Summer 2002 vol 2.1
 
 
 
 
Vigo Martin
Victor Hernández Cruz
In a city that now floats
in a bottle
In a dimension outside
of the census
Walls which were unregistered,
there was a painter,
who performed his roll
like the Taino cave etchers,
the pyramid illustrators of
Mexico.
Like the drawers of pyramid
hieroglyphs.
Vigo painted the hallways
of the tenements,
While through the air
he flew upon a white horse,
Or smoked hashish for
his desert camel through
Moroccan tubes.
He painted rocks
which were heavy art.
Loose bricks were found
by landlords containing
Antillean pictographs.
An artisan of the streets,
whose smooth knowledge of
many angles
Made more lines visible
through the old face
of the barrio.

Against colorful bodega windows,
bright candy stores,
the epoch of the pachanga
Deep in the clubs of night
under the world
In the sub-metropolis of need,
against walls barely holding up
Once we spoke of the need
to survive loose lions and tigers.
He painted lizard instincts
in imaginary palms,
Frozen eye sockets
containing tar and northern ice.
We recognized how we were
packed in the chance of numbers,
like bones in the Arctic spread,
noses popping out of sardine cans.
We spoke against the duwop of
the Paragons Meet the Jesters
Till dawn brought
a kind of blue light
to roofs–brick and steel
which made edges more visible.
In a conference of the stoops
he maintained that Dulces
Labios Mayaguez was his origin,
having been there he spoke of
sweet mangoes,
touching trees in honor
of the Tainos of his hands
stationed deep in his bark,
his left hand where a tattooed
cherry blossomed.

Vigo made a collaboration
between survival and creativity,
He stored objects that came with
the wind,
Had a cellar full of broken gadgets
portions that he could insert into
any malfunction,
A bazaar in search of a dictionary
of shapes and proportion.
He brushed himself like
freezer ice and melancholy,
never alone always with a
prehistoric beast.
As evidence that I was there
on this other planet
I still maintain a rock
which he painted against
the laws of gravity,
Now a paper weight
grounding the poetry of the tropics
Against the flight of the east trade
winds.