Our Man in Europe, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "The Lotus Eaters."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "The Lotus Eaters."

...(In Italian:) "Dove' mi amici, Andrea Squizz, Andrea Speroni, dove' Paolo Bossallini, mi ragazzi-Piacenza? (In French:) "Ou sans mon/mes frere, Loic Vauvert-Guillaud, le Marquis Jean Debats, ARTIST Isabel Pesoa, where R U now? (FAURE'S Requiem: "Libero mi, Domini")

...That I should live in a tropical paradise haunted by "memories-guests", an UN-forgetting of RUMOURS in Time's ripples, awash, washed upon a distant shore? (Mozart aria:) "La mia Dorabella! Tra-la-la-la-la!".

(In French:) "Ou sans les neigh d'antan?" the Concert ROAR which drove me to this "sticking post"; palm trees, swimming pool, a BIGGER SPLASH: Ciao-bene! Leonardo Gianone - DOG R BARKING! - yet our DEAD R DEAD in yesterday's tomb?

Bloodied Death's scythe, never unemployed, cuts us down, sometimes with a CRY, sometimes with a SONG; Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Poets with pen & paper to chill/HAIL a Life that THEY TOO could not fill?

(German Poet, Rilke:) "Who if I cried out amongst the Order of the Angels?" and what chance have WE to "strut & fret", squirrel our cognoscente/adversity, MAKE SENSE, incidentals, an ephemera, a Jack-in-a-Box talent, the UN-talented dream?

Weekenders. Six string (guitar) complainers. Drunks on a Saturday night. Lotus Eaters looking for a bigger splash. No where in sight. Yet WE Carnivale a'la Tomorrow-Tomorrow. Lives measured in cigarette butts, Cognac glasses, E-mails, perhaps deluded, but... for NOW...WE happy few...

c.2026. Dave Delacroix. 

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delaroix: "DJUMBI/VOODOO!!!"

 Our Man in Europe, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "DJUMBI/VOODOO!!!"

.... DJAMBI/VOODOO, the Devil/Saint of thee WHO R YOU OF YOU, the WHO? -Witch Doctor, rattle human bones, a JU-JU MAN, a bewitched Mamma, put a spell on U?

Does she Kiss or Curse; are U immune?

DJAMBO/VOODOO, an aboriginal dance by a sparkling fireside, a hieroglyphic, burnt into ROCK (90,000 years old). A Gerontius-mammas womb, barren but scared with legend?

DJUMBI/VOODOO, mosquito bites. When "No-see-ums'" (invisible bug swarms) rash, tropic nights.  Razzle skin yet later to roar? (They NEVER tell jokes?)

Every picture - a story. Every WORD - a holy moment. Something good friends share OR a Boomerang to resonate your ski-whiff hollowness in the air? (Do U OWE anybody Money?)

DJUMBA/VOODOO, an almost silent drum, pulsating, stirring the pot, ripples on Logic, a canker that will not stop to divine the divinity that drives our furnace hearts.

BELLS R RINGING Dick Whittington! Go back to LONDON. Maybe one day U'll be Lord-Mayor! Leastways VOODOO the Cat in your knapsack! Djambi, Jambu, Djamba, Voodoo! Just U.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Love in a HOODIE!"

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Love in a HOODIE!"

...A BRUTAL MORNING, MISTY, THAT DISCORD romantica, a hot knife thru butter, that outside-kiss that sometime can UN-kiss; cold lips left behind...despite spiritual gain?

A brutal morning, a glass half empty, a glass half full. An array of Martinis now scattered on a patio glass table, an ice-rink tableau that shimmers your mind. The Big Lebowski, out of "White Russians". The Great Gatsby out of Caviar/Champagne.

...Like a brutal morning, not a "Bloody Mary" in sight. Love's retreat, LOVE in a "HOODIE" seeking refuge in shadows from which Love can hardly rebound. A Ragtime piano, echoing in a wing of your Villa. No song in your heart.

Indeed! A melancholy, a stark dawn with a LAMIA-hiss, a Cat's invective "ME-OWWW", a surround of breeze-thieves to chip away a love once found. The Lady across the lake. The Lady IN the lake. Ephemeral love. Time, the great leveler. For Wednesdays Child, nobody asks why.

There's no JOY in the knowing. There's no joy in the JOY! Joys grape BUSTED, suddenly just a toy. Like a brutal morning, a high wind to Jamaica - palm trees erratically swaying! -  to vacuum Loves paradise that U once knew.

As swimming pool ripples that no longer bubble & sway. A dysfunctional Calypso, an unwanted desperate song of songs? Still, the glass half empty, halfway full; clouds will gather, tropic skies-pre-HURRICANE arrival, like Love in a "Hoodie" on a misty morning...grow silent, lull.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

OUR MAN in EUROPE, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Dylan Thomas Blues."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Dylan Thomas Blues."

(Dedicato: Carol Aniello & Nadia Sellers)

"Dylan Thomas Blues."

...NOW WHEN I WAS A LAD without a thought, bandaged, padded below kneecaps from School days RUGBY fields, shins kicked & knocked from SCRUM & ball-pass to score a "TRY!"  on a Yorkshire's Winter's hard turf yet COULD - for a 13-yr old School-Blazer/Tie, with "Piss-off!" attitude survive! And after a cup of hot BOVIRIL, a "Good show old boy!" from the team Captain. Teammates slap on your back? A 3-hour "CHARA-BANC" (old bus) ride back to the ranch/old school, singing/bellowing out RUGGER SONGS, oddball renditions of popular tunes, incl. Johnny Cash's: "Cocksuckers in the Sky."

Now when I was a LAD, School Daze, School TRIPS to LONDON, satchel-Sandwiches & flask of Tea, to go see Nelsons column, ROYALTY CRYPTS & GALLERY PORTRAIT- ROYAL SELFIES, and the British Science Museum where, we then ignorantly glanced at our forefathers - Sheffield STEEL towns - industrial ingenuity: "TOY-R-US" in iron & greed?...BRAIN DEAD at this point but the icing/cake of the London School Trip gig, an hour to escape, back of the British Museum, the Grand Russell Hotel-Bloomsbury with an Irish Barkeep who - I guess? - needed our shillings and who, after 2 Pints of Ale, joined in with a Dublin brogue: "Ghostriders in the Sky!" Her name was Brenda.

Now when I was a LAD, put TO, after serious schoolgirl seduction AT SCHOOL put my hand up her 14-yr old skirt which at SOME POINT she thought was a "might forward"; it got me dragged into School-Headmasters quarters, a place, a DUDE nobody ever saw...Yet BONKING in haystacks, BONKING in the fields: "Country Matters!" In the rural 1960s nothing seemed wrong. Decades LATER I always felt sorry for those URBAN Kids. Wall to wall people. "Can I take U for a Burger. Take U to the WIMPEY BAR/coffee? "I hear the KINKS R playing at the PALAIS...but WE R under-aged/no chance to BONK?" (Dead Cocks in the Sky!)

Now when I was a LAD, "FERN HILL, STRAWBERRY FIELDS, BLACK BERRY WAY", unbridled, I'd weekend exercise the local famers horse and more often as not, a vivacious School gal pal riding pillion. We'd trot then canter, tear up the local golf course greens then gallop, golf balls of anger whizzing by our heads, nary a thought of what tomorrow would bring. An Under Milkwood. A Dylan Thomas blues. We countryside Lords of the flies. We Ghostriders in the sky. We childhood Ghostriders in the sky.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe/now BELIZE/Dave Delacroix: "The Death of Julius Ceasar."

 OUR Man in Europe now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "The Death of Julius Ceasar."

...THERE'S ALWAYS A JUDAS, a (Shakespear's) Othello's IAGO to muddy the waters in your inner circle who cares nothing BUT for their own advancement, a steppingstone to POWER, GOLD, an EGO-inflated, insidious GLORY! A people-scum, social parasite, a rash under your skin.

There's always a TRAITOR, a worm in the bud, and within; a festering EGO, it's PANIC/self-survival to articulate/swear on a stack of religious texts, a bloody sack of LIES...to prevail and elevate a tomorrow, to widen the gap twix U & your wife? The mouse in the wainscotting. The Spider. The reptile. Their EGO-surrounds, a blight, the rat hanging on until your ship goes down. An inverted sincerity. That smeared-fake cosmetic, the tears of a Clown...

...A fracture, encapsuled-TIME, a ripple, as Empires Built-Empires fall down. An Emperor's Red Cloak, an ancient diplomatic dispute, just another CEASAR stabbed 29 times on the steps of the temple of Pompey-Maximus (NOW LOCATED in Rome's Piazza de Argentino) ...presently an urban refuge for Rome's stray Cats...

...within & without, Ceasar's nemesis/competitor (Pompey-Max) who was harried into latter day EGYPT! Decapitated on arrival! (Egyptian Immigration Check-In). As for Ceasar, a Texas Grassy Knoll assassination, (Piazza di Argentino) a political cause & effect, the outcome was the same, these final acts/thoughts for Poets to exclaim: (Shakespear's Cassius): "Brutus! The fault lies NOT in our stars but in ourselves!" Histories epitaph UN-worthy of Vaudeville. Yet does it not hook a corner in your mind?

These last swirling Julius Ceasar's thoughts/dynamics race, exacerbate. A BRIGHT LIGHT? A Ghost-ECHO! BETRAYAL! ...Histories mortal CLOAK leaves no-one alive. As ever my LADY ROSA, my Housekeeper's birthday present, a Panama hat, here in Corozal-Belize and in Time's ETERNITY things that may survive - forget about JESUS! -  or Caesar/Emperor., Pompey Maximus., my friends & MIO; (my Panama hat?), or my Guitar, that ZIPPO LIGHTER! Uncanny how our life's trinkets outlive the lot!

Ceasar's bloodied TOGA... Did some faithful Slave/attendant carry it away to create a hidden-ethereal shrine that now fires the tokens our own imaginings?...

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Les Enfant Sauvage!"

 Our Man in Europe, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Les Enfant Sauvage." 

(dedicato to Roger Armstrong, Sergei & Jeff Dahl./R.I.P./my Bros.)

"Les Enfant Sauvage..."

...NEEDLES IN A DOLLS PUPPET HEAD like devils in the fog in search of all the things that grate your SOUL-LOST, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;  and all OUR YESTERDAYS now riddled in Idealism, rusting-fragile, brittle, a SAMPAN, broken masts, yet with  full tide, floating, drifting into some harbor, a ship  manned only by a crew of  RATS to infect some haven, a Whitby, Harfleur, a Bordeaux with a NOSFERATU and a daughter's-daughter seductive VIRUS from a Vampire to infect your neck? A Cargo.

SPIKES in a Dolls neck. How animated do U feel? Petticoats, shawls & lace. To RAVAGE mascara, face cream, powder, beauties restitution, a'la a mortuary of existence-death memory-struck-down by generations, U raise-RESURRECT generations, witness their dance, dancing the Dance-Macabre, a Dia de la MORTE in your tomorrows MIRROR face? A FACER!!! ZAP! It sometimes it assails, think on, a faraway vista of a SAMPAN, the solo promise in SOUL U needing a Wrap, a Scarf around your neck to keep you warm from your Children's wrath in the cold South China Seas? What needs your need? Children's screams?

Needles in a Dolls head or neck. A JU-JU Man. Economy Witchdoctors. State Medication. Petticoats of Lace. To SAUVAGE mascara, creamed face, a mortuary for the dead, memory-cold, struck down by the generations U raise. Do U Do? Do U Do! Do THEY dance the dance, DO THEY dance the Dance MACABRE, "facia et Facie", "Mano et Mono", a "Dia dela Morte", your mirrors FACE? Who sings? "Les Enfant Sauvage", do they sing for U? Or like some Ulrike Meinhof's, her BAMBULE. A domestic chaotic-a. TRASH just what they see. Trash what they feel. WAILING out a Song: "A Whiter shade of Pale!"

 Sometimes U gotta find away from your own Childhoods rage, that's what I tell my Kids; that NEEDLE U felt poked in your head and that fire...your Childhoods blaze. As for your PUPPET HEAD, wooden top wobbles in your broken Puppet Dolls head. U wiggle through the years. Duck when U gotta duck; but always - give EM shit - GET SAVAGE!!!...and come out fighting!

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, noe BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Swansong!"

 Our Man in Europe, now BELIZE, Dave Delacroix: "Swansong!"

...WE HAVE ALL DIED A HUNDRED times AS IN a rehearsal, a repetitive SOUNDCHECK: "1-2! Check 1-2!" before our finale, that swansong concert? ...Fluttering in limelight, we have spread our talent (?) like gypsy moths before an audiences' hypnotic gaze, flickering "avec" guitar or tambourine with gossamer wings, some pirouette, some drunken stagger by a microphone stand, some smashed guitar, some mosh-pit dive into that unpredictable YAAH! of Hollywood fame.

Some found, some resound, some burnt out, some strive. A lounge gig to heaven until U die. Some WAIL; some sing. Some walk on by. Some, a "strut & fret" into their own magic hour. Perhaps their finest hour never to know? Many of course sail into a World of no-return leaving behind a guitar in the trunk of a burnish Mustang auto, a change of clothes. Some weed.

Then one day some clown in a Hollywood studio who ordinarily just makes the coffee, dusts off an old 2-inch tape: Some song some kid begged to record, plays it by, a snippet in front of INDUSTRY STARS, Robert PLANT, Rod STWEART, or Stevie NICKS. Their geriatric fading talent gleams in their eyes, a lifetime of glory, fame, mega-wealth un-disguised, pounce like vultures, the star making machine, once again, UN-paralyzed! 

We have ALL died a hundred times, yet after we are gone, a legacy of DAZZLE may touch your humble resting place and sing your "besties" song? Word travels fast to Heaven. My old girlfriend, a now aging ballerina, an inspiration for the song, heard of its recording-resurrection, sauntered by, announced herself, but the Studio slammed the door in her face!

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.