abject terror, singing: "One more "Vin de Table" before I go...Better make it a large one; One more "Vin de Table" before I go; to the valley below!" (Time Travel is not for the feeble in Spirit.) "Le plate du jour" maybe cheap but it isn't free.

Time Travel. Oh boy! Like a cyclonic spiral, better still, a labyrinth, of INNER REGRETS - dealing with the Past here - hardly ever lets U go. TIME IS A PRISM: Ghosts. Hauntings. Even moments of "Deja-vu" have U in its primordial coils. And your Time Travel Tourist Impressionist (painting) smile may work for a lost weekend in this - government sponsored T-T - investigation of a famous unsolved Murder? ...Here's hoping I get to realize my Government Pension plan.

...T-T communications at this "time", even though government sponsored, R akin to early telephone calls or basic radio transmissions. Pretty fragile. But I can - if this message gets to U - tell U that my NEXT T-T assignment is to Istanbul. Some master spy named Cicero: "The Five Fingers"! And after? Vienna, Austria to check out some hood named Harry Lime. And don't ask. The T-T bosses just send me where they send me. Just don't tell the Chinese! They'll mass produce T-T Tourism. (Holy moly!) And they MAY be watching the same "film noirs"!

c.2026. Dave Delacroix....For the FIRST TIME TRAVEL post on this Blog/scroll down & read the post: "The RE-CHARGE of the LIGHT BRIGADE"....I will be continuing the theme as the spirit moves.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "BIG BAMBU!"

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "BIG BAMBU!"

...I DON'T DRINK TOO MUCH but I drink ENOUGH on account I don't want the Booze to go bad. I don't CHAIN-SMOKE - unless I have to - all the time. I DON'T fall in love on a Dime, but when U only got Nickels? I post depressing Poems on Dave Delacroix @ Blogspot.com. "Our Man in Europe." I may as well be on planet-someplace for all the response the blog gets...Oddly, over a quarter of a Million: Lotta bored people out there? But YO! I'm not in love. Inter-planetary Internet PORN still light years away & the orgy of Youth long gone.

THESE DAYS I don't travel anywhere; been, done & seen that. Seen it all before. Temples, monuments, Parthenon, Panty-Thongs, I knew a cutie in Istanbul who turned out to be ABDUL! Like I say, long since I shoved "all my yesterdays" up Memories/Frank Zappa's "Grande Kazoo!" And these days I try not to whine in these Belizean balmy tropical evenings, so I've taken to whining at the crack of dawn - accompanied by our local jungle birds/cacophonic dawn chorus, and Java-coffee, Bloody Mary & Jesus chain smoking before the standard "petite déjeuner" of Whisky & Beer. It's become a ritual.

U can sing AT the Moon. U can bow down/pray to a Rock. Wooden Crosses R still in vogue/kneeling posture. Luckily, I'm Bi-Polar/ambidextrous/can't play tennis/prone to "attention deficit disorder", I know my A-B-C's, but I can never get past DAVE! Not to mention I was not TO the Manor born nor with a silver spoon. And I don't drink too much. I only keep an eye on the booze in case it goes bad. But, sadly, BIG BAMBU! -U never can escape your gloom. That Big Bambu. No matter where U roam. When it wraps its arms around U.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Oh Happy Day!"

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Oh Happy Day!"

...WHEN JESUS WALKED, (When Jesus walked...) Where Jesus walked (Where Jesus walked...): O happy day! O happy day! O happy day.

When U 1st. KISSED - O happy day - the one U first loved? -O happy day. There were NO tomorrows, O happy day! U betch-a! O happy day, that day.

When Jesus walked - O happy day - U walked in his footsteps - O happy day - and when YOU first loved: O happy day. (Sing along:) "O happy Day. O happy day!" (Don't be shy:) "O HAPPY DAY!"

And still your LOVE is so True - O happy day - & the Kids R clothed & FED & all SAFE - O happy day -  ...and so let's ALL sing together? -Remember the words? Foot tapping is acceptable too:

"O Happy Day." (Let me HEAR U!) "O happy day." Oh yeah/U got it! "O happy day! O happy day." THIS IS your Day!... O... happy...day!... (U can all sit down now.)

c.2026. dave delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "The KAREN Song."

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "The KAREN Song."

...(singing/whining:) ...I GOT ISSUES WITH MY ISSUES, I gotta feeling...the World has done me wrong. I gotta FEEKING - peeking at me! - outside of WAR & PEACE; I got some heartfelt, serious ISSUES, U will never UNDERSTAND -don't get me wrong (?)... And when...

...And when I think/see U trespass on MY SOUL - I'm sensitive-sometimes? - I'll sure as hell give U "What for!!!", "WELL...Y-KNOW?" (Actor Christopher Walken-speak) Nobody gonna get away with that? I'll EVEN UP da score! -And on the Internet, I yell my song! (U can Man-Bun your long hair but U cannot hide!) My HARRADAN-harangue will strip it down.

I got ISSUES, left, right, sometimes Left too. I'll give U "what for!" -it's what I do! U got everything U need, but U don't know what U want, where-as I DO! I AM & always WILL BE your personal-societal nemesis & as any respectable KAREN in your neighborhood WE NEED to RANT, From Clochemerle/France or in downtown-N.Y.C.: And traditionally, in most neighborhoods there's always one or two KARENS who wrestle with their Blues, every ready for confrontation, in olden days, the Village Nag? (...Always that "U/Not ME" factor.) 

I got ISSUES. I got issues. A psychotic ALAMO which I must defend! Rain or shine. Shut your dammed KIDS up! My Feng-sui Gyro-all outta WAK! They play too near my garden!  And YOU!!! Fishing! Canoe-in down my back garden "personal" bayou. As FOR, and I just don't like the clothes U wear? SO, GET OFF MY CLOUD! Respect MY ISSUES! And no use whining. I'll out-whine U! COS that's what a classic KAREN will do.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "All along the Lee Shore."

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "All along the Lee Shore."

(dedicato: Gordon Westran/Sheffield/U.K. Bro.)

....ALL ALONG THE LEE SHORE, shipwrecks like U & Me lie half buried in the sand, all with a story to tell like some almost forgotten song old seafarers still hum: "OH-ANACREON (Greek Poet) we raise a glass to thee!" or "ADMIRAL LORD NELSON -we'll DRIVE HOME into the gates of HELL for thee!"

ANACREON in heaven? We raise a glass to thee!

Sometimes U feel like an old Sheffield Wednesday Football Club soccer ball. Not %100 inflated left over from a muddy field. 

Alas! And so it goes, beached as we R on this mind-set Skeleton Coast, an empiric-elephantine boneyard OF MEMORY left to be buried by Time's desert sands like a Saharan OZYMANDU monument for future generations to gape at and wonder. Nevertheless, a Lee Shore which no West-Wind-OH! Mariner ever expects. It comes as the Iron Duke of WATERLOO fame now faded into obscurity.

ANACREON in heaven? We raise a glass to thee! Anacreon, U bawdy hack? We sing U into eternity. (UP THE OWLS!!!)

c.2026. Dave Delacroix/David Michael Oxley.

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Saturday, in the Park."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Saturday, in the Park." (Après song by 60s band Chicago/their Chicago V LP)

"Saturday, in the Park." 

...I GET VERTIGO IN THE VERTIGO inside my mind. I WEEP but never cry; certifiable? Probably. I should have been RE-HOUSED from Soullessness long ago.

I get drunk before I'm drunk, a sensitivity of Soul. I write poems about the "only woman I ever loved" long before we meet. (Weird.)

It's so hard to be a sex-symbol when nobody knows. My fashionista tailor is the local Thrift store. Oh boy! Do I shine? -Plaid on Plaid!

I invented the "French-Dip Soup". Forgot to Copyright. Get no royalties. Same THING: Russian TEA/Tea without milk. Culinary History passed me over.

And it's difficult to be "the leader of the Pack" when U hate crowds, like a Politician, Poet or a Freedom Fighter who hates People? The funeral pyre of peoples Autograph Books.

Still. Saturday, in the park, I thought it was the 4th. of July. And there I sat upon the grass, a "Nowhere Man", O.K.-ing -it's O.K. to ask Why...

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. 

Our Man in Europe/now Spying in Belize/not selling Vacuum Cleaners/DAVE DELACROIX: "The RE-CHARGE of the LIGHT BRIGADE" (a

 Our Man in Europe/now Spying in Belize/not selling Vacuum Cleaners/DAVE DELACROIX: "The RE-CHARGE of the LIGHT BRIGADE!"

(A fantasy/creative literary Blogpost of a renown historical event: The Charge of the Light Brigade/Crimean War/1857 responsible for - as in ALL War, lots of needless dead bodies but also Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern-day hospitals: "The Lady with the Lamp".)

"...The RECHARGE of the LIGHT BRIGADE!"

...NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THIS - Time Travel? Still under the cloak of Government Secrecy - but I was THERE: C.I.A, K.G.B., M.I.5.; yes, TIME TRAVEL is under wraps less the CHINESE find out and mass produce Time Travel Tourism. But I, yes, I was THERE (assigned/secret agent/undercover) with my "Hasselback", my Kodak instamatic camera too & a Super-8-Cine! (My Cellphone dissolved thru Time Travel, incidentally. No Internet service in 1857 anyhow.) I COULD have used my 35mm-CINE/with aluminum tripod but - wearing Period clothes - a sure target for Russian snipers on the battlefields every side... & it WOULD have wrecked Poet-Tennysons "Into the Valley of Death rode the 600...plus some oddball taking "Selfies"?" (U can't mess with the Past/First Law of Time Travel.)

Anyhow. Into the Valley of whoosits rode the 600? Maybe 575. Yet AS an eyewitness to this debacle, and I too, astride-DONKEY there-in trailing behind the cavalry, snapping photos horses/riders' asses I was a tad - as they say in Italy - "incapacitato"!" -Later I would muse, like mounting a GOYA painting, the Naked MAJA, a Bela on a divan, a Saturday night, wonderfully inebriated but without bedside candelabras/heartbreak-City! -I was essentially blind as a BAT; In other words, no upfront grisly Foto "close ups" to win me a Nobel prize. Photojournalism even incorporating Time Travel is unforgiving outside of getting butchered in the fray. Journalism is self-glorification. The STORY is just backdrop. But I digress:

Lord CARDIGAN, in command of the Light Brigade, perhaps he wore a thick one, (a Cardigan) the precursor of the modern bullet-proof vest/ leastways he survived the charge/didn't get a scratch. By all accounts he was a "jolly good fellow" -madcap-drunk, and these days (2026) a pre-requisite for British Army Sandhurst Officers College. And YES! A True Commander of Troops, faithful unto death, whose BOYS, lances-wielding, sabers swirling, the like of those who sent Napoleon's armies to their graves and as later recorded (& FILMED!) in the GREAT WAR (1914-18), the "like", armed only with a "swagger stick": "Come-On Me-boys! For England & St. George!" Thousands per day of course immediately mowed down...Every English/French town/village has a monument listing names: "Pour la Gare".

But THIS notable "engagement", the stuff of legend, the Charge of the Light Brigade full of "cut & dash" not forgetting eternal military glory, we - on site/"On the Ground" as USA Media reporters love to enunciate, we, my donkey-with, and the Light Brigade, TROT-TROT-TROT went FWD. (Could-a been a Horse guards' parade!) But THAT only lasted for about 20 minutes... A late arrival, a Captain Nolan/superb horseman recently reassigned from warfare in the Punjab (India) had hand-delivered an ancient E-Mail/"DISPATCH" from the "High Command" who were picnicking on a hillside promontory, armed with Telescopes way back yonder which - the DISPATCH - seemed to cause some consternation/confusion/bickering amongst Lord Cardigan, subject to LORD RAGLAN, the engagements senior commander who subsequently retired from the "advance", rejoining the ranks of the reserve "Heavy" brigade.

Anyhow, (TROT-TROT-TROT), a picaresque vision of an assortment of riders, the ranks in splendid formation, be-splendant in uniforms, gold or brass buttoned, red, black & crimson tunics, Jodhpur riding pants, knee high, spurred boots in black or Bond Street fashion Monkey-shit brown, chain-mail strap helmets, paste-board tops or steely-peak caps; mustachioed fellows sharing a brandy flask or 2, a devil-may-care attitude. It struck me that NONE of them had any illusions, not since WATERLOO of what hell they were riding into. -Lord Raglan, out in front. Erect, Sabre upheld!

The rest is now bleary. TWO CANNON-SHRAPNEL bursts exploded overhead. Captain Nolan's horse went down/Nolan's head blown clean off, yet his arm/hand still waggled his saber in the air? The latter of the two-explosive bursts, and my donkeys alarm, I was thrown to the ground, where-in my donkey was directly turned into BBQ! -And my camera equipment, utterly shattered/no "selfies" alas, as the Light Brigade upgraded from a parade ground TROT to a CANTER, hooves pounding & the wails of "Victory or Death!".  

......................The relief of Mafeking, 55 Days in Peking, the Zulu war, Roukes Drift. Korea. Vietnam. TWO WORLD WARS! Yet in the Crimea, "the Lady with the Lamp", Florence Nightingale who took it upon herself with many volunteer nurses and led her OWN CHARGE to patch up the madness of Mans insanity. A heart felt pulse which we should all revere.

Today? So help me God, I've been reassigned. My latest Time Travel mission, (1990s) and no worries, Hi-tech visual recording gear. My global "Maigret's"-government Masters have allocated me personal space-satellite time all downloaded AND encrypted on my cellphone. The password is: "The Rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain/Betty's got a brand-new dog." -I should be able to remember that. I'm still "on the ground" (media speak) in a war zone. It's just as gross as before. This time, the Middle East. A tribal-situ. A bunch of Hatfield & McCoys who've been going AT IT for 2 millennium over divergent Icons in the sky or the correct way to tie the laces on your sandals (?)...

c.2026. dave delacroix.

 

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Swing SISTA Swing!"

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Swing GEISHA Swing!" (Song:)

(Music/rumbling Blues:) ...I ain't no worried bout who IS da MAN, I ain't worried bout some Mandarin plan: So Swing, my lady-Geisha swing.

 DON'T give a hoot bout some IMAN-JU-JU MAN, put ya HIJAB on the fire, get out while U can; why should U service this BRAINWASHED, prayer 5 times a day MEDIAVEL RETARD, swing lady swing...Do like a Geisha Gal do: "Sayonara Dick Breath!?" with his spare SAMAURI SWORD, CHOP!!! OR Biblically (Caravaggio painting:) "Judith & Holofernes" last -she decapitates him - last intimate moments. In FRANCE, a Crime of Passion. No worries. Six-month prison sentence in a Dordogne vineyard. Only FOUR if U don't guzzle their prize Grand-Cru?

...It sounds SO EASY to walk away, and there's U, hardly in disguise, hitch-hiking, over-clothed for some ISLAM OLD MAN but ya gotta walk away - if U can - because HE will fold like a cheap-mattress, the one who's been raping U ON & ON? GET OUT OF THERE!!!

Swing Lady, swing your RIGHTS. Swing Girl, preserving your Rights less U accept a Lifetime of Night, no night a young girl should know: Swing Lady do. Swing HIGH. Swing LOW. But turn your emancipation, your FREEDOM into your MOJO!...

Swing Geisha, Swing Lady. And Swing Indian/Pakistani HONOR BRIDES, swing a GYPSY-OUTCAST Lady. A song to keep, to keep alive, in your head, no HONOR BURNING, nor lonely exile, GO VOTE with your feet & sing out loud (if U can?). Your Song IN UTERO!

Swing Lady DO. It's up to U. Nobody said it would be easy, but unknown FRIENDS R out there. Swing SISTA Do! There's a WORLD that cares for what U DO! Swing out Sister Do! Step out into the Light where those old grey men, afraid of the light, will not follow U.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our MAN (DARIN) in Europe, now Europe, Dave Delacroix: "Singapore-sling!"

 Our Man in Europe, now Europe, Dave Delacroix (Es-Squire): "Singapore Sling!"

(dedicato: Diane Striker in Hong Kong)

"Singapore Sling!"

ZING, ZOOM, SLING (been a loving long time since WE:) Loving. And now singing something, heartfelt-loving/ne-er forgotten, me feeling stupid, but Love feeling free? Here in Corozal-Belize there's a high wind from Jamaica blowing cobwebs, your Song anew/refreshed, I HOWL...a Salute!

Zing, Zoom, Sling-blade-righteous! U gonna dress up ZAZZ, We -cup-O-tea, one index finger UP or a Singapore Sling? Let's rendezvous at RAFFLES in town. We'll, in our minds FLOAT to HARRY'S (Hemmingway's) BAR in Venice, Paris or Rome, some barista who'll mix a fave cocktail, might even remember our names.

(I fell in love with SOMEONE, but as the Song goes:) "It ain't gonna be U, NO HOW!? And if U had a MILLION DOLLARS (USD), my bar tabs couldn't keep up with U! I fell in love long before we met so it AIN'T gonna be U babe, it ain't gonna be U." Until now.

....I wandered lonely as a cloud. My Singapore Sling. A'la Fools & Funkers. Loves death loves a CROWD s-why we now live alone. Our Prides gone South & every song you ever heard from a Cowboy Mouth hollers, canyon echoes, and there's no joy in that prairie-morning campfire where a lone whisp of singular smoke rises into that lonely, empty sky.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix -Ex-Rockstar -: "TIPPERARY!"

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "TIPPERARY!"

(Song/town in Ireland: dedicato/PETE from Caven Town.)

"Tipperary."

...It's a long way to Tipperary; it's a long way to go. It's a long way to Tipperary to go see the sweetest GAL I know. (Geraldine?) Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square; now row-on-row the Poppy flowers grow, our bodies lie there.

(DEATH/WAR doesn't distinguish between an Aristocrat, Poet, Shepherd or Famer's boy?)

It's a long way to San Fransico, outta New York or from Seattle to San Diego - From Oklahoma to the "grapes of wrath" in California groves, the future-un-knowing, the Oregan Trail. Who could have known? It's a long way, "The leaving of Liverpool!" But my heart's right there.

It's a long way to SHANGHAI, outta NANKING, population murdered-raped, a brutal way to go, but sometime expedited, to HIROSHIMA-BANZAI-KAMIKAZI, reluctantly. but we bombed it anyway. Global neighborhood lunatics like Islamic fanatics got no place in our town. History?

It's a long way to MECCA, a long way, historically all roads lead to ROME, those famous Catacombs! Row-on-row of MARTYRED DEAD now lying, lonesome with no Cellphone. Maybe an OVID poem? Or Persia's Shakespeare: AFFIZ SHARAZI (Hafiz!!!) -SUFI POET ploughed asunder by Mohamed/ISLAM-IMANS perhaps on "their OWN destined rendezvous" in DAMASCUS? -poppies await row-on-row. But RIDE your fastest horses!?

It's a long way to Tipperary. It's a long way to go.  It's a long way to Tipperary, some Gal (Geraldine) I never knew? Goodbye Piccadilly. Farewell Leicester Sq.? It's, alas, it's a long-long way to Tipperary but MY Soul, sadly ain't there.

c.dave delacroix. 2026.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "DEMONS!"

 Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "DEMONS!"

...HAS ANYONE GOTTA (cigarette) FAG? I'm "jones-ing" for a tobacco "rollie". As ANYONE got a mean-assed SHOT of whisky to twirl around my tongue a-rolling? Does anyone still know the "Meaning of Life" to keep our living bullshit rocking & rolling? Can U "spring" for a bottle/cold beer? Maybe a sweet ride downtown before LIFE's glitter turns into a frown? That inevitable 11th hour Curtain hesitatingly ponders your design. Destiny, IN ESSE, has a life of its own.

Does anyone still BELIEVE in "Life-after-Death", some universal calling (HOWL!!!) or intertwine with planet Earth's JU-JU-Men, Imans, Priests, Monks, Budda's, Rabis? Does anyone - these days - blindly embark on a Roman Pilgrimage, visit with JU-JU-PAPPA, get an Easter foot-wash pedicure at the Vatican in the Year of the Dragon, the Year of the Unicorn, did either year ever exist? Religio-souvenir after-life Insurance-Crucifix tucked away in your lingerie drawer.

Or simply, do U just bury family fortunes gone-South automatically, "Ashes to Ashes-Funk to Funky" bury our Dead, kiss their Tomorrows "arrivederci", see U on the other side? Then invest -DA MONI-MONI-MONI", your inheritance, pick up a Gibson guitar, a Marshall amplifier, thrash out some BLUES & bore to death all your neighbors in a village (in Sicily?), or abroad, Montparnasse-France or Winchester-NY, cemeteries where, competing with Museums "infinity goes up on trial"/Bob Dylan-Zimmerman, Mans forever after?

Do NOT go gently into this (?) good living twilight. It can be prematurely as black as HADES, in this case: NO LAZY SUNSET, NO MOON DUDE! And Dog's a-barking! Cats chorus "MEOWW!!!" R U so quickly forgotten or is it a "mortal-crossover" U be dead & gone? As for your Demons, an Edvard Munch Oil Painting, a hollow SCREAM, your bloody past demons reappear, unrecognizable, that fond Stranger U used to be: "Has anyone got a fag? I'm "jones-ing" for a sweet memory...and a bottle of cold beer!"

c.2026. dave delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now-Belize, Dave Delacroix: "The Weeping Willow."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "The Weeping Willow,"

...WHO TAUGHT THE WEEPING WILLOW how to CRY? Look no further. Whilst IN FACT my DAD invented the French-Dip-Soup (not a lot of people know that?) my OWN cultural-contribution: "THE POGO!" -a robotic dance now sweeping European DISCO floors; halcyon days? As for these notes of Creativity? U people don't even know the meaning of heartbreak, leastways what I tell passing strangers after reciting Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" before they FLY, never again to have known or met me? People can be so cruel.

The "weeping willow" of course, after post-decades of psychotherapy still prevails "avec" mega amounts of KLEENEX tissues; perhaps like Aspirin, an undiscovered "wonder drug", that "magic bullet", a wonder cure for All societies dysfunctional SNIVELLERS, Cross-dressers or people named Ralph? Admittedly, there is NO CURE for the common Cold 'cept - prevailing - an honorable suicide, and traditionally favored by failed Poets, Game Show hosts with TV low ratings, Stand-Up Comedians? No suicide-note Jokes: Body Bags Anonymous! Montparnasse cemetery: Charles Baudelaire. And alas: Some War-Crime pit. A BABI-YA. Or (Tom Waits growling:) "Out on the edge of Potters Field."

Weeping Willows, rabid Lotus blossoms, Oak Leaf village festivals, or a sudden flight of Swallows, Pigeon shit on your windowsill: WHAT medievalist symbols, or the cult of ISLAM do U embrace, that WANT of your NEED...to "black out" your Fear?... No personal renaissance, no personality "resorgimento" in sight? Yet DEGAS, French Impressionist painter, accidently - snoozing on his sunlit balcony - fair BLINDED, did not succumb, turned his talent to sculpting bronze figurines that make Art collectors sweat & scream & Swiss Banks vaults hording Nazis gold burst at the seams?

Meantime, poor old "Weeping" whoopsies resides in your Soul never likely to release U, that GIG U felt-forced to plant long ago. Poet Arthur Rimbaud. "A Season in Hell". A souvenir, reluctant to lose now infuses all your Tomorrows: A stretch-limousine, a taxi-fare. A dinner at the "Cafe de la Paix", "Maxime's!", which U can no longer afford. And that flower-glint, that spark in once, your childlike eyes now fade to dark.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our LAD in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Jack the Ripper!"

 Our Man in Europe, Dave Delacroix: "Jack the Ripper!"

(Scene: An Edwardian/Victorian drawing room, late 1800s/early 1900s, cluttered with heavy drapery, flock wallpaper, early (Selfies?) B/W photographs on fireplace mantel, overdressed family connections lately demised.)

(Fast FWD to the present day/same decor?)

..."JUST WHERE IS HENRY, the Butler?" -said I to Betty the chambermaid, these days called an "Au pair". She replied, nervously, "I think he's in the Butler's Buttery (?); I think, SIR, on his Cellphone?". "His phone? ...And have U seen HIDE NOR HAIR of my Horse Stable Lads, in particular with my Mare?" -"With your LADY-Sir?... In the East wing. They share the same Internet service. That CHAT thingy?"

"TIK-TOK? SPRINT?" -I asked. Betty, "I dunno Sir!". (She had a Brooklyn/N.Y.C dialect.) I tried to clarify the situ.: "Did the BUTLER, Henry ever order a Handsome Cab in the name of SHERLOCK HOLMES? -Possibly using the alias of a certain Dr. Watson?" (Betty:) "I'm-ed DUNOON if I say so Sir! Gypsies, Taxis, UBER?" -was BETTY'S, whispered response; a conspirator in a Police-cover-up of a unique "Crime of the Century", horses' hooves on cobble stones, now stretch limousines, nose-candy & Epstein debauchee-jamborees? EDGAR ALLEN POE'S: "Tell-Tale Heart": How could, I be sure?

Jack the Ripper? Sherlock whoosits? EVIL transcends EONS! I too smoke a pipe. A long "Churchwarden". In my case, tobacco laced with opium. (Old local chemist/discreet drug dealer). Sometimes I'm in a profound ZONE for hours. S-why I can get no sense out of Betty, nor she can get no sense out of me? Cutting her Lilly-laced throat or lowering her wages has long since been on my mind? Yet with the advent of LUDDITES, Trade Unions, though a hundred years later, for better or worse, one has to go with the Times?

"Oh Betty?" I asked, upon her departure from my "Book Room"; "Just WHERE IS JACK, I mean, Henry the Butler?". (Her fist in her tiny mouth:) "Likely, Sir, erasing past E-mails, old "Selfies" on his Cellphone.". She nervously babbled on: "Sir, yes! The ones of U & 'IM dressed in Victorian Frockcoats, that is to say, the B/W Fotos of U with your Doctor's bag?" (So, I sighed:) "Jolly good Betty. Here is a brand-new Credit Card. Go buy yourself a Mercedez-Benz or a long holiday in the sun."

c. dave delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now Belize-small country by Mexico, Dave Delacroix:

 Our Man in Europe/Belize-lately/Dave Delacroix/Dave Delacroix:

"REQUIEM/ORATORIO!"

(It means "Shaddup/Die Young/Drink Up & BE somebody!)

"Requiem-Oratorio: When I Died."

...WHEN I DIED, THANKFULLY PENNILESS, mostly friendless, I'd squandered my last paycheck on whisky, betting on slow horses/fast women not to mention forgetting where I'd stashed my last 6-pack of beer? (The heartbreak!) My heir's inheritance (lol), a motley crew STILL cuss me to this day, even in HELL I hear their Banshee-wails/remorseful ghostly needy-cavernous echoes?  AHA!! They TOO R now dead but we don't share the same rooms. Reservations?  I got first dibs! I got to go to HELL first.

When I DIED, quiet affair, post sword fighting, Islamic-pirate-Corsairs gigs? And if those Muslims capture YOU!? Historically: It's all over now Baby Blue. However, Slavery is still (2026) a domestic pastime, immigrant kids from the Philippines, house servants within some Egyptian hell, the CULT of ISLAM, how do U DE-CULTIFY a zillion zealots? Your own crazy privileged daughter. Isn't that enough? = wotchagonnaDo?

...A World of WOES. (Brennus; in 390 BC, "Vae Victus!"): "Woe to the Vanquished!" - on his invasion/sack of Rome, or "Long John Silver/Treasure Island; "DEM DAT DIES'LL BE the Lucky ones!", yet eons later, Euro-patriots fighting those Genghis Khan-fast pony hordes, latter day Scientology or Druids' "Weeping Willow" Cults, we taught them how to BE confused, sometimes, historically, critically, we taught them how to die? (U had to BE there! /There's NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!) U frick THEM or THEY frick THEE? Better wish for a "home run" Babe Ruth!

When I DIED, NO PRISONERS. Easter Bunnies, festive trinkets tied up in a Bow. The reality? JACK PALANCE/movie: SHANE, puts on his gunslinger black gloves, shoots your teddy bear between the eyes, never thinks twice (it's alright) and AGAIN< no TAMBERLAINE, no CEASAR's holocaust in France & all life's partners in WAR, to this day prepared to dance. And in this grayish World do U (Poker-game) hold-Em or fold-Em. Do U protect your Own? Or step aside and get a stiff drink?

When I DIED, a good thing too! I took to my grave a forgotten tune which future Kids will never understand. WHO sings of Charlemagne, Alfred the Great or the Trojans at Thermopylae, some ancient surfing beach/Greek shore where birds in the woods at dusk still imitate the Trojans' death battle cries, an ALAMO, as WE TODAY, with guitar-voice SING OUT, trying to represent a record of Our Time, as we ALL like to think that we did some good, for better or worse, a nobodies-nobody...when I died. And like U, fair or foul, no favor, "Vae Victus" it's up to U.

c.dave delacroix. april. 2026,

 

Our Man in Europe, now residing in Belize, Dave Delacroix (David Michael Oxley -on Facebook): The Samauri's yesterday."

 Our Man in Europe/now in Belize/Dave Delacroix": "The Samauri's yesterday."

(Dedicato: Roger Armstrong, R.I.P.)

"The Samauri's yesterday."

...WHY IS IT WE R PRONE to look for Darkness when we, basking in the sunlight, a 'la once, from under a Mater's skirts furtively peep out? Allors!!! In the Mind's Eye, an epiphany/GOBSMACKED: Did HE who fricked the Lamb frick Thee!? And what's for Tea? Would U like it YIN or YANG?

GADZOOKS!!! To BE or NOT TO BE - the Marx Brothers make it seem SO easy like a Night at the Opera/DUCK SOUP - on the menu -  or those THREE STOOGES smacking rhythm on their knees; alas poor YORICK, ya look pretty silly, a grinning skull/graveyard backdrop, a Courtly Fool, this Life U left for WE?

How (WOW!) do I love thee, let me count the ways? G.P.S. gonna come in handy so my "Techie-Buds" say but WHERE DO all sorrows go a 'la "recherche du whoosits"? How is it we R compelled - genetically - to pander TO our memories, a "release" button disabled?

(Poet Rilke:) "Who, if I cried out"...winged frickers... ANGELS would hear be BAWL/call 1-800-I'm All fricked up!/We only use first names/phone or E-mail. At the TONE leave ya whoosits. We'll get back to U. (Don't worry. Be happy)

...We tilled the soil, but now no longer productive, almost (?) as if we have made PEACE yet it is a DESERT, this survival VICTORY of our latter-day needs, haunted (guilt-ridden?), that fearless youth who sailed the 7 Seas who loved & lost. Was there ANY HOPE that we would discover faraway Cathay, El Dorado or Ponce de Lyons Fountain of Youth? (Bit part in a Movie?)

And tomorrow & tomorrow. Tomorrow's eternal Tomorrow. Time's spinning web to un-seat Kings, tyrants, proud or brave, a monument for some famous jousting Knight or a renown Samauri's yesterday; a courtly lady laments in a Gothic Chapel or a Geisha maiden weeps by a Kyoto temple... as Tomorrow creeps upon our petty place.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "DEAD SOULS."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "DEAD SOULS." (Midnight-ravings/Whisky enhanced.)

(dedicato: Impoverished Children of the World)

"DEAD SOULS."

(1): ...WE R MARINE WEATHER, we R rain into shine, we R ever seeing, sometimes - given a voice - we R blind, blind on blind, instantly BLITZED, out of sight, an epileptics recovery from a profound FIT, post-frothing at the mouth not knowing.

Alas, there IS "no knowing". All the Heavens - like "California-Dreaming" -are leafy-brown & within your unique individuality: a Thought profound? -A "cafe au lait" at the SAVOY (London Hotel), The RITZ (Paris), Lady Diana Spencer's last pit-stop. Death on a Dime! (Mein Gott!)

"I LAUGHED! I thought I'd DIE! They'd bury me. Bury me? There'd be Worms! Worms? They'd TICKLE! Tickle? I'd laugh. I thought I'd die!" (But it ain't funny!) A mental in-continence on un-solid ground. A Rasputin in the sky? Pride's prejudice in the naked eye.

(2): ... Dead Souls. (Lady Diana?) A REGAL/Government "HIT JOB". Dead Souls. The ones we forget. Like GOGOL's novel, Dead Souls. We still count them as living currency and global-histories-holocausts, no worries, still culturally TAX DEDUCTIBLE to grease our tomorrows in the name of GOD, Patriotism or ROAR for our local football club.

Dead Souls. Rotted away & gone. THEY, who knew Winters, Sunshine, who cried or loved. Who marched for "freedom", who farmed the land, built citadels of industry; some, who sacrificed their lives for a valiant cause...who left a sweetheart behind to cry. Mothers against Drunk Drivers? Only Mammas really cry.

(3):... Who, brave enough, will Martyr for the Martyrs. Dead Souls. -Who paved the road U tread. Dead Souls. Do U honor? Give a thought? And at that inevitable "rendezvous" of Souls: DEAD, as they say, dead as a door nail, will U sing: "If I was a Carpenter & U were a Lady? Would U marry me anyway. Would U be my baby."...

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/SPY-DUDE: 006-1/2, now in Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Paradise Cove."

 ...Our Man in Europe/Spy-Dude/now in Belize/DAVE DELACROIX/Cousin of Jim Rockford P.! : Phone ringing: "At the tone...Jim/DAVE, your cheque bounced at the Chinese Happy Laundry. They (the Chinese) R NOT happy despite their business Logo. U might wanna relocate outta: "PARADISE COVE!"

(dedicato: William Houston, Daniel Washburn-R.I.P., Paul Z. Zermeno, Dan W. Randolph & John Scace/Malibu-California)

..."Paradise Cove."

... I CONTRACTED ...BUT NEVER SIGNED any legal document unless I was blind drunk/a good idea for a latter-day Legal get-out-clause?... Anyways, I contracted THROAT CANCER probably from breathing the same air as U, surfing the waves at Malibu'-Californias' Surfrider point or some Gal, kissing in wild abandon, POINT DUME!!! It happens. Contracted. Or, who knows, in some Brothel or Busking/Guitar-jangle on a street by a Texas Oil Refinery Industrial zone. Maybe a brutal SUNBURNT day hitch-hiking through USA-Nevada's ATOMIC BOMB TESTING GROUND? Don't ask. A Mariachis highways are endless.... Paradise Cove?  We'll get to that....As for my UNIQUE - we R ALL unique for better or worse -  my medical-Situ-diagnosis, it called for CHEMO/RADIATION/ they politely call it "treatment", a medical application whence my frontal-hairless scalp appeared - we talking VIKING LOCKS-gone!!! - and out of nowhere, though semi/quite dignified as if I'd just fought a noble Duel yet the (Cancer) treatment was/IS exhaustive/Radio (Radio? No AM/FM) therapy strips U down to your "boxers"< WHEELED/stretcher into an M.R.I. DEATH TUBE probably designed by some young M.I.T. "Frank-En-Steen".... (Aside note: I was STILL/rollie cigarettes, chain smoking throughout this gig/Cancer Doctors frowned? What's THEIR problem!?)

...Where was I? The DEATH TUBE. The M.R.I. "Frank-und-Steen", Frau BLUCHER-whinnying horses! Or IGOR, actor Marty Feldman with bulging eyes/probably a Clinic Assistant, hospital smocks & face mask?? Perfect disguise! GREEN LIGHT/RED LIGHT! Like stale cheese on the cracker, those "bits & bobs" they never forewarn, they applied a HEATED TENNIS RACKET- RADIOFACE-MASK over my face, NO WARNING! ~~ and just in case things go wrong - a death mask, a souvenir - "Sorry. He's DEAD. Better call Jim Rockford. AND AT THE TONE ask 'bout his Chinatown un-paid laundry/DAVE DELACROIX. Dave Delacroix? -We never heard of him; and sometimes - Japanese? - "Syonara-babee!"

Paradise Cove in the afternoon. A Burger at the "Sandcastle" bar & grill. No-one'll think U ever go slink in there? ('Cept to use the phone?). Tacos, easy on the chilli sauce. That new long-legged British Maitre'D. put wise to keep my Creditors away from me. They can impound my Trailer, but THIS Taco/hot sauce belongs to ME!

...But BACK to the CANCER DEATH TUBE, strapped in, (PRE-Corpse) launched into potential psycho-eternity as they slide me IN, thinking of Film-Noir Movies, GILDA, LAURA, BELINDA, BLENDA! Again, with the Japanese! -was there a BLENDA? Was I IN ONE? Jeeze--eeze! Yet a MACHINE, the M.R.I. gizmo/Death Tube (free admission) instantly ROARS, Cyclic-ROARS! And even within the molded Tennis Racket DEATH MASK, U observe flickering lights - ROAR! ROAR! ROAR! - a monotonous soundtrack punctuated with an accompanying staccato "BEEP! BEEP!

This optic/aural experience - in the DEATH TUBE -  it CAN get a tad more complex a'la a Dave Brubeck (Genius Jazz dude: "TAKE FIVE!") as the M.R.I. machine then progresses into "Tripple-Bob: BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!" And U got nuttin' to DO 'cept lie back, and being a Music man, instinctively I tried repeatedly to identify a "rhythm", so I'd tapped my foot, left or right, which one I don't recall but the ever-hovering Marty Feldman - with bulging eyes - Clinical Assistants - the dude/s who'd strapped me down for this M.R.I. Death Tube - advised me - they mumbled through their face masks - in ESPERANTO (?) better I didn't "foot-dangle/twiggle my tootsise less the Cancer-Radio-Sputnik-RADAR-fotos didn't come out alright?" And in horror I asked:  -Aeroflot! -"was THIS Russian built!?"

...But it was the WAY their insidious demeanor, cloaked/masked, they looked down upon me like I was an almost fresh CADAVER out of an Auschwitz Death camp tube, conferring ..."Has he still gotta pulse? Somebody give him a poke?" ...Victims/Patients sometime have good reason to get suspicious. Anyhow. All alas is now well. My Cancer IS in remission whatever that means. I guess the 'treatment' scored a goal. I still get to bark & whine, for how long, that's in the hands of the Universal Ju-Ju-Man. But I AM OF THE OPINION that the M.R.I. Death Tube machine should be outfitted with an overhead JUKE BOX display feature to stare at - to distract U from its ROAR/BEEP-BEEP!... Essentially, with a selection of tunes to placate We Patients. Perhaps "The Sound of Music-Movie-soundtrack" for sensitive souls, IGGY POPS, "I am the Passenger". for ex-junkies, DONOVAN's "Try & Catch the wind." for your average Space Cadet, or Frank Zappa's "Cosmic debris."? ...The latter for Surfer-Cats from Paradise Cove, Malibu-California... Some Point "DUME ROOM BAR" illuminati. Probably like U & Me. "HEY THERE BROTHER!!!"...

c.2026, Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Joseph & Jack on Patrol."

 

Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Joseph & Jack on Patrol."

I-MAH OUTTA MONEY, OUTTA MONEy, not the first time or (?) the last. I'm out of MONEY, today, it's not funny, no Plan-B flying from this mast. So, KEEL-HAUL ME, PRESS GANG ME to some other foreign creative voyage. Give me a fresh bottle of Whisky on a Tramp-Steamer outta Curaçao: Oh-Boy-Oh-Boy! 'CUZ I'm outta Whisky, got no money! Can any WILLIAM-MORRIS TALENT AGENCY Dicksta or remote Hoboken Dock-Rat, Hollywood producer hear this song?

I'M outta DUCATS, Pieces of Eights/Pieces of 4ths if U prefer. Got not a Farthing, a silver Scheckel, my throat is dry -not a song in mah heart. I knew a Gal in San Francisco, one in Tobago, another in Belize? But what's it gets me? I spent my money, like a Jack London, a Joseph Conrad, a refugee, HACKS U never heard of who wrote books, scraped Alaskan soil for gold or sailed the seven seas. 

Can I SELL U my personal Brass Sea-Compass for a decent bottle of Rye? I'll tell U stories, magic tales of adventures of those pacific isles, the legend of NOSTROMO or KURTZ up the Congo river, darkest Africa, I sailed with these boys, got in and back alive, gimmie a bottle of GIN & I'll tell U no lies.

I'Mah outta MONEY, it ain't funny, U see me a doorway beggar. Glitterati-Skid-Row/sunny side of the boulevard. Please note my Thrift store fashion, my teeth a 'rotting it wasn't always my style? Once I was LORD JIM, leastways his Bosun. We crafted/skimmed thru Coral, sandbanks, tidal treachery. We hunted Ivory, DIAMONDS, EMERALDS, those barbules U could feast on in the palm of your hand! And film shoots outta Palmdale, CA. Confiscated USAF experimental plane crashes ON FILM. I think I squirrelled some away in some recording studio in Burbank? S-why the F.B.I. still got me on File?

But BACK to Jack London. Back to Joseph Conrad! Where did they go to? MOVIELAND: "Call of the Wild", "APPOCALYSE NOW!"...YO! Just look at my weathered hands. Oh-boy! Oh Boy! For an extra bottle of Whisky ...I could tell U more...

Jack London of course, similar kind of fish, had he & Conrad met: Would have been a drunken pistol/fisticuffs/sword duel? (TICKETS for THAT I could 'ave sold?). We R talking eye-witness accounts here-buddy/park up the Whisky...Anyways. Out of (BRRR!) Alaska, probably the USA's future Millennia's Mass Prison Camp, Jack L. getting a nod - sans no dueling with Joseph C. - adventured to warmer climes. His short stories R a kid's adventure delight!

...It's funny how my throat gets dry...For another $10s....Or a $50,000 advance for this Screenplay/Movie 5% rights? ...I'd tell U more.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, Dave Delacroix: "A Lover's Swan lament."

Our Man in Europe, Dave Delacroix: "A Lover's Swan lament." 

IN COLOGNE/KOLN...R U WOOGIE, R U WIGGLE-WOOGIE, R U BOOGIE-WOOGIE at all? R U BLINKY, twinky-TWINKLY, no need to punctuate it out for one and all? Do U SNEEZE or do U WHEEZE; do U dance the ROE-BOE? & if u don't, $20-a shot I'll show U how to freeze on the dance floor. (DO DAH ROBO!!!)

R U MAGIC, do U SWIRL, cast off those high heel shoes! (Red ones?) I thought they were never, but something to throw at a Bull, Gigolos at the "WasserfalL-disco", ten-a-penny. Can U MAGIC? MAGIC-MAGIC!!! - sway within your OWN charms? Do U have a (Song, dave Delacroix: "Fire Exit) fire alarm? -like a TAZER!!! -Tits & Teeth Babee!

R U BOO-GA-LOO, (subversive TWIST & Shout), a "COLD WAR" Berlin tremble? Do U tunnel under the WHA?), "A whiter shade of Pale", the Gal that U wish/ought to be. The Gal who came IN from the Cold? (More Boogaloo). Did U grow OLD just like me?

...R U now WHOOPSIE-DO but nobody (?) gets your Gig. Always nodding your head to all THESE FRICKS U meet? Will they EVER see the, will they ever see the Lady U R and - in their lecherous eyes - the Star U were meant to be.

 Did we ever farewell hug or kiss, did U ditch or die over YOUTH, a remiss. Beyond Pscyber-space. The Internet: Do U wiggle-waggle, forget & leave me in this lonely place. Spinning hearts love into eternity. No fault. Could it ever be? But our own.

...Ya gotta feed a Heart. But a hungry heart alas... ain't got no home. So, lament. Prozac or tomorrow's sunrise? It's always tough when U lose your life-long Swan. Yo! It's not funny. This pond-life in which mostly we dwell, as the years go by gets lonely.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, Dave Delacroix: "DA MOMMAS & DA PAPPAS!"

 Our man in Europe, Dave Delacroix "DA MOMMAS & DA PAPPAS!"

...On a Mexican "ADO" City-to City bus, Merida to Chetumal, 200 miles, a CANCER treatment survivor (MIO!) with severe hair loss, a 1944 "AUSCHWITZ-SELFIE", skeletal features, an image of despair. No Song, no Guitar but back on the road to someplace, no name, no destination...miles & miles of jungle-green, fast backward-bus speeding, no glimpse of the highway road signs. Speeding along. A Belizean BRO, Lionel Forte, tall guy, holding my Cancer-limp hand.

"All the leaves R brown & the sky is grey" - here - Corozal-Belize - across the street we hear it day by day like NATURE'S LUNGS, just sometimes an occasional breeze: (Singing: "And if I didn't tell her...") What discretion/modesty in some Mind's Chinatown, Shanghai, Paris, Milano, your legendary background, who's to say it was only California dreaming?

I went into a Church. I cooked a "Coq au Vin". A DICK inflated with wine incumbent rhyme. I wason a "mission", Psycho Missionaries one & al, their wisdom like JOKES, wherever their punch line falls. Still, "all the leaves R brown. A Greek Chorus of HARRADIANS - old gals in your local Corozal-Belize drunk tanks -  yet just WHO SCARS your Twilight ZONE, your projected 11th hour solitude, and later a Cognac or 2, pet-felines. Da Mommas & da Pappas: A crescent moon.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. 

Our Man in Europe, now a 'la GREAT GATSBY residing in Belize: Dave Delacroix: "Li'lle Old BYE-POLAR me."

 Our Man in Europe NOW - a 'la Great Gatsby residing in Belize: Dave Delacroix: "Lil'le Old Bye-Polar Me."

...I was born - To CHER's song, "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves": I was born in a camper-trailer down Arkansas-way. Broad beans & rice kept our Childhood alive, & with Banjo lessons I learnt to survive; other folks had much worse stories than, than Li'lle Old Bye-Polar me.

...NOT up to much at UNI-VERSE-CITY (Little Rock), my pronounced "attention deficit disorder" somehow kept me in Key; I never (1960s) protested, didn't March for any fashionable Cause. Under wraps I kept - now diagnosed - quite oblivious, medically: "ALL Fricked-Up Syndrome", and by this (A.D.H.D) nature I discreetly prevailed in its Socio-survival "low key". YUP! -Li'lle old bye-polar me.

...Sometimes I wander, er...WONDER just what in Life I missed? Was I Dyslectic or prone to bleak or stark ephemeral flashes of Genius? -Albeit the mundane, arrogantly throwing away a winning Lottery ticket or some hot gal's kiss. Yet All in ALL I thank the Gods I - in esse - I wasn't THERE or bare naked in Life's Carnival of Souls, or sometimes amongst (WOKE) Fools? - Li'lle old BYE-BYE-Bi-Polar me.

And now the World's a-glare. WARS, sadly not out of fashion. PEOPLE STARE not knowing Tomorrow's justice. I AM sometimes just NOT there. And I rarely go ONLINE'. I never answer Fb messages. I never answer the Cell phone. It rings? I just check the Time. In the World's Court of Justice, I will probably be Tried, absolutely GUILTY!  -burnt at the Stake, accused of MADNESS-NON-COMPLIANCE: There U have it: Li'lle old Bi-Polar Me.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix...This Post inspired by Actress Jan Sterling cabaret-performing song "It "ain't gonna be me." in the Film-Noir movie, THE NAKED JUNGLE, 1954. /Movie on Utube. Like U, like me, the BUGS keep eating at me. WOTCHA-GONNA-DO!?

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. Sometimes we get tired. Touble IS, it's people -for all our disabilities - allow the NAZIS/now Religio-ISLAMISTS to arrive!...

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, near Mexico, Dave Delacroix: "BRIGADOON!"

 Our Man in Europe (James Bond incognito wearing Thrift Store clothes-disguise), now in Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Brigadoon!"

(dedicato: Johnnie X in Glasgow. He showed me - late 1970s- the town/Glasgow/Rene Mcintosh architecture, Glasgow University, Gibson St. for YOWSA Indian Curies, the (Pub) Stonehaven: Arrayed with 200 Single Malt Whiskies. (We made a dent in that?) We actually met/worked together out on the Oil Rigs in the North Sea off Scotland/Norway. Oil Platform construction. Wild West stuff. Helicopters landing/taking off day & night. Oil Rig construction in those days was a battlefield. Dead or Disfigured bodies airlifted OUT daily. Accidents. Fires! Guys going NUTS with Fire Axes! BIG SHOT Texan Engineers whining over the radio waves to their wives in Scotland: Short-wave, everyone could hear. And cabin Sleepwalker, Epilepsy-dudes? All the OIL COMPANIES, Chevron, Texaco, etc. All they wanted was semi-skilled cannon fodder...Johnnie & I survived. We don't whine about PSTD. That's for pussies, As for Military pussies who SIGNED ON to USE a Gun, can U spell BULLIT!!!?... JOHNNIE & MY own enemy was raw nature, 90ft waves...Nobody (THE STARE? HORROR!) walks away from that; 200 colleagues, upturned, drowned on a North Sea barge, seated/gathered in the cinema room watching "The Sound of Music" or some Porn flick?  Lads we knew from previous offshore construction gigs. They didn't have a chance. We mourned these BROS, pitched in our Wages for their bereaved families... we didn't whine or need therapy. OUT THERE, the North Sea, U know what U R up against. Big DANGER-BIG BUCKS! ....BURRRT there IS..."Brigadoon!" (Swirl-Swirl-Swirl!)...The Ghosts in our lives. Do we get to meet them again? And if so?

"BRIGADOON!"

...FORGIVE ME. I WAS PREPPING a "Coq au vin" (chicken stew-thingy), chop-chop veggies, slice-slice and all necessary condiments, VINO-Blanco, coriander, black pepper, bay leaf, oregano, onion-garlic, a potpourri of gastronomic (Rive Gauche!) meets April Fool's Day, easy on the DIJON?

It's always a FACIA to unexpectedly rendezvous with your OWN "Brigadoon", that legend-SOTTISH-myth, that New years' (Hogmanay?) whoosits enjoyed with Haggis, a rotting cheese, washed down with a Single Malt (Whisky)?

That "single malt" served sparingly, we serve to the BAIRNS in a teaspoon, the Gals in a Glasgow "STEAMIE" doing laundry, but on a Saturday night we "highland Fling", their Joy, our Ladies, is our respectful CLAN-HUZZAH~! St. Mungo! his voice perhaps caresses the river, the bonnie Clyde.

And your OWN- CLANSMAN, "Och-aye!" my Highland brethren, did U wreck Bonnie Prince Charlies soul, invaded Egland, got as far as the Midlands then PULLED out his Soul; probably, in the way of things, Royalty - incestuous - dog eat dog - even normal families have been known to murder their own, but I guess it'll never get U an INVITE to Brigadoon:

BRIGADOON! BRIGADOON!  We ECHO, that legendary Scottish Myth that only APPEARS but once a year, when bagpipes WAIL, the Princesses of the Highlands SWIRL, a season-exclusive, that Holy "CEILIDH", a Club, a refuge of honored souls to re-enact a sacred dance, all enshrined, to sanctify the ghosts of the past who annually gather, a BRAEMAR, a Brigadoon to rejuvenate, to ne-er forget the BRAW LADS who died at the battle of Culloden mowed down by the English King Georges bayonets, musket & ball.

It is an uncanny TATTOO, Edinburgh's annual Castle Pipe & Drum/marching regiments, annual HOLLER-BAH-LOO- where-in-UNDER me-thinks lurks that BRIGADOON to prick the conscious of Edinburgh's-TATTOOED-tomorrow's fools? For better or worse, Scotland has SCARS, what bleak legacy has known extreme deprivation, persecution, a latter-day KILT emblem, a TARTAN, a Sporran to hold ya ducats, a few mists & yarns. "Lochie-Ness", the high road or the low (Loch Lomond) ...

...and what remains in their (the Scots) of this RENTAL we share of our brief eternity? A BRIGADOON! A Brigadoon. A bridge to a one night's paradise. A St. Walpurgis night. An Equinox? The stuff of Poets locked in a room where only imagination's Swallows escape, their wings, noiselessly, rise into the sky, Pipes wail across the Glens?

Brigadoon! Brigadoon! Hogmanay! That night of the year. A mystical place, Lochs, Scottish mists, then smoke/bonfires but ONLY ONCE, no "Cock-a-leekie Soup" only your Truth. Invited to this mystic Ceilelh, as highland ladies dance around your "sticking post" to decide if your Highland heart be true or false.

Brigadoon. Brigadoon. Nary for SOME -Joy! But for OTHERS? A bleak dawning comes too soon.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. (April Fools day.)