Fernando Rivas (rivers125@aol.com) is a Cuban-born composer, arranger and producer, who has worked with Vincent Persichetti, Tito Puentes and many other musical luminaries. You've probably heard some of his work on Seseme Street and other television ventures.




MIAMI NOCTURNE iii


I

'Yo soy un hombre sincero'
sings the wind
blowing from 'la Saguesera' to Kendall, cold, caressing
from the old guy in a 'guayabera'
to the neat young stud right out of GQ
in his BMW, ready to cut some perfect deal.
And the rhythm of the airport
jet engines roaring
sweeping over my City
connecting my City to a world of heart and jungle
tropic and snowpeak
a world foreign, yet mine too
mine now
ours now
hesitant, in undefined freedom.

' Un hombre sincero'
a true voice in an untrue world
where the sales-pitch is commandment.

What have you got, Miami?
What have you got for me today?

You got me locked out
looking for a way in.
You got me in impossible love
showing me that I already decided
telling me with your sunsets
that other choices can or should have been made.

You got me facing finality and eternity
flute and congas in my head
running into old friends
that smile shared memory
and move on, unaffected.

Miami, 'un hombre sincero' -
Can you use one?
You got me, heart and spirit
corazon de melon
besitos de chocolate
un cafecito, un cortadito
Gloria Estefan smiled at me
Sang me to sleep
Drove away today.

Oh God, Miami,
You got me like you shot me with your bullets
shot me with your beautiful women
and the riots and the fires
and those Cuban girls
a thousand dark eyes looming over shelves
in the Dadeland Mall.

They don't remember, Miami
But I do
When seventh street, north-west, ran two-laned
through weeds, forest, lake
and ended

Oh yeah, I remember
When Kendall was swampland
when you and I were children
and love was just an innocent dream
and cocaine was far away
like New York snow.

I answered the ad in the paper.
I came.
'Yo soy un hombre sincero.'
Am I over-qualified?
Is my taste in music too philosophical?
Should I stop asking the salesgirls at Sears if they've read Plato's
Republic?
Should I worry whether Beethoven answered the questions
in the quartets?
Will I run into Bela Bartok's ghost in Hialeah
in some Cuban sandwich shop humming Lecuona?
How far can I throw this disk?
(Remember, I am made of stone
and have stood thus for centuries
currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

C'mon, what have you got for me?
Don't tell me.
More clear blue skies and pretty white clouds.
More neat little houses and neat little gardens.
More hypersweet love ballad
C'mon, Miami...
What have you got?

II

We got the best music in all South Florida coming your way today here on Power-Watts-Potencia-Hispana, la mejor, la que le trae su musica, Julio whining above the traffic on Collins, Guns N' Roses drilling through white concrete underpinning of the Palmetto, Chirino expanding the universe of son montuno con Samba!
We got Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Colombians, on Calle Ocho looking for work on street corners their hard eyes longing to synchronize with the sterile beating of our thirst for a Jaguar with leather seats and a house on Star Island.
We got, we got
sandwich Cubano
we got
love for you, my friend
dark guilty love, passionate impossible love, love
unchecked by boundaries
fueled by regret
we got the Woman
and the feeling
and the backdrop of ocean and palm trees
all the hopes and all the choices.
Hey! we got
Fidel's ghost floating now on disembodied black-and-white film, doves flying around him and dark thunderstorm skies making yet another anti-yankee speech while roses bloom in the back yard, in the garden where time has never moved and Truman still ponders Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and I ponder existentialism, a high-school graduate with starry-eyed deceptions of grasping the ultimate unified theory, looking up at the dawn coming up softly behind the tree that has long ago been chopped down, like all my hopes and all my certainties
We got
Virgil coming to lead me through
Lead me, Virgil, to that celestial world, baby,
where Beatrice waits for me, daiquiri in hand
over in the Grove,
Drop some of that Dante on me Virgil!
Aeneid me, please!
I need some of that classical Michaelangelo history
marble statues and sistine chapel infinity to root inside me,
'cause this Miami sand is too soft, honey
too soft.

III



By the canal, water quivering gently in the morning light:
the duck universe.
Ducks paralyzed by my entrance
Then accepting me
Going on about their duck business
this perfect lawn, fenced in by condos
their world
in which, this morning, I am an intruder.


They observe me with shutter-like eyes
that betray nothing
and convey only the perception of universe upon itself
chemicals built geometrically pyramidically
to thrust through water
and the low distant roar of the airport
is just static,
they have known the art of flight forever
and are much more sincere and perfect in their execution
though here on the ground they waddle like old women
with clogged arteries.

The ducks consider me before granting an audience
not unlike Roman cardinals weighing the mysterious request of some aspiring
Vatican visitor.
They refer me to the Sistine Chapel where Adam is
a perfect vision
the apple of God's eye.
But I refuse this as too simplistic
and the ducks know I am not easily dismissed.
They walk to and fro in complete acceptance of
their duckhood
still dubiously pondering my audience
conferring with an elder, larger and darker
who finally approaches me where I sit
head-on, his hammer-like head bobbing
waddling with some effort
he squawks in my direction
pointing to the overwhelming obstacles posed by
existence
i.e. old age, sickness, dementia, etc.
some of which he himself
seems to have experienced (not unlike Michaelangelo)
first hand.

And I see the eyes of the duck are emerald green
the green of golf fields, well manicured
maintained for the whim of the well-to-do.
I see the promise of flight, the threat of falling.
I am granted a vision of overwhelming certainty
that yes, oh yes, I am here
this is no dream
and when the tree falls in the forest
you bet your life it makes a sound:
Molecules are thrust about
because we call that sound
because we call this living
and we go on with it
and yes, oh yes, its a fight
and the risk of the fall is always there
as well as the promise
of spreading wings, and rising.

How can I help but love?
When its in every biological act
in those golf-green eyes
a love I don't understand
a faith beyond cathedrals
a wisdom that is not human
because we call it love
but what is it really?
The geometric, pyramidic ascension
of atoms
Molecular substructure and infrastructure
Of this universe
caught in the synapse between eye and brain
in this duck's head
in my head, too
like a counterpoint
to which I sense the harmonic
underpinning
the rock-and-roll power chords
the tutti finale
where the duck hears only
the quiet hiss of an approaching rain storm
and therefore eternity
in the calm assurance
of the unquestioned.

IV




As I drive by
I see a boy entering a house.
Opens the door.
Then disappears.
Its a neat little Miami house
inside a neat little Miami garden
And that boy could be me
Correction
Was me
some aeons ago
before the Woman and the Beach
before Michaelangelo.

That boy enters the house I cannot see
I am already moving away
His mother is cooking something
the smell of which will travel with him
Travelling with me now
on this road
Because Virgil has failed me
Having lost me
Side-stepping into and Adult Book Store on Bird Road
(Adams and Eves on screen:
California bodies fucking in ecstasy
Rock-and-roll hymns to the doubly penetrated female
Sandwiched
in and out
front and back
Flesh sculptures flexing the rhythmic universe
white and black
to excite and further satiate us.
Adams and Eves move in perfect harmony
unlike our own pitiful
bald-headed, fat-bodied, pot-bellied, scarred, limping, winded, aging, dying,
atrophied, knotted, gnarled, twisted, imperfect
fucking
which is an act
of, need I say it?
smarmy, syrupy, Julio Iglesias love. Your everyday run-of-the-mill
devastating, life-giving, death-razing emotion: love!)

And when that boy goes into that house
he shuts me out forever
he leaves me in the valley of death
wanting you
knowing you don't want me.
I am defined by rejection.
Driving always down this same road
that I myself designed.

Jose Marti rides his horse
Sculptured for eternity
'Yo soy un hombre sincero': no more.
Now I sell air-time, I sell diet products,
insurance to retirees, cars.
I build and re-build a cyclic world of
Glass towers
to shield me from the sun.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Riding black limmos
pass me on I-95.
Brickell Avenue I sing to you,
and turn off that radio, child,
It only brings me memories
Of a sad day
when Woman was only Woman
and Michaelangelo dreamt
of heaven
and Dante sang at that club over on South Beach,
you know the one.

Good night, Miami.
For I am your Son.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .




Fernando Rivas

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