Archive for October 2009

Pompous

Sir Edny Reed uplifts his nose as he passes Tuesday’s garbage,
A pitiful pile of stubborn alcoholics and druggies,
His wingtip shoes glide over their rotting corpses
And gold glitters in his eyes as he approaches a comfortable eternity.

His position gives him credence to be better than these slobs
And he need not ever pretend they are people.

His Rolls, his wallet, his suit and his Russian-import wife
Will forever cause him to forget that a nose upturned
Is a nose in danger of reaching backwards
Till it smells the shit in the broad-ass behind of its owner.

Dust

The ringing won’t stop and he’s heard it all before. She moans about his lack of integrity, the longing she has for different days, the hopes and dreams of that better life that she imagined herself living as that small girl curled up in her attic near the frosted windowpanes. That snow has fallen outside and blanketed the neighborhood in silence. The droning of the baseboard heaters rumbles beneath their feet, disrupts the dust-bunnies, sends them flying. The floorboards creak in the silences between her words and within his deep sighs. He looks over to the fireplace, sees the film of dust that has settled into the grooves of the bricks. The matchboxes of their favorite restaurants, the log from the last fire that was lit two years ago, the fancy dinner with white linen napkins and both of them intertwined on the couch. Sandalwood candles, darkened oak, heavy red wines, the brie from the Italian store a few blocks away, the smell of musty books. They dance through his senses and the traces of his memory bank, fall closer to the ground with her every word.

His heart screams through the backs of his eyes. The pressure builds high, he wants to save it all, sees the cards folding as she plays again, and again, and again. And it’s nothing like it used to be. Her words leak from her mouth with garbled everyday nonchalance; as if she’s said it all before a thousand times. She holds her hands in crooked, sharp positions of indifference, fingers dangling like slaughtered mackerel. Outlines the many facets of their finish line with foppish breezes of whittled facial expressions and inconsistent gestures. The wallpaper was always too yellow, he thinks, and the walls too thin. They let in the cold, release the heat, never could hold anything worth keeping. He notices it peeling in the upper right-hand corner of the room and the wallpaper glue reveals weaved webs of decline.

His patience wears pantaloons of aired consent, her words spill outwards in messy splatters. Time’s unending gaze unfolds along their trials of years untouched, gazes never met. On two separate planes, they stare inward gazes to pasts imagined, nostalgia-imbued.

The strangers waltz plainly  in the company of forgotten dust.

Communion No. 1

Renaldo had read it fourteen times by now. Each letter seemed to explode upon the page, reach through his eyes, grab a hold of his optic nerve and twist to the unending beats of his troubled visual cortex. The past bubbled up through the web of words before him in muddled movements left and right, up and down, circular turnings, and unending spasms of now. He would sit for hours simply staring at the pages, waiting for them to tell him their stories and whispers of clarity would come, slithering through the innards of his brain, through his arms, rolling around through his matted nerves and outwards, through the tips of his fingers, the pen he was holding, the paper he was writing upon. To see the gossamer notes through which the universe operated was his occupation and he knew the impossibility, sensed the inabilities to do so piling up minute after minute, day after day. Attempts to grab hold of them with his pen and mark them down only failed and the sense of that which is unspeakable would move elsewhere in coiled transparencies. Structures, fleeting and temporary, would formulate in speedy creations and precipitous declines, sloshing constantly through vitreous solution, never-ending, never truly complete. In-creation. In-making. In-destruction. Simultaneously coming and going. Movement. Change. Morphologies.

He had written five books, all attempting to name that unnameable. Knew that each time he made particular choices to call out particular people, use particular words, write within a given language within a given form and style. He would begin to mark out in his brain all of the intricacies involved in the waltzing performance of writing that he performed when putting pen to paper, would begin to feel overwhelmed with the possibilities before him, the choices unfolding, the heaviness of marking out one’s existence with darkened lines on porous paper. The layered and sedimented existences of the pen, paper, choices, the artwork of typography, the streets upon which he walked, the language he spoke, the hushed tones within walls, the silent susurrations that washed the spaces all around him. Fulmination, eruption, discharge, dissonance, outbreaks and combustion and the, “If I could just see more, sense more,” “I’m almost there, I can feel it. Just keep pushing,” “One more letter, one more page, one more book, the etchings are on the wall, it’s nearly complete,” kept coming.  And then it would be lost. The unattainable remained so, continually. A communion, defiled and hygienic. A repetitive affair.

Bone

“Conquered”, Francois thinks to himself as he finishes posing the new skeleton of the Nesophontidae, commonly known as the extinct West Indian shrew. His white mustache curls upwards and grazes the bottom of his bronze eyeglass frames, his eyes squint, skin near the eyes folding in on itself like an accordion. He looks over at the others that people before him have sculpted back to life: the wild Urus cow, the Hyracotherium dawn horse, the Archelon sea turtle. Their skeletons smirk in the witching hour light at him, beckoning life to be brought back to their dusty, brittle bones. Steel pins rammed through their joints, the others before him have taken pains to make the dead seem lively. A clattering is heard from the Triassic section of the museum, all people but he have gone home by now and Francois turns, begins walking cautiously towards it.

The Allosaurus crosses the doorway in the lessening light. It has grabbed a sheet from the light-sensitive exhibits and wrapped it around its bony waist, holds it with each little limb’s three curved and pointy claws. Looks right to Francois, with a ‘Hmph’ lifts its massive chin up, saunters out of sight. The Josephoartigasia Monesi mega-rats tumble into one another playing tag, weaving in and out of the piles of toppled bones left in the wake of the Allosaurus. Francois is not amused. With squeaks of ossified glee, they disappear into the plastic bramble lining the Brontosaurus exhibit. The Brontosaurus is not there. It’s bobbing head crosses the window frame to the right from outside. It casually dines.

Francois moves closer, sees the sun setting over the city of Paris, suddenly hears the pounding of repetitive beats upon the centuries-old wooden floors. Faster they get and he turns, only to see the three pointed bulldozer head on the Styracoaurus headed straight for him, dives to the side into the glass casings of mutated baby human skulls. Shattering glass goes everywhere, the Styracoaurus can’t stop and continues on, through the wall and into the gardens of the City of Love. The baby skulls all turn downwards and look at him, begin to talk amongst themselves and cackle. Francois gets up, shakes off the shards of glass, regains his dignity.

The twisting of metal, crashing of glass and bones, sparks begin to shower down. He looks upwards to the prehistoric-themed fresco, sees six Pterosaurs dangling upside down from the broken chandelier on the ceiling. Hears them squawking until without warning, they are brutally smashed against the wall by the head of the beast herself, the female Tyrannosaurus Rex who has risen with a vengeance. Their bones topple to the floor below in cacophonous chaos. The floors fill with the blood-curdling shrieks of the newly-awaken. Within ten seconds, she is alone but for Francois who has now wet himself. She turns her head to the side, glances at him with impunity. Begins opening and closing her jaws lined with 60 dulled teeth, clicking her claws against her ribs. Scratches her head with her segmented tail and stops. She looks to the left, to the right, up, down and then to Francois again. Runs suddenly to the cafe on the outer perimeter, comes back with a table and a chair dangling from her tail and throws them down to the marbled floor. They rattle and settle. She carries a bronze candlestick in her left claw, a lighter in her right. Sets the candlestick down, lights the candle, takes a deep breath and sets herself down on the wooden presentation slab near the table. Peers over at Francois. He looks back. She lifts her claw, beckons him to come nearer, sit down. The romance has begun. Her, so empty, yet so graceful and powerful. He, a man of many interests, filled to the brim with dusty particles from his passion. Both of them, old.

As the moon comes out, shining through the circular glass windows of the natural history museum, La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf saunters into the hallowed halls, fills their imaginary cups with deep hues of red wine. The night is long, their love is new, and they have just begun.

Chagal: Palais Garnier

The red velvet seats, the gold trim, the cherub statues, marble-lined staircases, brightly-light chandeliers, the rounded corners, subtle details and he looks up. A cacophony of color, an explosion of dreaming images, slumbering characters of women and horses, village scenery reminiscent of Chagal’s home village of Vitebsk in la Russie. The cube, the symbol, the Fauvistic, the surrealist: flowing, syncopated madness through the innards of the frenzied palate. The painting screams within the walls of the 19th century Palais Garnier, livens the sterile air, evokes chaotic and sporadic yearnings from above, lining the worn stage with fattened strips of buoyant agitation. Pictures are snapped, tourists come and go. Communion is held.

Quiet. Listen as Mozart’s “Jupiter Symphony” leaks from the images 70 feet above. The ghostly shadows of the corps de ballet continue to dance upon the walls. Singers and musicians, dancers and artists everywhere sway to the movements as Chagal’s paintbrush conducts the piece to our moment in time. Wagner and Ravel, “Der Ring des Nibelungen” and “Bolero”, peel themselves from the chromatic dispositions, lay themselves comfortably within the strings of Apollo’s lyre and play stringed accompaniments to the Parisian’s roaming far below.

The chandelier dims, the skyward musings by Chagal are quieted. Muted scuffling as the players resume their posts and composer’s batons are locked in cases of gold-leaf and ivory. French oak doors creak close, the marble sighs antiquity, Chagal smiles, reposed. Till another day they wait, scheming prismatic brilliance.

The Wait

The man pauses in the aisle, marks down the colors of the seats, the feel of the tepid airplane air hitting his face, appreciates the scenery of those joining him on his flight from Berlin to Amsterdam. The black bag in my left hand becomes heavier, the leather bag on my right shoulder pulls my bones down towards the mish-mashed carpet of light blue, burgundy, puce and navy blue, threatens to snap my arm clear off. Still, he waits. For no apparent reason other than to hold everyone up from getting on the plane and sitting down. He grins like a buffoon, shuffles his bags around in the cabin stowage area above, pushes his gold-rimmed grandfather glasses up with his right index finger. The bane of our existence, the sardonic jokester, the unbridled grinner, the haughty smiler. He exists to pause, a temporal anomaly existing neither in time nor space. He speaks to others sitting down of banal topics related to seat locations, his favorite foods, his final destination. My fingers have reddened. The pressure of the bags is mounting. I imagine my fingertips exploding, blood spraying everywhere coating all passengers rouge. The buffoon will not notice but I will be escorted off the plane to medical. I will miss my flight.

The leather strap on my right shoulder digs in, begins to melt into my skin. Soon we will be one and I will be known in New York as that freakish man that walks the streets with a leather bag dangling from his shoulder skin. My body will reject the leather graft , a debilitating infection will ensue and months later, my arm will be amputated. This man is killing me. Slowly.

The stewardess comes by to ask him to sit. He engages her in a ridiculous conversation regarding the occupancy limits of the plane, the food that will be served, her favorite color. I brace my legs against the seats, afraid one of them might leap forward and up, send the man hurtling towards the back of the plane. Gently, I bring my black bag forward and begin bumping his legs. “So sorry,” I say and he looks back, smiling. Again, I begin bumping him. “Ah, I am so sorry. I think my bag is dying to get to its seat.” Subtle shifts of focus defray any chance of hand-to-hand combat and as he turns once again to ask me to stop, I make my move, speeding past him with my bags, knocking him in the arm, pushing him into the seat on the side. As I run down the aisle cackling, the cabin crew tackles me, restraining me with plastic handcuffs.

I watch from the office of the polizei as my plane leaves Berlin, the buffoon smiling from the window of 2A.

The Wall

Colored washes. Covered wounds. Locked, rusted gates. Cafes nearby and a circus across the road. The wall rises, marked by artists from near and far, lines the desolate highway. It is smaller than he expected, less magical. It is a wall and nothing more. He grew up hearing about the fall of the wall from his teachers and parents, saw the headlines on the papers over breakfast as his father read them. He heard the widely bandied stories, the histories of others, the generalized and accepted interpretations of what the wall represented and what it meant for it to fall. But as he looks at it now, all he sees are colors, concrete and nothing more.

He wonders what the the real stories were to the individuals divided from family, loved ones, their jobs. He thinks of the innumerable intricacies that must have been involved when people looked at the wall or merely thought about it. Like so many of the stories he was told as a child about the world, those fables of framed monologues that America and its education system loves to perform in relation to national and international new’s stories, this one too rang false. He couldn’t imagine Reagan and Gorbachev. Instead, he saw the faces of the women, thought of the children on their father’s or brother’s shoulders, tried to imagine the look of the elderly as they watched a section finally crumble. He wondered if people always thought of it or if it just became yet another one of those things people accept once it has been around for awhile. Like the lack of health care in his country, the subtle racism, the strategically segregated neighborhoods. He understood the symbolic meanings to an artifice’s destruction, thought of the twin towers and how many people were affected by that. How, too, that destruction was utilized for social and political purposes and how in the ashes of those towers, a new wall in America was revitalized and risen from the ashes. He began to think of the wall as physical which turns to mental and then just seems to become so normal that people forget about it.

He reaches out, trails his fingers along the bony spine of the concrete mammoth, tries to imagine the cries of joy in the reunification of lovers, mothers with their sons, fathers with their daughters and really begins to think of all the walls that still exist. He wonders why such importance has been placed upon this one when so many endure, when new walls are being erected every day between family members, within communities, across the nation and internationally.The misery of private property spreads so far, he thinks, marking us off from one another in continually creative ways.

This wall that once physically separated people has fallen. He thinks of all those yet to fall, looks up at the slowly passing orange and purple clouds above, turns and walks away.

Berlin Says Hallo

Red and white-checkered tablecloths, pelmini and kvass and two blocks away in the center of Berlin, we are suddenly in Russland. The communist bloc housing rises in the frigid afternoon air of Berlin, rain having just paused and the streets are empty. Cars line the streets, two old men speak Russian in the corner, their gray eyebrows swooping upwards, their mouths moving slowly, hands gesturing in arched movements downwards. The waiter comes, piercing blue eyes, sharp-edged chin, elongated face. Takes our order and disappears into the back of the restaurant. The wall remains not far from where we sit, the buildings remain scarred from the bullets of a world war not far past. Quiet. Cold. Rising buildings devoid of life and modern architecture rises in the midst of East Berlin aside years of centuries-old churches and theaters. The Spree river cuts through the separation, watchtowers still bear the metal gun stands, a circus now pitches its tents in the place of barracks and we sit not far from the Circus Hostel. Joviality meets doom, laughter meets sadness encased within the faces of older generations, within buildings now covered by the facades of particle boards painted in pristine scenery covering the scars of war. The clouds part and hit the Reichstag where the parliament now sits, grass rolling outwards from its rusty pillars, the grounds riddled with fallen leaves and spitting fountains. Deutsche Bahn not far, its trains sound the passings of thousands of people moving in and out of the city now struggling to renovate, cover-up, revitalize, renew. We finish eating and traverse the sidewalks of past gun fights, bombings, killings, taking pictures of stunning buildings, the art-covered wall as the polizei looks on from afar through lensed-occupations. We traverse the sordid histories of the past with cameras, steadfast gazes, and the creeping suspicion that we have not moved far from where we stood during those darkened years of war and terror.

Le Marais: 6 Train

Humid air washes down and over him after the rain, slinks into the metro below with him, hand-in-hand. Boarding at Charles de Gaulle Etoille directly under the Arc de Triomphe, headed southbound to Chevalret. The faces of Paris seem less daunting after NYC, less directly confrontational and speak more of internalized tragedy and existential interrogation. He looks out to the yellow and red wires lining the metro walls. Twish-twish, twish-twish of the wheels below. Past metro stops. People come, people go. The train glides over the Seine, the Eiffel tower flashes across the cloudy afternoon sky to the right. Bir-Hakeim and the metro plummets and he is traversing centuries of sedimented history. The dreams of Paris twist upwards through the entrails of the city of love. Music resounds from deep below as men hop on with Arabic beats. The lights lining the algae-ridden walls bounce off of the black rims of his glasses. He rides silently, creeps towards home with clarity. 5 more stations.

Foreign and Familiar

Traveling to a land of the foreign and familiar rattled his brain, caused dissonance in the everyday operations of life. To think at one second that he knew what was around him was his first mistake, the next moment the streets and buildings exploding into stratified histories completely unknown to him. He listened to people speaking, understood naught but a few words here and there and felt again the overwhelming feeling of complete isolation, the ebbing anxiety on the fringe of existence. To travel the lands with foreign words is to become infantile once again, emasculated, thrown into the effervescent existences of pure joy and wondrous fear.

Gargoyle Nights

The rain pours from the weathered mouths of the algae-ridden gargoyles high above. He watches them in the early evening light, wonders what they are thinking and what sights they have seen from atop the Notre Dame. He pauses, thinks he hears them speaking to him, realizes it is just the muffled cries of children from along the Seine. Slowly he looks down to his emboldened espresso, breathes deep, and takes another sip. He thinks of how many years they have been there, watching over Paris, how many years they have endured. All around him, the foreign and familiar waltz along the cobblestone streets. Espresso and cigarette smoke line his mouth, live up to the stereotypes of Paris. He contemplates the youth of America, how little it has progressed in its young life, how so much of its existence is backwards and works against its people’s quality of life. He quietly thinks of moving to Paris, wonders how he would make it work, takes another sip. All his prior views of Paris from his trips there in his youth melt away, he enjoys the hospitable company of their host from Tunisia, listens to the gliding cars along Blvd. Saint-Michel, sees the vendors closing their covers, lining up their books, and covering them with plastic for the long rest before the new day begins.

Paris is another place, another city like so many others. The people, although of a different language, are people nonetheless with dreams and aspirations, problems and annoyances not unlike any others. The cultural differences that many claim to be clear differences worth separating French from American are merely different choices from the same pallet of cultural choices, decisions on how to live life. On this quickly darkening night as the last espresso drips from the cup to his lips, he knows that although so many love to separate and cordon off particular cultures from one another, such differences exist only as a long-washed dream, a sense-ridden ride down the pathways of what is possible within the purview of humanity. Choices. He thinks of this in light of the watchful gargoyles. The rain has stopped, their mouths now dry. The city pauses in beams of spotty moonlight shooting downward from the spaces in between the drifting clouds.

The B Train

Charles De Gaulle airport shrinks in the distance as they glide along silently in the B train splashed primary red, blue and yellow headed to St-Michel Notre Dame. The accordion music drips through the fingers of the Algerian man looking for change. Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose, and its suddenly just like the movies. Rocking back and forth, passing the rainbow graffiti of the children and Parisian gangs on the concrete walls separating train tracks from homes, the red Spanish tiled roofs and failing walls of the lower-income homes of the Parisian suburbs: it all floods in and rests itself on his jet-lagged brow, passes by in surreal, dream-like fashion, a blur of colors and senses that he imagines he may forget once rested. The Drancy stop comes and goes, makeshift sandbags piled high on the platform sides and tall, skinny trees droop to the right, their leaves melting into golden brown. Their bodies marked by the pains of last winter cringe for the cold weather to come.

Ebbing tiredness shreds the backs of his eyelids and the beating of his temples rolls Bongo-Bongo through his brain. Le Bourget and the income starts to rise with better apartment complexes, cleaner streets and nicer clothing. He closes his eyes and the images of forgotten rural America as it is passes by by the Amtrak trains plays repetitive beats to the universal story of the tread-mark tracks of trains through neighborhoods.

He opens his eyes. The accordion exits. An Iranian man donning dark glasses and torn gray jeans gets on, flips on his beat-box of Arabesque-musings that drift through the crisp Parisian morning and the white, weathered man to his right turns his hooked nose and downward-curving lips to the man and scowls. The train chugs on past Gare du Nord, Chatelet Les Halles, the tiredness sweeps in like a vulture and picks at their last remaining energies and they are there: St-Michel Notre-Dame. The next five hours are marked by smokey cups of espresso as they wait to find a bed to rest and their lives and the Notre Dame blur together like a Pissarro painting unleashed.

The Disappearance of Gung-Gung

My first love was a blanket. Its name was Gung-Gung.

It was a morose yellow but it smelled of childhood traipsings through the outdoors, gathered dust bunnies in its woven fabric, screamed for attention day and night. And I was there, more than willing to give it what it needed day in and day out, so much so that it became a problem and my parents began to see that separation anxiety was a likely future for Gung-Gung and I.

To solve this, they cleverly devised a way to edge my beloved out of my life by making Gung-Gung disappear. As I was sleeping, they would come into my room, take my warm lover from my slobbery fingers via tip-toe and fervently chop little pieces off of it, making sure to not take too much for fear I might notice. Gung-Gung had begun to shrink.

Night after night my beautiful partner in childhood crimes and escapades was whittled down. From a 5′ x 4′ blanket, I suddenly found myself with a 4″ x 4″ piece of flimsy fabric which I clung to tooth and nail, quite literally. Ripping the final piece of fabric from my clenched teeth was a sordid affair coupled with blood-curdling screams and questions of “Why?!” reverberating against the walls of our old farmhouse.

I think of this now through a sense of loss, dark humor, and wonderment at how my parents could do this. But I think too of all the trail-ways little Gung-Gung must have made through the landfills of America, how maybe little pieces of my friend were used in rat’s or bird’s nests, how that blanket went places no other blanket has probably gone. So when people now ask me why I move so much, I will tell them I am simply re-tracing the steps of my first love, my blanket, my dearest. And should I ever be mean, rude or otherwise disagreeable, I will quickly blame it solely on the disappearance of Gung-Gung.