Havin’d fcukin enuf of the
sentimentality longing melancholic conundrums including sadness, reminiscing and bleeding cold shivers down his hardened spine ..
He clambered down the gangplank and got his sorry ass on the road towards the high street..
‘Twas a Saturday night on the Caribe Isla“ El Amanacer”, a hot humid summer night as hurricane Matilda had swept past a day earlier having rocked the place like a massive fiery dragon with a two hundred mile long lashing tail, taking away roof tops, shaving palm trees and making the parakeets shriek with jumbled feathers; the slim Bharat Natyam dancer lost her story telling as her jingles broke loose and collared around a lethargic Siamese cat who turned bloody alert hissing , the monkeys howling with chattering teeth fled upon to purple mountain their young screaming , the donkeys collapsed braying and the horses bolted into the raging sea; some married dolphins ..their other hoofed mates were later found grazing at flower pots on pink cottage roof tops ..the storm surge swept across as a tidal wave ..not a blade of grass nor a sliver of Gouda cheese was spared..

…But now….the island was steadily returning to normalcy; cows too had renegaded from the sheds swimming towards a black swirling hole, so milk was scarce……the farmers all a helter-skelter, peacock butterflies and humming birds vanished into the melee..now drying their wings and rejuvenated fluttering returning to plush spoilt garden as leaves still trembled gently with echoes of the past screeching screamin’n whistling banshee winds..

This dude was on shore leave ..moisture and beads of sweat formed on his forehead and the rest ran down like big rain drops down his hairy chest and smooth back, his neck was wet, his ruby red italian silk shirt clung to his heavin’ and pantin’( in soft whisper..) even his four-hundred dollar bills stuffed down his socks felt like blotting paper squeaking along with his leather boots.. Bandidos were at large, hungry frikin vultures waylaying kids, sailors, boot leggers and even grandmothers, snatching and grabbing their 100 year bags that had powder puffs and lipsticks from Elisabeth Arden; all who passed through Calle Caliente* the hot street needed to exercise “bien-ciudado” extra carefulness as these low lives slinking in the shadows of broken doors, garbage bins and dung.

The Main Gate of the port was what he had to negotiate before he could venture out to the bar “El Corazon con Piña Colada”
across the street where strains of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t fear the reaper” were on melt down and a quartet of ‘ungfellows came on … Kids callin’ themselves Greta van Fleet; no frikin nonsense, with God’s given grace they hit the deck with Motown Funk #4… this had him now on a banter to get out…to be there.

He thought he’d sail through the iron metal grill that was half open but just as he got closer a woman cop in luminous green uniform and a top hat 🎩 in black ostrich feathers blocked his path and pushed him into the inspection cabin. He tried to struggle but she rammed her baton into his gut and his breath wheezed stumbling, collapsing on to the sugar cane mat.

There were still three minutes left for the funk to taper down as the cop asked for his ID… he dove deep down in his jeans pocket but WTF, the dude had forgotten it in the hell hole of his blistering hot cabin..

“C’mon Ma’am.. the only boat in harbour, and-I-am-he-just-me the you-know-who ( not wanting to pull rank) whose havin’ fcukin enuf and needs to get to the other side, so give me a break; it ain’t no jailbreak ya know, I’ve shed all the soft velvet mushy feelings and even cut my chin whilst shaving with my razor; to feel the burn I splashed whisky on my face-you-can-feel-it…”……

“ I can see you’re pissed to high noon but me gotta see who you are, I need to see your ID” she said.

He looked into her face and saw her eyes, one eyeball ruby red and the other cobalt blue. Her lipstick was coal black and a tattooed crab on her right high cheek bone. She smiled wickedly and her teeth flashed diamond sparklers, her long slender neck had five strings of Mallorca pearls; now don’t you dare question him as to “how’d you know.. them
Pearls n’all ?”… well Mikimoto, Mallorca, Hyderabad whatever, the dude had worked the boats in the Philippines and knew the absolute best came from Pinctada Maxima mollusk as those days it was nine dollar fifty an hour and a bonus if Fagin the Jew accepted the full catch..

… this woman, the cop..she had a barker strapped to her right thigh, a mean SOB with an eighteen inch barrel something like DH*. .. no no .. this gal wasn’t going to let him out without a song, without a passionate plea that …

“ when I was young
muddled and fuddled even with apple juice
fair maiden you looked after me
as I toddled and later hobbled on one foot
resting my other so gently on the grass
the winds of time
did change me
as the arrow flies never arrives ..
I grew older
but you left me in the park
on the swing
and vanished with your little things and my baby socks..
You just faded like an oil painting
bleached on a hot summer day
instead of the beach..
you were to stand still in the Louvre…
never did they show you the door
nor banished..
for I was still sitting on that swing
as you crossed the seas and the oceans leaving me to stare at wild wind blown spaces..”

The lady smiled at him,
within her fertile mind
pictures of the past at last grew more vivid as she remembered that early winter morning when she rose ..
the fog was thick
she could taste it
and then she saw him..
the toddler standing in the corner
with a wild zebra to his left
a timid unicorn to his right
and a black flamingo fluttering above him…
.. she had no choice but to return to her tribe as she walked and got lost in the fog..

“ and this is now how you appear with strong demands to cross the frontier of our lives stories ?” She asked ..

“ I was but a child and you left us”..he says ..”then and even now my mind sways; I have faced severe storms on the oceans and in my tormented soul I have come ashore to cling to that Cherry Tree and become part of the landscape, let me through I plead to you.. you know I am not old and not new to you.. so what ID do you need ?”.. questioning ..

The high pressure system right above has flattened the sea now glassy and Venus will set soon yet striking a sharp light across that ricochets on to both their faces, illuminating each other.

Apologies were emanating from his face and slowly she absorbed the full meaning, the entire truth..
She backed away soft and saddened ….and pressed the orange button…

… the gates gently opened without a sound, the hinges well greased.. his eyebrows all cocked his lashes a flutter and his doe intact in his shoes he walked away no second look .. just straight on .. and then more briskly into a trot; finally speed hit his heels and he was gone, way gone, never to return..

ETD* was at 0500… Shore Leave ended… Pilot boarded but no sign of the bounder… they searched high and low, near and far even in the Bar “ El Corazon..”
but he was no where to be found.. possibly following the tail of Hurricane Matilda..

The Mate was now in temporary Command as he set sail for Bermuda… all what was left in the propeller’s wake were some screeching seagulls and “ The Fleesh” going on low key at the Bar playing their last song “ el jardin *“ as the first rays of the sun hit La Isla Amanecer…*”

*DH Dirty Harry
*ETD Expected Time of Departure
*el jardin The Garden
*la Isla Amanecer The Island of Dawn

Vivek ( Bonnie ) Bhasin
Summer’n Sweden🇸🇪
July 2021