I'm Goin' To New York City, I'm Leavin' On A Train

god made food

the devil

the cooks

- joyce

slopery slip sliding talking remembering no can't solvering some mystery or other nor nother

tip trod toward tequila bar mexican settling wrestling and football t.v.

saloon door swing open music stop dead silent heat...

air broken by moustache laugh and step forward in

by back slap how-de-do and a welcome never felt so and much

belly up to clink glass accompaniment set to music of the spheres

and the pure joy of it all covers up, washes over, the pure truth:

the mind is past its glory

-the road is out before me

the moon is shinin' is bright

what i want you to remember

as i disappear tonight....

show me a poet

who didn't drink

and i will proudly

raise my glass

and toast

those shitty poems

The Sun Was Shining Everywhere

i sit down to write. and what do i have? what is the only thing i can find? a blue pen. a blue. fucking. pen. and a shit pen at that. ugly to look at. ugly to write with. someone's free gift from some animal clinic in some Ohio town i've never heard of. and if you really think about it, Ohio has a lot of towns, comparatively speaking, that i, or any other relatively well educated person, has, if nothing else, heard of. Cleveland, Columbus, Kent, Dayton, Youngstown, Canton, Springfield (or one at least assumes). but this town? i don't even know that many people in Ohio, have only been there a handful of times, and each visit brief or simply passing through. a blue fucking pen. i certainly don't know anyone in Ohio with a pet.

i forgot Cincinnati...

no... that's not true. a cat. an old friend living in Ohio has a cat. but i haven't seen her in years. and besides, she knows better than to give me a blue pen. although there was once that she did, in fact, give me a blue pen. she was working at some terrible place, tex-mex cuisine, pre-packed and franchised out. i showed up late under the guise of craving quesadillas and cheap margaritas, pretending to write with an ink-less pen.

- we're slow so i can give you this... to a waitress a pen is worth its weight in gold... i'll need it back.

i believe i wrote that she saved my life. did i mention that i was there because i was in love? do i even need to? but i haven't seen her in years.

and Akron...

i loved another girl in Ohio once, or rather, i loved her before we went to Ohio, and i loved her once we left, but our time in Ohio... it's all over now and as often is the case it's impossible to believe you were ever in love or that you could be anything but. and now, at this moment, a blue pen is the only thing that connects me to her, to what we shared.

Bowling Green...

and like a sieve these vague ethereal memories hold nothing more than remnant drops, like faded blue ink on a whiskey soaked page.

new poetry blog

http://writepoetryfucker.blogspot.com/

Some Bullshit or... Why We Live In Brooklyn

girls stumble slip forward out of franklin ave doors into franklin ave steppin forward steppin out while joel staggered home heavy and full, street home and heavy. The Prospect. the one named building in his hood not proper named. not carved in stone. all clean lines and glass. no home for a cop for a good police two aspirin washed down, chased with a brooklyn. Rachel, the Raquel, with hipster jeans and andy warhol tits had kicked him out and hard so a night spent on the street at the two for one bar filled with catholic restroom aesthetic or pagan or what's the fuckin difference. memories of a brick. though a window.

- raquel
- rachel
- that's not a good jewish name
- well i'm not exactly a good jew
- the tattoos gave that away
- fuck you
- among other things
- you gonna buy a drink or does andre have to kick you out again?
- i'll buy anything that comes with those tits
- are you off duty?
- yeah, of course
- fuck. that means i can't sue the city. andre get this piece of shit outta my bar

at 6:45 in the morning he stepped from the platform at 7th ave onto a manhattan bound q train, screamed, "fuck all you vodka slurping russian motherfuckers," vomited down the front of his shirt, and collapsed. when he woke up he felt like he had been beaten in the head so badly with a metal pipe that his brain was leaking from his face. for all he knew he had been. it would take him almost twenty four hours to even realize that his payot, those side curls that, more than any other single physical characteristic marked him an ultra-orthodox jew, had been ripped out at the roots. he was just lucky to have woken up at all.

- what you want, boss? usual?
- coffee cream and sugar three old fashion plain
- cops and their donuts enh?
- hey, diego, why don't you shut the fuck up and get me my breakfast
- you keep talkin that shit and i'm gonna file a brutality complaint
- you pull that shit, diego, and i'm gonna give you some brutality to complain about
- how bout you get the fuck outta my bakery
- how bout you go fuck yourself
- three eighty
- here's a five keep the change
- tomorrow, boss?
- see you tomorrow, diego

those that stayed were committed, refused to give in to white flight, one driver fucked up and all hell broke loose. it shook his faith. tore it up. august 1991 and joel looked out the window of his family's third floor apartment on kingston. angry black kids, some his age, throwing rocks, bricks, bottles, anything with weight into any home with a mezuzah in the door frame.
- joel, get away from that window
just as a brick comes toward him, slow motion, slow enough that he has time to wonder whether it came from a house or was found in the street. slow enough that he has time to wonder why a brick would be in the street instead of holding together someone's home. slow enough that he has time to wonder how anyone would be able to remove a brick without the whole house falling down. slow enough that he has time to wonder why he didn't move before it hit him in the side of the head.

- so some kid comes winds up at downstate in the e.r., blood pourin from both sides of his face, screamin about russians, bloomberg, and the prophet isaiah all at once, fightin so hard they have to stick him just to get him under control, three guys and they can't get this piece a shit in a bed let alone do a goddamn thing for him and on top of it all this asshole show up with no shoes, lookin like he's just walked a couple miles barefoot, feet nearly as bloody as his face
- this says he was checked into kings county
- kings county, downstate, same fuckin thing. they'll walk across the street with a spike in their arm just to shave ten minutes off the wait time. anyway, i thought you might be interested because he's one of yours
- one of mine?
- yeah. one of yours. jew. black suit, fedora, curly sideburns, well, not anymore
- what are you talkin about?
- maybe you oughta see the kid

New York Epilogue...

...for z harvey

a $30 cab
brooklyn
to brooklyn
should i even tip?
certainly not the shortest route
but he did have three stops
aw fuck it
merry christmas mr. raza
middle of july

i'd come from a good bar in a too hip part of town. a bar that sold me british beer the way it should be served: hand pumped into imperial pints with a side of crisps. salt and vinegar. plus the empenada man showed up. but he ain't got nothin on the tamale guy. chicago tamale man. now see that's what made the second stop so hard to take. the chicago... not the tamales. not the man.

tonight ny city is losing one of its finest to that third coast empire. that breezy town i love to complain about. that frigid bitch of a city i fuckin hate. that midwestern mecca that will always hold special place in my heart. a city perfect, at least for a time, for a good southern man i watched get out of a cab at 5th and 20th brooklyn time and disappear into the night. the night spent with people i love. (with people who might just love my girlfriend more than me (but really... can't say's i blame em))

27. homeless. unemployed. i feel that, son, i feel that. i know where you comin from, and in this case i know where you goin. know it better than some ain't goin just are. i know its midwestern mexican, its hazy vague southside, its meat markets, donut bakeries, warehouse theatres, its 4 am beer bar holy grails, its northside stretch 'a long streets deserted at nights 'cept the occasional old timers bar make you feel like small midwestern town all wood board and darts marked only by slow swinging sign out front. old style. exactly.

i know it. did my own time. cracked her wide open. now it's his time. and so off he goes. that man among men. the one faced challenges we'll never know because they was his and never meant to be our own burden. faced challenges hid behind face 'a joy. he will be missed. he will be accepted. welcomed into other open arms not our own but just as warm. but for him... never warm enough. 'cause none can ever be quite so.

27. homeless. unemployed. for some folk - and usually the good ones - ain't no better way to be. i feel that, son. i feel that.

You Are Men Of Stones

it started with the four.
moving between cars
as the train moved between
boroughs, counties, islands.
and as we hit the light
of the brief aboveground
the music it did play.

spins, flips, drops, dance moves i'll never do, they did on a moving train and in close quarters. deft maneuvers inches from commuters they dared to ignore them. and as we slipped back beneath the same city yet always the other - or i suppose the original depending on how one perceives it - they moved on. and just like that... it was over.

and then it was hours spent selling happiness in the place i never feel good enough for but never feels up to my standards, and then, as always, it was over. those last hours always seeming so terribly long and so terribly quick, spent with that mysterious thin film on skin, that drunkish feeling in head and limbs, that same desire to stay and fix what i've forgotten, to get the hell out. but just before the final curtain fell with bike lock on front door... is that? i think... well he and his wife certainly look happier than they did after that prostitution thing came out. but ultimately i leave with that unbalanced feeling that comes with an unbalanced till: four dollars over after ten dollars short is almost too much to take. it's like i tell mike: i feel like i'm losing my mind... i haven't been getting much sleep.

but fuck it. i got a train to catch.

and do i how i do. just before doors closing and i'm settled in, eating cookies too broken to actually sell. a substitute dinner akin to the breakfasts i used to make from the day old tray precariously balanced on bakery machines.

and just after making it back to my own island, my county, my borough, my home, he steps through the door asking for change, for dinner, for attention. and then the latter he demands though in not so many words: "from the halls of montezu-uma, to the shores of tripoli," somehow sliding his way into america the beautiful with such skill clearly not available to his ability to hit the notes he's aiming for, into that song which i can never hear without being reminded of sinatra emoting his own version in his later years. the tired sinatra, the sinatra that still somehow had it, the sinatra who had a cold.
and then...
the transfer.
not running not walking senses shifting somehow alert flowing with the crowd to the other stair that leads me to my own train on the wrong track a new route and just making it just barely to find out we're skipping stops we're expressing past all those i never care for anyway this train is goin' places and then finally...

a stop.

a next stop announced, but at this point... how can i trust it? i get off and walk the long way turning onto streets that seem vaguely safer, somehow smarter, some kind of a more full. but as i cut across the rare two-way street in the dead traffic night i see it in front of me and the first thought i have: is it breathing? and i watch and i wait but i don't stop walking. and there is no breath. there is no panting, there is no up down up down of a body being guided by lung.

the dog is dead.

i don't stop. somehow i am capable of instantly realizing the possibility of death, capable of checking for the signs without a slowing of step, and yet something in me that will do something after the fact is gone. it's simply not there.

howl, howl, howl, howl! o, you are men of stones:
had I your tongues and eyes, i'd use them so
that heaven's vault should crack. she's gone for ever!
i know when one is dead, and when one lives;
she's dead as earth. lend me a looking-glass;
if that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
why, then she lives.

and yet i know,
now she is gone forever

...

i come home to another, very much alive other, signaling it's intensity through shrill yaps and yelps that have kept me up for nights on end. i come home to bugs and heat and hunger not satiated by leftover sweets. but i come home. home to last cigarettes and a glass or two of gin. home to a shadily rented apartment where i am no more permanent than the occasional breeze - blow winds and crack your cheeks? i should be so lucky - but i am home.

come home, come home
ye who are weary come home
calling, o sinner
yes, i am come home

Making The Most Of Rapturous Nothings

"if you asked me what music i like most... i reply, the sounds around me i haven't composed."

and what haven't i composed lawd lawd i ain't even a composer. not per se. but what don't ever one of us compose?

every day and every moment we each and every one of us compose our desires, our secret hidden fantasies buried down so very deep coming to the surface in fits, starts, bits, drops, pops, bangs and sometimes all it takes is walking a midtown street in the rain trying to remember how you got to that place how you got there how you are how you were and all of a sudden and a very suddenly it's all too much to hold in and then. just. like. that. pow. bang. hmph. it all comes out. tears. sobs. wails. tears sobs wails drop to knees holding on barely holding on trying just to try hoping to keep it together but failing so miserably but succeeding succeeding succeeding yes yes yes yes yes this is something something something SOMETHING this is happening and fuck it all FUCK. IT. ALL. "every day is a beautiful day every day is a miserable day." this is something that happens. every moment. every day. and you. or her. or him. or someone else entirely. and that's just how it is. that's how it was how it will be. every moment a funeral every moment a festival. can you honestly tell the difference? ha. i dare you to even fucking try. good luck, because it's all the same in the end. like a new york conversation it's impossible to tell if it's argument or agreement. and every night we fall asleep with the same in our heads and wake up with.... well the same. tabula rasa? bullshit clean slate. it's always the same and it's never so. we're left hanging on the edge of reality. hanging on the edge of everything that ever was and ever has been. how exciting is that!? we are, at each and every moment, on life's edge. the end of the world cannot be prophesied. it's just gonna happen. just like that. so at least at the very fucking least... enjoy it.