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The Bag

It’s a very quick look, almost imperceptible. Down at the Whole Foods bag in my hand and up to my face and then she’s past me. Within those milliseconds and through the eyes of that older Puerto Rican woman and her three year old daughter, years of sudden change pass by in a whirl of images, a montage of upped rents, displaced friends and the changing faces of the blocks where she has grown up. She remembers the corner store being the place where she and her sisters pretended to play games while all the time watching the boys getting off the rickety JMZ trains in the late afternoons, stripping off their dirty t-shirts to nothing but a white undershirt and sitting on the stoops drinking cold soda from their mother’s fridge. She remembers the old men gathering at night in front of ‘their’ buildings, slapping down dominoes and cards on flimsy card tables, the blue plume of cigarillo smoke twisting up into those humid summer nights. She also hears her mother screaming at the top of her lungs as the neighborhood gangs have a shoot out in the street, knocking holes in the cars and shattering the windows of the first floor apartments. The sirens, the screams, that dead night beat of the South streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s all changed. And so now, she walks the streets seeing new, cold faces all the time, where people walk by without hellos and sneak into their apartments like silent ghosts at night and slide back out in the early morning. The silence between 8 and 5 that she never knew as a child growing up has nestled into the neighborhood like a poisonous vapor and she wonders where the people that she knows have gone, where the change came from, and how long she’ll be able to withstand the ebbing pressures for her to move.

Her daughter runs on past me to look at the pigeons that have found some food behind the chain-link fence on the corner. As the older lady glances at me and passes by, we stop as the child plays on. One word, ‘Hello’, opens the floodgates of pent up rage and we stand on South 4th and I listen while Ivonne tells me of the uneasy feeling that comes over her when she feels she no longer knows where her memories lie. How when she goes home and remembers Pablo Mercado leaning on his cane outside his carniceria that has now been turned into luxury apartments, she has to think of something else or she will cry. How her daughter may never know this pain but may also never know the pleasures of those long summer nights hanging out with friends on the corners watching boys, of the parades with the flags and the endless seas of food and smiles. ‘Things have changed, things have really changed,’ she says and her daughter giggles with delight as the birds take flight and throw gusts of feathered wind through her hair. Her daughter’s ready for her next adventure, looks over at us all smiles and Ivonne needs to get home to start cooking. She says, ‘Have a good night’ and I tell her the same and then we are done, moving in opposite directions while living not three blocks apart.

Senses of Seasons

Distant Gershwin sounds across the mist-laden rooftops of Brooklyn. The pitter-patter of the kittens paws slide against the polished oak wood floors and the oven, just slightly cracked, releases smells of warm sweet potatoes as the snow gently gathers along the edges of the rusty-black window frames. Cracked ebony paint peels back off the faces of the time-worn red brick, gives a deep sigh and slips off forever, catching flight on the swooping breezes of the wintry strolls of November. He looks distant through the frosted glass at the children running out into the white sidewalks…

And then it’s gone. He finishes the post, goes to hit publish and suddenly, 2/3rds of what he has written has been demolished because of a faulty internet connection. The anger boils up inside of him and it goes from a wintry night to a flaming inferno where snow never falls, children never enjoy the spirit of their first winter, where the squirrels are rabid and cleverly wait behind garbage cans for the unsuspecting tenants to throw their empty bottles of Jack away in before they leap out and go for the jugular. He feels an irretrievable loss, takes a deep breath, gets angry again, takes another deep breath and begins to visualize the posting system as the enemy to be vanquished. His fingers slam down on the ‘Save Draft’ button and with every click, he throws his head back and cackles. ‘You may have won tonight but I will be back tomorrow,’ he says, as he begins scheming for the next day’s post.

The Witch of the Black Sea

Her long, black fingernails rap fervently against the stony walls of Swallow’s Nest castle in Crimea, each one slamming down in syncopated motions with the crashing waves below. Her tangled, black, rat’s-nest hair guards her eyes from the early morning sun glistening off the mossy rocks below. For twenty years she has been alone, the raging witch of the Black Sea, forced into solitude by the hatred of the local villagers and her misguided love affairs with a multitude of men from the Crimean Tatar National Assembly. On her shoulder perches a raven, dead for five years and stuffed with the innards of her disgruntled mattresses piled high in the circular prison precariously balanced above the booming ocean below. She names the raven Valentin (from valeo in Latin meaning healthy) and speaks volumes to it, the only thing that dares to listen these days to her rantings and emotional outbursts. Her curvaceous nose shoots outwards and down, riddled with furry moles and her crooked, toothless mouth droops on the left, an aperture of dark light and befuddled loneliness.  She was once the ‘Queen of Point’, the diva of the outer stage, a wicked woman with a biting tongue and dark entrails of sinewy cynicism, greed, selfish-pursuits, and a lack of empathy unparalleled. And she wore this in her face as a darkened shroud, pouting lips, wrinkles of times spent weeping. The world was created solely for her and she perused the hallways of her steward’s fears and insecurities and exploited them, turned them inwards against the poor souls and collected the refuse left in her wake, stuffing it neatly into a satchel she carried in her ever-darkening soul.

She sighs, lifts the matted hair from her sight, looks out into the ocean but sees nothing but blue-gray mist and tumbled tides. The rotting velvet curtains frame her decrepit body in deafening solitude. She speaks to Valentin to calm her troubled mind, tells him of her greatest achievements, her wondrous feats. A feather from his spotted chest flutters to the ground and is swept out by a gust of wind to the sea below. Piece by piece he is able to escape her grasp.

A scuffle of paws sounds as three mice scamper across her bedroom floor. She grabs the waxy candelabra,  turns to hurl it their little bodies. They escape into the hole in the wall and her anger boils up inside of her and explodes. A torrential downpour of fury-ridden words are shot from her mouth, reverberating against the stone walls, pounding against her temple, and loop out through the window in inky gobs of negativity. For miles the wailing cries of the Witch of the Black Sea can be heard, children shuttering at her deafening sickness. In her loneliness and solitude she wades, a woman now forgotten in the halls of this ancient castle.

She drops the candelabra from her limp, bony wrists to the stony floor below. Turns back towards the window. Scrapes her hair back over her eyes, listens to the pounding waves, strokes Valentin and knows that somewhere she went wrong. She scowls. Tears can no longer soothe her emptiness. One finger at a time, she marks out the years she has wasted in anger upon the stone walls, loses count, and begins again.

Dissonance Part 1

I walk the dusty streets of never and forget of where I am. I wonder where the time has gone and to whom it has passed. The street corner lamps lit low, I peruse the cobblestone streets of the infirmary, bidding goodnight to hawkers, prostitutes, and the forlorn. I continue as the horns from the steamships sound from the harbor across the way and the gleeful laughing of the gentile parades in front of our faces. One stone amiss. I bend to fix it and a rat the size of a small dog snatches my pocket-watch by the chain with its paw, screeches with horror as the watch is yanked out and smashes against the blocks of stone. It bumbles on endlessly through the darkened night and the remnants of time dangle from the worn trousers of my father, worn by his only son. The heirloom screams of holes in time, moments never had, loss and forgetting far too young. Pockets within pockets line the inner walls of my fortresses of leghood, places to store the many trinkets of ones childhood-turned-adulthood. And they overflow.

I stuff the shards of glass into one of them and continue on my way. Governor Chamblis is in rare form tonight. The old curmudgeon rallies the mind-trapped troops of his youth to battle on the knoll of never-was, yells orders to the lot of us to load this and stand this way and over there. I strike a pose of great repute and when he turns his back, I slip into the seedy shadows of Jack Alley where there are no lanterns and the only light that leads my way is the faint moonlight showing through the drifting fog. My shadows resound against the mossy mounds of drunkards and dead, the soul-stricken and the refuge-seekers and with every step I take, the sound of my repetitive footsteps rebounds shooting skywards to the heavens. A door opens to my right, down but five paces away and I stop. Slink to the sides to see who may emerge. It is none other than the true Governor, the great Monsieur Lambois, stumbling drunk through the swarming arms of six fair ladies. The door closes, the ladies of the night recede into the warmth of Madam’s bosom and I match footstep with footstep and follow from a safe distance.

The hunt has begun.

Hobble Me Red

“That’s the funniest God-damned thing I have ever seen”. Roger always seemed to say things at the wrong times. This time, it was to a one-legged girl trying to hop around a stainless steel pole in a seductive pole dance on 43rd and Lexington. She wasn’t amused.

He often, in retrospect, realized how awful the things he said were but was never able to bring such realizations to the fore when he needed them most. His doctors had called it A.D.D., his father had called it terets and his mother just considered it, ‘a pain in the caboose,’ as she called it. He often replied that if it was a pain in her caboose that it must be a pretty big pain cause  her caboose was bigger than a moose. He loved to rhyme as a child and would continue this until very late in his life.

“Really? I mean, your legs are like toothpicks on a torso of balled muscle. What were you thinking? Do you need to drag your legs behind you like wet towels as your arms do all the walking?” The spin class instructor, for the first time in his career, had stopped the class, walked over to Roger and punched him right in the face. Strangely, it was the best spin class Roger would ever have and they continued on, insulter and insulted, until class had come to a complete stop.

Many jobs had been lost due to his condition and he perused the hallways of the corporate skyscrapers like an awful comedian, the one that no matter how much you drink at the show, he just isn’t funny.”I like this look. It’s as if a poodle had just given up, thrown its paws up into the air, handed over its pelt and you decided to slap it on to your shiny, balding head. You’re like Minnie Driver meets Shakara Ledard.” The onslaught of spit and varicose-veined cheeks had gently informed him that he was fired.

He would often meet people on the street that he had touched in his unique way and it wasn’t uncommon for him to return home covered in coffee, mango smoothies, or energy drinks. Abrasive, uncanny, unyielding, and friendless were all words used to describe him and he would sit and listen to such descriptors and then proceed to describe the women’s hair as, “frizzled strips of burnt bacon”, “auburn nightmare on elm street”, or “razor blades of desperation”. The men  received descriptions that were no better: “Soiled toilet-seat cranium”, “Like a parrot pooped all over your head”, “Like snakes met gel and gel won”, or “A sandy beach of loneliness”.

Roger would continue undaunted through the avenues of shamelessness, keeping the masses humbled against their will. He sat and watched the one-legged woman, oblivious to the words continuing to spill out of his mouth and smiled at the silliness of it all.

Minor Keys

“Our lives are composed of minor annoyances, right? Those little things that are small in and of themselves but add up, yeah?” Harold looks around but no one is listening. He decides to continue unabated.

“The laundry is not yet dry and won’t be dry because it’s in a machine that is broken but the lady doesn’t tell me. The cats have just pissed all over the floor, leaving it to me to wallow in the duty of cleaning up after them. The bureaucratic lender Sallie Mae has yet again messed something up with my account, and doesn’t seem to abide by human logic. The man on the phone (who I am sure is nice) is watching what he says and how he says it in case the Sallie Mae customer service/satisfaction agents are listening in and so even when I get to speak to a human, it’s a regulated, corporate machine”. They look at him in wonderment, their mouths dangling open. Harold doesn’t care.

“The little wheels on my desk chair won’t swivel so I keep slamming my knee against the desk and the levels of frustration just keep rising. I want to go to a movie but this entails me interacting with 5,000 people before I even get to the movie and the point of me going was to just have some space to myself but it’s a mute point in this city cause there are people everywhere!” His voice is rising, he hears giggles from the back.

“I just want to feel a non-chemically-induced relaxation for 5 minutes, a calming soothing sensation where I don’t feel like the city is conspiring to knock me down and run me over with its grungy 4×4 tires. Just a small break, that’s all I ask.” He sees it out of the corner of his eye as it is sent hurling towards his head. A gob of chewed up, sticky sucker smacks against his cheek. He sighs. The bell rings. Day 1 at Sunshine Preschool has come to a close.

The Pitch

“Okay, so here it is: Santa and every other imaginary creature except for the easter bunny leaves and the easter bunny is forced to deliver presents while simultaneously taking teeth from under pillows. He searches endlessly for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and loses his mind in the process. He then gives teeth as presents and leaves turds under children’s pillows. What’d ya think?”

Ralph looks at Sted, puzzled as all hell. “You do realize this is a children’s book, right? Two to three year-olds? Talking alphabets and dragons and fairy godmothers. That kind of thing?”

“Right, well I feel this has the makings of a new type of book, an emblazoned take on traditional children’s characters. A real winner. That’s what you’ve got here.” Sted grins, his upper gold teeth bare in unwelcoming company.

“Listen son. I’ve been doing this for 30 god-damned years and I can honestly say that your story, out of all the lousy stories I’ve been subjected to, is by far the most out of whack, pile of rat shit I have ever heard. I mean, what parent in their right mind would buy this for their small child? A flipped out, klepto rabbit shitting under children’s pillows is not what sells to this crowd. You can be damn sure of that”.

“Okay. So, the rabbit isn’t crazy. Done. Maybe he’s not crazy but just stressed out. I mean, come on. With Santa’s duties on top of everyone else’s, who wouldn’t be stressed, right? We could turn it into a moral story about how best to deal with stress in an increasingly stressful world. When the Rabbit Thought He Couldn’t. Something like that? As far as the stealing, I don’t know. It seems pretty central to the story, don’t you think?” Sted turns his head to the right and smiles like a postmortem deer.

“No. I don’t think. I don’t think cause the whole thing stinks. All of it. Let me be very clear because it doesn’t seem I am getting through to you: these ideas are not fit for children of two to three nor will they ever be at this publishing house. Not while I am here, not while the next guy is here, probably not while this building is still standing. In fact, if ever you come into this building again, ever walk by this building, breathe on it, touch it, even think about it, I will call the police and have your ass thrown in jail for disturbing the peace”.  Ralph is out of breath and huffs and heaves in his wooden chair.

“Okay. So we throw in a moral about not stealing. How borrowing is okay. Like stealing but then you give it back. The Taking and Giving-Back Bunny That Could. I like it Ralph”.

“165 emails. 43 calls. And now, 15 minutes of my life. Get out of my office you god-damned nutcase and take your cockamamie bullshit with you and never, let me repeat, NEVER come here, call me, or email me again.” Ralph’s flaring nostrils inhale a fly and a piece of string from his jacket.

“Fine. Unheralded fiction will come to glorious fruition in some other publishing house. I can sense when genius is unappreciated. Sir.” Sted bunches up his pink tutu, rolls his glossy-red lips over with his pierced tongue and struts out of the red man’s office on 6-inch, velvet-purple stilettos.

Unwelcome Guests

February 21st. 8:50 a.m.

There was an ebb and flow to the room like the beating of a drunk clown’s heart. The curtains rose and lifted on the mid-morning breeze and the clay brick behind them seemed to yell coarse stories of long-gone eras of splintered water towers and Buick Sedanettes. Donny had been there for months, couldn’t believe the time had finally come. Grabbed his wallet, his jacket, stuffed his knuckleduster zip gun into his pocket.

February 21st. 9:35 a.m.

The corner store, owned by a couple of Cuban brothers, had been closed for weeks. Metal grates on the windows hung by a thread and swayed to the beats of troubled times. Long grass had grown tall in the spaces-between, gang signs lined the streets, sadistic Christmas lights glittering orange, yellow and red. Donny looked up to the window three stories up. One fire escape, holes all over the place, rusted red, but he could smell the Menudo, see the lights were on. Wondered what they were doing, who they were with. He took a few steps towards the building, the wooden soles of his shoes slapping against the brick walls of Down Street. Paused. Waited. Looked up and around. Took a few more steps.

February 21st. 10:01 a.m.

Donny was nearly there. He had thought this through for months by now, knew exactly his line of attack, who he would take out first. He reached into his pocket, ran his frozen hands over the hard steel, climbed a few more rungs of the ladder. Three more to go and he would have his shot if they didn’t get him first. Quesadillas. Burnt. Just like he always liked them. He pauses to take in the smells, doubts whether he should have come and then takes three more steps up. Explosions.

February 21st. 10:03 a.m.

Sensory information comes flooding in. They are in a cage on the ground. The children wail for their mother who is strapped to the stove, red apron and bright yellow bobby pins through her hair. She cooks what she always cooked for us. Tania and Alfredo look over, see Donny and stop crying. Take it in. Daddy. Donny puts his finger to his mouth, makes it clear that they should keep quiet. The beasts look on, one from the couch, another from the kitchen table, tibias neatly folded over one another, tarsuses rapidly clicking on the tiled floor. They sit transfixed on their mother, Donny’s wife, Regina. Groom their antennae with their forelegs. They haven’t seen him yet. He ducks down out of sight and waits. He didn’t expect them to be so big by now.

February 21st. 10:06 a.m.

Donny leans against the moldy brick wall, reaches his arms overhead and backwards to the ledge of the window and begins groping around the find the best grip. Open, run in, blast them. And it’s over. Quick. Just like that. He finds a grip on the window, begins trying to edge it open just a little bit so he can give it a better shove upwards. Pushes it up and then hears the hissing.

February 21st. 10:06:32 a.m.

Spins around, lifts himself up and comes face to face with the activated salivary glands of the beast. Its midleg taps fervently on the window sill, the children are now yelling and the other one has grabbed Regina, nuzzles its head and glossy black eyes against her auburn hair. Donny takes a deep breath. Knows its now or never, looks at his kids one last time and smiles at Regina. The shattering of glass sounds as he barrels through the window.

February 21st. 10:07:01 a.m.

A flurry of six legs and Donny as they wrestle through piles of shards of glass. Regina is screaming at the top of her lungs and the other beast is on his way. Four antennae smacking him in the face, going for his eyes. He feels the spines of their hindlegs digging in, holding him at bay. Grabs fistfuls of forewing and rips down as hard as he can. Ungodly shrieking, ripping downward movements of their other wings and his face gets trapped between one of their hindwings and remaining forewings. The stench of years of garbage, urine and feces unbearable. Regina throws a pot from behind and smacks one in the head and Donny’s free. They’re still reeling from the pain of their missing wings and Donny runs over, grabs the steaming pot of Menudo, soaks them both. Boiling liquid seeps in to the cracks in between their exoskeletons and they are rolling on the floor, throwing wild punches with their legs, trying desperately to grab either Tania or Alfredo but they have moved to the back of the cage and are just out of reach. Silence and they sit still. Donny’s running, freeing the children, freeing Regina, trying to get out through the door but the lock has been jammed and the only way out is the window, over the bodies of the beasts.

February 21st. 10:10:19 a.m.

They are about to step over when the twitching starts. It starts off low in the hindlegs, moves quickly to the front. Wings lift them off the ground, then slam them back down to earth. Lifting, falling. And the hissing grows ever louder. Twitching. Hissing. Lifting. Falling. Donny remembers the gun. Turns around to find it in the pocket of the jacket that got ripped off in the fight. And he hears the screams again.

February 21st. 10:10: 55 a.m.

His kids are wrapped in the beast’s arms. His wife is on the ground, pleading that they let them go. Donny doesn’t care anymore. Throws the gun to the side. He’s had enough. And he’s running towards their battered bodies, ripping through their legs with his torso, knocking them tumbling to the ground and his kids go flying to their mother’s feet. All three of them are up now and edging closer to the window. Donny looks back to his wife’s face, takes in his kid’s. Knows it has to end there and pushes with all his might and they’re outside, tumbling over the fire escape down towards the concrete below. A hissing ball of fury, wings flapping wildly, unworldly screams as their prickly legs try to cling to something to stop the plummet. Donny reaches out, grabs a rusted flag pole under the fire escape. Rippling pain through his arm and the legs of the beasts claw at his chest, his pants, his shoes for a grip. And then they’re gone. Headed down at light speed. Splatter against the cold concrete of Down Street and the alley cats come out, begin to lap up the remains of the beast’s twisted bodies.

Crazy Train. Next Stop, Manhattan.

“Six million Jews killed. 5 million more. Where are the others? African burial grounds written on the wall. A, B, F, D, G, 1, 2, 5, K”. The man salivates profusely, dressed in over-sized overalls, wears a hat covered in oddly-shaped pins, carries with him bags of his yesteryears filled with worn, soiled newspaper clippings.

He plays on the strings of the never-seen, the imagined machinations of a cluttered mind. I sit and watch him intensely. Others move away, leaving four seats open on either side of him. I think to myself how what is considered his madness is within all of us, the pounding cerebral circuses that we all prescribe to. Madness of one decade the normative of another. Ugliness of one time the beauty of today. Perhaps what we move away from is the recognition of ourselves within that crazy man, within that overall-laden representation of what we all contain, what we all could be, what the minor keys of the mad crowds criss-crossing the busy highways of our lives may create, the times that come, the times that go, the muddy waters of memory, the many swish-swashing ideas upon our befuddled minds, through our eyes we see ourselves in distorted fashion, a recognition of an ‘I’ that we never wish to be out of fear for what that may mean. The music plays on through the madman’s mouth. ‘African burial grounds. West 42nd. Where’s the moon? Where’s the moon? Six million Jews killed. 5 million more…’ Everyone watches the spectacle of the cacophonous representation of ‘us’ and the temples pound, the music plays on, the madness increases, his voice coarse and cracking now. People begin to stir and look around. Eye contact is made, words are exchanged. The shell of normal constancy has almost cracked. Play on music man! We’re nearly human now! He longs to know where the moon is and no one knows, no one is willing to tell him. He looks madly around, searching not for answers but for connection in his wash of solitude. He is ostracized with the raising of an eyebrow, the turning of a back. He is forgotten with the upping of the volume of one’s favorite music. His memory dies with the stop at Borough Hall in Brooklyn where he announces, “I have arrived!” Everyone watches. Grins. Deep sighs and the seats are filled one after the other after the other after the other.  Again and again the people come, the people go. People look straight ahead. In and out. I ride a train of lunatic down the hallowed halls of the tube train terminals, yellow lights slapping the faces of the riders into stony silence and overwhelming normalcy. The madness speeds ahead.

Panan

The sense of urgency in Panan’s readings pounded at his temples: Capote, Carlyle, Fitzgerald, Nietzsche, Lorca, Deleuze, Baldwin, Wright, Benjamin. The list went on and on and he didn’t know why he read them, only that he was searching for something, an answer that he hoped was secretly locked away within the pages. He saw the meaningless repetition, the depression, the murder, the destruction but also the exuberance, the births, those peaks in life of realizing the power of human spirit, the deep breaths, comforting snuggles, and most of all, the smiles. He felt the joy of a quiet, frigid morning with a hot cup of coffee but knew from those covering the stories from the ground the deprivation it caused to the coffee bean farmers, paid far below a sustainable wage. He tried not to think of these things but the contradictions seemed to compound in a mess-hall of joy and consequence: long showers and droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa, delectible chocolate from the backs of underpaid cocoa bean farmers, the very paper he was writing on and crippling deforestation.

In the States, he existed in a pendulum-state between lucidity and oblivion. Most of the time he was too damn tired to care and imagined other people shared his exhaustion. Panan’s immediate concerns would outweigh those of thousands of miles away in places far off with people he did not know. He wondered how people could speak of a global community when so many (including himself) weren’t even communicating with their nearest neighbors; as if making the pool of people bigger would suddenly make us all get along and talk to one another. He longed to have an opinion, be able to make a stand and forget the big picture where no one was right and no one was wrong. He searched for an answer to living, to a silent, creeping truth that we are here to make peace with ourselves, with others, to discover some type of harmony and dispense with discord. To most of all find understanding, limit judgment, work through compassion. What he found were limitless answers to a limitless question, snippets of realized light shining through the hard copy of pulp and typography and like a swallow he began to gather and weave together these disparate lights, create a nest within the streets, along the sidewalks, in the tallest of the high-rise buildings and in the sub-sub basements of the never-gone. He tried vigorously to weave together vicissitudes of the hard sciences with traces of religion, smatterings of the arts with long-winding chords of the social sciences,  vibrant pounding subtleties of classical music with the bone-rattling and stomach-bending films of Tarantino. He worked constantly, unending in the vast, ever-expanding tundra of human knowledge and it all rolled out in front of him like a sadistic puzzle, and Panan thought that if only he could put it all together, somehow all of this madness would stop, somehow people would talk to one another. But he realized that in the process of doing this, he was talking to no one, being a part of the very things that he wanted to change. He realized then the costs that come with every choice, the sacrifices that are made in choosing A over B, the inability to be in all places at once, the overwhelming feeling bearing down upon him that his choices made no difference. He reveled in existence within a box of contradictions and when it all became too much and the many sordid colors of the mindscape warped his view of the world, he learned from others to take deep breaths, sit in one place, and let it all go; let all the contradictions go, the hurt, the joy, the all that cause suffering, joy, and all the rest. And when he sat for just 5 minutes, it would all sweep away and Panan would be quieted and humbled in the face of enormity and be so very glad to be alive.

Mourning Coffee

Funeral Home Ortiz rises like a phoenix from the long-gone ashes of today and I etch a story of sordid consequence. Towering over the mangled stop sign below, along the trailways of the bangles of the cacophonous freeway, it continues unabated and tired, begging to be taken out of business but the bodies keep on coming. Shattered, yellow-tinted windows adorn the one-side allowing for filtered sunlight to enter and the glossy black, rusted fire escape calls out to years of being known as the home of neighborhood death and renewal. Like so many of the forgotten and never named, the innards of Ortiz read like dusty pulp fiction, its faltering light posts knocking on the door to be discarded, for darkness to reign supreme. Bodies have arrived en masse in the past, some with familial attachments, others with the lost remnants of year upon year living without any connection. Floating corpses through our city’s streets, unattached and wandering souls looking for a home found it nowhere but in the run-down, chipping red walls of Funeral Home Ortiz that opened its arms to the never-named, nurtured their bodies and gave them proper burial. People carouse the streets, parlors and cafes surrounding Ortiz, walking past, around and through the sedimented histories of their nameless brethren encased within the three stories of brick and concrete and it watches, knowing that their day too will come. For the lost and forgotten, Funeral Home Ortiz graciously offers home and peace to those that may have never known either.

White Sheets

Dripping skin and false teeth glare at him as he walks the runway of the nursing home dressed in nothing by a toga. He had been told this was a toga party but the closest to a toga was the hospital sheet the old man at the end of the hall who smelled of urine had accidentally tucked into his diaper and decided that it was time for his daily walk to the corner and back. He pulled the spongy red nose deeper into his clenched fist. “It was a toga-turns-clown kind of thing,” his Nanna had said, “fun…for the old people”. A bald-headed, crinkly woman sneezes and Betsy, Nanna’s friend, let’s out fart that reverberates against the hall walls. She doesn’t feel a thing. He stops in the middle of the hall. Contemplates his options: a) he could see his Nanna, say hello and leave; b) simply leave; or c) convince Nanna to give him a few of her Percocet and hold the party, by himself if necessary. He rapidly decides on c. An old man stands next to him. Begins speaking nonsense about his sister Betsy and all her medications. He smells of mothballs and one of his testicles is airing in the fervent breeze of the nursing home, hanging out of his perm-pressed, navy blue pants as if trying to free itself from the confines of outdated fashion. He walks away, leaving the man to his own devices. The man continues to speak in the increasing distance.

“Hiii Nanna. So good to see you,” he says, his toga bunching in the back. “Thought this was going to be a party. Doesn’t seem like a party to me”. “Oh but darling, it’s always a party in here, don’t you know? I’ve told you that, right? People may not be wearing the togas yet but they will. Oh, they will my boy. We wear clandestine togas, don’t you know?” She says this with great conviction and for a second he believes her but soon remembers that Nanna’s nuts which, he thinks, he probably should have remembered before donning the toga. He woes the barmy infirm granny into giving him some of her ‘candy’ and downs 3 Percocet. Begins getting jittery, a little vivacious and soon hits the roof. He is running across tiled floors, grabbing old women and tangoing with them and those hips of theirs are moving, those feet like little lobster claws. Cha-cha-cha. The old men jump in at slower speeds and pretty soon, everyone is dancing and all the smells of the universe are joining hands and knocking those that can smell them still in the face. Urine, feces, mothballs, cough syrup, oil. The smells vibrate through his nostrils like the chug-a-chug of a slow moving subway train. His toga gets wrapped around his body like a wrung out towel, everyone is laughing, false teeth are flying and life is good. The beat goes on and on and people that haven’t danced in years are shaking off the dust and reveling in their feet, nurturing their legs, hugging their souls. Hair-clips and wigs, crowns and glass eyes: they’re all a part of it now and the floor is littered with year upon year of age and daily wear and tear and they step on them defiantly to the beat of tango master, Roberto Chanel. The nurses arrive, start in as well and little white dresses and gowns bounce wildly upon the makeshift dance floor. “Don’t stop dancing,” he yells. “The night is still young and we have so many more moments to live!” They all let out a wail and increase their speed. He throws a kiss to the crazed dancers, grabs the corner of his toga, spins around and marches down that nursing home runway and out the door. Another damn good day.

Jazz…After Hours

He’s like a slowly dying Barbara Streisand meets a high Lady Day. A few snide comments arise from agitated audience and he ducks the saltshakers and napkin holders aimed for his head. “And then, a’one, a’two, a’one, two three! Ba-da-da, ba-da-da, boopie-di-deee”, he plays on to the crazy bee-bop beats in his head, gets hit in the arm with a leg from one of the tables in the crowd and only plays louder. “Riki-tiki-ta-kaaaaaaa, boop-di-do-daaaaa!!!” The crowd is audibly booing and hissing by now, the night manager is getting restless. He knows something must be done…quickly.

Naked jazz becomes the only answer. He grabs his rip-away pants, pulls them straight towards the crowd. Ripping velcro and his pants are off, wailing ri-ti-ti-ta beats in circles around his head, the crowd scared into silence. “Ta-ta-di-daaaaaaaaaaa. Boo-nop-di-bop”. Off comes the silk shirt, the polished black Florshines, the lanky purple dress socks. Just his old white hammock undies swingin’ in that smokey jazz night fever and he plays on and on, harder and louder than ever before. He hears a man yell from the back to put on his damn clothes, that he’s burning his eyes out. So he takes them off. White undies shot straightaway at the man’s head, the man screaming like a banshee and running out of the club.

The night manager stares at him, this jazz man with his boys dangling, his bee-bop swayin’ and he’ll play on and on until that early light starts to shine through those velvet red curtains.

Stetson Nights

“Reingold. Russo Reingold. Where? He’s the guy down on the corner there, smoking the cigarette and lying to the girl about his age.”

Stoney flicks his ash into the midnight wind. It curls upwards leaving trails around his eyebrows, dust on his leathery cheeks. He  turns down the brim of his Royal Stetson and gives a light chuckle to the open-mouthed gape of the permed, broken-hearted woman to his left.

“What’d you expect lady? He was gone from home so often for a reason and it wasn’t to practice bowling. Now listen, I did my job, now you know and I need to get paid. I don’t got all night.”

He grabs his pocket watch and slides it out his deep pocket by its gold-linked chain. The top glimmers in the moonlight overhead, an emblazoned S.E.L. shows its face. The woman, with tears in her eyes, looks over, head lowered.

“How much’d I owe you mister?” she says as she slowly opens her purse, stops and lifts her head to look him in the eyes. “Normal fees, I suppose? Just a hard night’s work and another broken-hearted woman to you, huh?”

He grits his teeth, summons the patience he knows he doesn’t have. Feet aching, splitting headache, all he wants to do is take a cold shower, pull on his bottle of Jack and hit the sack, forget about the day until the next one comes. Sewer rats squeal below as the infidel and his new girlfriend climb into a yellow cab, the gray sewage mist rising from the grates, pushing them gently along.

“Listen lady, I mean no disrespect but I gotta get out of here. I got things to do. You hired me for one thing, you got results. Just cause you don’t like those results doesn’t mean I gotsta do anything about that. Your problems, are not my problems. Now, the money.”

His eyes sag as he lights another cigarette, smoke stinging his eyes. The orange haze from the streetlights below shoots upward, slicing beams along the edges of the Brooklyn rooftop and the woman sits down on the black tar in her pink satin dress, kicking a rusty gray paint bucket filled with stagnant water on its side.

“I don’t give a damn about you nor your tiredness nor your God-damned results. You’re God-damned beasts, every one last of you.” He sees her sag her shoulders and reach for her purse. “I’ll get you your payment.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a wad of 100′s. They flap like a deck of cards being shuffled in the early a.m. winds. With a crooked smile, she yanks out one after the other, holds them up in the night sky with her index finger and lets them loose. He looks at her like she’s crazy, walks over and slams a foot on each bill, a big boot mark in dust left behind and bends over slowly to pick each one up, stuffing it in his jacket pocket.

“Don’t need more than I was supposed to be paid for lady. I’d suggest you keep those other ones for a rainy day. Seems like you might have a few on the way.”

He starts to leave, heading for the front of the building where he’ll climb down the fire escape into that cool, free night air, one step closer to bed and the end of another dirty job. “So long, lady,” he says, turning around to catch a glimpse of her one last time. She’s running full speed towards him, head down, barreling at him like a pro-linebacker. Her head smacks him in the stomach, pulls up and hooks him under the ribs and they’re falling. One story, two, three, four…their bodies are twisted together like a pair of mating eagles, her soiled pink satin dress smacking against his body, fluttering in the silent, early morning. His Royal Stetson tips forward and somersaults upwards towards the moon, his watch sways like a grandfather clock from its gold-linked chain, and money. All that money. Shoots out of his pocket and out of her clenched fist, hits the night currents and covers the visible sky in greens and whites. Falling as the cars screech, a woman screams, the lights dim. Somewhere in the distance a cat screams bloody murder and city’s street-cleaners are on the way.

No Parking

The weathered old man, splotchy wrinkled skin, folds back his hair into a posture of grace. He sets his steel blue cane off to the right, leaning it against the concrete steps, focuses in on the yellow words, bright against the corrugated iron door: NO PARKING.

He stares for an hour, shaking his head, thinks of the years he spent roaming the grassy hills of his childhood, free to explore, free to make mistakes, free to fall down and scrape a knee, feel the pangs of hurt to appreciate the moments of health. Restrictions had become the norm. Confining limitations, specialization towards simplification, blinders on vision, mapped out cities of the mind and feet. To walk where allowed, park where permitted, watch what we eat, where we live, when we laugh, what we say and to whom we say it: metal bars had become our pillows, our crutches. He turns his head to observe a child of three running through the fountains outside the towering corporate skyscrapers while the father looks on, making sure he doesn’t run too fast, stray too far, forget too many of the rules. “The bars have become invisible,” he thinks to himself and shudders in the easy breeze of the Sunday afternoon. “Internalized through years of generational inheritance, commercial after commercial, and mediated social interactions, many of the bars have become so second nature that people no longer know the difference between a prison and freedom,” he looks up into the sun, squinting. He wants those hills again, wants to roam free one last time. Wants to throw caution to the wind, not worry about how many calories he puts into his body, how he combs his hair, where he places emphasis when speaking in measured tones and inflection. He wants to know all the self-imposed restrictions that he has accepted, placed and reinforced upon himself and explode them. He wants to choose his limitations, reveal his prison, tumble through freedom unhinged.

The child stops running through the fountain and hand in hand, father and son walk off to get ice cream. The breeze picks up and caresses his aging skin. Gulls fly overhead. Boats skate the waters of the Hudson, sons and daughters carouse the cobblestone streets of the South Street Seaport, the sun rises and will surely set. He has seen it before but longs to see it continually. Beauty edges its way in and nuzzles down for a long comfortable sleep, and he parks himself defiantly in front of the restrictive sign in an homage to freedom. “This may not be freedom,” he says to himself, “but it’s the closest I’ve come in years”.

If You See Something, Say Something

Saw a NYC police marquee today

Said, “If you see something, say something”
I see

Whites pushing blacks out of neighborhoods

Calling it neighborhood cleanup

Gentrification. Renovation. Renewal
I see

White people driving their cars through parts of Crown Heights

Sayin’ this is too ghetto to live in

And continuing on–

Good riddance.
I see

Particular people benefiting from this recession of late

While the majority of us sit bent over and fucked

By an administration and a system

That doesn’t give a shit about its citizens

But cares for the continuance of the system of commerce.
I see

The upper class leaving the office building in ties

While the cleaning staff in aprons comes in

Rarely do they meet face to face

But when they do

I see the class conflict of 250 years and beyond.
I see

A bourgeois elite furthering its agenda

Through the institutions of education, government, commerce

While the rest of us flounder

And blame each other for the puppeteer’s doings.
I see

Police beating non-whites at an alarming rate

Prisons bursting at the seams with color

Families ripped apart, children gone awry

Because some people are not deemed worthy of an equal chance at life.
I see

Academia teaching supposed liberals

To expound upon theories without ever having to act,

Power given to those that speak up

Just until they too are incorporated

Branded, commoditized and sold.
I see

Everyone having ideas of what life is

What we are to do and not to do

Ideas on right, wrong and all the rest

And judgements flying high in that noon-tide stink of sanctimonious ruin.
I see

Individuality as devisive

A tool for those in power

And collectivity through our sameness in humanity

As a great hope.
I called the police

And told them what I saw

“Stop wasting our time”

And I continue to see the injustices
Call 1-888-SAFE
Tell them what you see.

Setting: Unseen

Gossamer Note #132

The concrete bleeds with the syncopated bodies of the dispossessed. Rows of orange street lights run streamers of forgetting over shadows in the alleyways of brick tenements as the back-lit banality of politicians runs rampant on the T.V. screens. Static charms the ears of the enveloped children, resting on their mother’s cushioned laps behind grated windows, as they listen, as their mother’s listen, as the community listens to the upchuck of repetitive violence marked with intrigue. The men have taken leave, by choice, by circumstance, but mostly by design. Rats breed in the crevices of the marbled hallways of cash, troweling sub-par neighborhoods for opportunity. Liberty overlooks the stacked dominos of skyscrapers in the darkened metropolis, her torch sputtering its last platitudes in the face of the looming nightshade clouds of inequality, orange jumpsuits, and dilapidated housing. “Bring me water, bring me food, bring me shelter, and forgive those that trespass upon our bodies, our minds, our souls”: the city speaks in unison of a time of forgiveness which is not now as the kettle begins to boil and overflow. Unemployed beggars walk sidestep with corporate thieves, asking to be seen through the guilt-blinded eyes of the fickle suits. Squalor sits on the fringes like a frothy fungus on a pit of vipers. The cleaner comes tomorrow to push the filth away and for grievances, please call 311. Voices now distant, moved to further fare, the city breathes deep as the mayor plugs in Lady Liberty’s torch and the police run free while the rest of us listen to the lulling beats of the unending static.

To Teach

The stringy professor with dangling locks of auburn hair strides in to class, slamming down his copies of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Rimbaud’s, A Season in Hell. “In 476 A.D., Romulus Augustulus is deposed by the Germanic barbarian named Odoacer. In 1000, the Islamic world was experiencing a ‘Golden Age’, establishing the Arab world as the world’s leading extensive economic power. In September 2009, Brittany Spears debuts her new Circus fantasy fragrance. And I ask you, what have we come to? What has happened? What are you doing?”.  He glares at each student with contempt of the heart, as if they have let him down, his secret children born to an imaginary wife in his imaginary life.

“We often state that we wish to live. To live. Doing what, I ask? For if you are to tell me that by living you mean buying things, consuming, or working to consume, I will tell you that you are clinically mad. To live. What does this mean?” He scans the room with a vacant stare as if he knows the answer which is that there is no answer. His mouth twitches on the upper right hand side, his yellowed teeth peep-show performers. “I ask this question only on the first day of class because I consider it to be perhaps the most important question of your lives. To know, even temporarily, what type of life you wish to live, with what type of people you wish to surround yourself with, doing what types of things, with what kinds of results, is the key to not being a leaf. A LEAF!” He yells this suddenly as if the last thing in the world he would want to see right now is a leafy tree waltz in to the classroom and plop its wooden ass into the cushioned seat. “A leaf blows this way and that. ‘Oh, that looks pretty’, ‘Ooh, I’d like to have some of that’, or ‘Wow, that profession which is the same as my father’s and my father’s father and yes, his father sounds like exactly the thing I want to do for the rest of my life’. A leaf. If there is one thing I hope to emblazon in your minds and bodies, it is this urgent need for all of you to ask yourselves, ‘What is life?’. For to answer this now will prevent you from being taken advantage of for the rest of your lives, will lead you down pathways that may not be permanent but temporarily, they will be yours. Even if they last two seconds, these minor diversions which you decide to leap upon with a faith unbeknownst to many will be yours. And to know this is to accept failure when it comes, learn from it, and move on but it is also to know success and a happiness and contentment that no Circus fantasy fragrance will ever give you. To live. To forge blazing trailways down your messy, complicated, but stunning and beautiful roads to self.

Your assignment for next class is to live. See you next week.” He walks out of the room 15 minutes early. The class remains for 20 more.

Media Frenzy

The vortex of information, news, podcasts, blogs, streaming videos, tweets, Facebook updates and notifications, mechanical requests for my time and energy fixes me in its sights and I sit on the edge, an individual overwhelmed by the worldwide barrage of typeface linkages. “My name is Pete and I’m a Facebook addict.” “My name is Debra and I’s a tweetaholic.” “Benny here. Can’t stop reading the news, crave RSS feeds and I’m in love with Wolf Blitzer.” I imagine them all standing up, fellow fallen comrades in the fight against the great electronic challenge of our time. “My name is Jake and I suffer from uncontrollable bouts of anxiety brought on my friending, de-friending, taking care of my virtual pets and…and…oh my God, someone grab my pills for me.” This would be me and I would be falling over on the waxy wooden floor of the high school gym brave enough to be the epicenter of all grievances against all that is web-based.

The way I see it there are two ways we can look at this news and media frenzy: either a) the sturdy individual, the knowable yet mysterious self, the ‘I’ is standing tall, hovering like a halo above the vortex of information, choosing when and how to participate and in fact, has much more information than ever at his or her disposal; or b) the vast international sea of information spirals downwards, boring multiple tiny holes into the mind of the individual, confusing them until they resemble the bedazzled Blackberry of a privileged teenage girl, ultimately overwhelming them and leaving them with little more information than they had before but ripping apart any semblance of their sanity, causing them to shrivel up into a ball in the corner of their room crying because Jonas just de-friended them, a person they met once in a coffee shop on 14th and 5th ave. I have made illustrations:

After experiencing B many, many days, I now choose A. To battle the incessantly returning anxiety, I now don a golden, sparkly halo I stole from my little sister and repeat “tra-la-la, tra-la-la” paying homage in my befuddled mind to the days of the Gutenberg press, solid stacks of newsprint and the beauty of one book with a set number of pages, a countable number of typeface characters, and a smell other than burning plastic. Then I turn on my computer.