We did not find Kokovoko

You promised, said Passepartout

Sometimes fiction cannot cause reality, I screamed

– Sometimes? she asked

But you did promise me: “Kokovoko”

I did.

And in the hours of tedium she sang

Ditty after ditty about her prince from Kokovoko

Who would steal on us and take her on his fancy-wood canoe

In the moonlight he would take her to the coasts of Orinoco

Where the silver fish of Chavez flow downstream

from the Andes upland-highlands of Peru

or she would disappear in endless rhyme-games of Kokovoko, koko, loco

coco, yoko anything to free me she would moan from the constant, daily, you!

But we did see the whalers

We saw how they were struck,

how they were killed and how they were sliced and cut

And even saved a Greenpeace volunteer

From wave and shark

There was nibbling but it could have been

An eel or something nastier but never the jaws of death

It is beautiful tho’,

She said

That we are here and not

Like them

Like the thousands on the shore

Needing each a penny for their ocean reveries

Or the Andaman islanders removing salt flakes with tiny tweezers

to free their land from Tsunami Jo's unasked for gift

I wrapped her in seaweed hammock,

hoisted her up, eye-level

twisted her around until she hung unmoving

and explained the basic rules of craft-oil, blubber and sperm.

“You whale and me Ahab I said.”

Here – inside your head would be your junk: particles of oil, thousands of

oilnests or pimples. Exactly… we have more bone to oil. It's your tits

or your bum that may be more generous.”

My fingers over her head and behind the neck,

there…that's

where most of it is: the oilsperm…it is soft and wobbly…

becomes hard jelly if exposed…thousands of litres of sperm.

You look pathetic you are such a useless mammal”

You promised me Kokovoko! How good the drink

How light the heart, how gay our jokes our maps

Here: Scheria where I would find my Nausica to help forget Aouda

There: Lilliput and next, look at that Haleakoloa!

No to the right! Dr. Moreau's islands!