Fusion

Marrakech 40 x 30 cm

LA PLACE (MARRAKECH) *

Through the gate comes a donkey pulling a cart of

   God Knows What

a man with two green monkeys, a trio of petit

   bourgeois French women, temporary henna

doodles on their forearms and wrists and here comes William Burroughs

   riding in on the breath of his latest fix mere seconds

before noticing he’s, like, in the wrong medina, man

   smell of cumin, smell of chili powder, of sweat and horse dung

smell of dried mud and rotting fruit, musky incense drifting

   into a sweetish subterranean odor of human excrement

Paul Bowles on the roof top of the Hotel de Paris

   firing up his trusty hash pipe

several decapitated heads rolling across La Place like bowling balls

   in a shopping mall suburb of Ft. Worth, of Atlanta

   sound of bare hands on the skins of Saharan drums

oui, madame, what I have here in my hand—a fat writhing lizard— 

   is that rarest of aphrodisiacs—it works!

   a smell of hash, of wood smoke, of roasting meat     pink walls

everywhere, rose, ochre with reddish tints and pale orange, layers of peeling adobe

carpets pungent soaps shiny baubles snake skins the residue of a thousand espressos

   yes please guten tag come in bon jour bitte have some tea you

insult me with that price, hah hah, but still we are friends, non? oui? I have five children

a glee club from North Dakota moves cautiously through the portals of Club Med

   little boys calling out after them     

where you from? where you go? what you want?

* Djemaa el Fna, known as "La Place", is a large square at the edge of the medina of Marrakech.

Jimmy Page/Robert Plant - The truth explodes

Performing in Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna