Throwing Up in Taxco
or “Take Tea and See”
The porcelain throne hasn’t seen a maid’s mop in days. Too soon, the head that was buried there has raised itself once more… and again the shattered balance scales in his exploding skull tip, and he is back to head-down facing the brown stains and the remains of his stomach floating there. The futile attempts to bring more up…are futile. So it always will be, if, after a long abstinence, you suck in too much smoke of the local mota. So he rests, knows this will all pass. Keeping his head low, he crawls onto the lumpy bed and lets his breath come slowly. Moments like flaming novas flash through his head, and when the rocketing is over he slowly rises, his balance centers restored. Or is it he that rises? He is detached. Are there lights below? Taxco is a wonderland at night, but his balcony in the cheap hotel faces away from the gold-lit center, the Zocalo and the pink-stone Santa Prisca. Below him are the famous winding streets; below are people returning home from a long day’s work. They carry flashlights in the dark…. not benefitting from the ambient luminescence that they cannot see, those other lights that pass them on their dark journeys. But maybe because his mundane world senses are shot through with cannabis he sees them, the dead, the glowing other lights slowly passing by and alongside the lonely campesinos who dream of homes and mates and suppers. They are always there, he knows; but tonight his eyes—for a brief while— have new sight. Sleep brings dreams of silver and stucco and dripping candles. The bells of eleven churches awaken him. He stretches away the fading images And dreams of un cafecito in the mercado. In early sunlight, people climb the hills below. And now his eyes are back to being half-blind again.
Art Gatti