the distraction has become so routine to me
i imagine ms. pacman and the ghosts
navigating their way
through the maze of my digestive track
Melatonin Thursday
why should sleep
feel like a police officer
patting you down?
remain perfectly still
do not tug your blankets
no funny business
the darkened walls of your room
are not the engorged shadows of streetlamps
8-bit litigation
when a relationship ends
there is no avoiding
that hour when you exchange
bags of each other's belongings
pathetic items
unsure where they really live
like silent children
in a samuel beckett custody battle
where the adults
are as strange and composed
as two high definition flat screen TVs
which are being lowered with great care
to the bottom of the grand canyon
“Bushwish”
in water-proof khaki jacket
looked like the asian-american
of 1961
in his pressed way
he is older than he seems
with his finger on a subway map
he implores me
according to the note
scrawled in his hand
he was looking for an apartment
in bushwish
Small train observation
Wearing contact lenses makes people nicer to me but not if I sleep in them. They don't like that squint. I think that's why they kicked me out of a coffee shop today.
On the Church Ave. bound G train a dude gets on at Greenpt wearing a Patrick Ewing jersey for the Knicks game tonight against the Celtics.
I'm trying to love Deep Cuts by The Knife the way I used to but my headphones are broken now and the slightest movement mutes the left earphone so I'm unnaturally still.
A lady gets on at Nassau wearing sunglasses. The Patrick Ewing guy starts talking to her but I can't hear the conversation. Then he starts taking her picture with his iPhone, searching for better angles he sits next to me. Then he leans against the handrail. Then he sits next to her and they shake hands.
Trying to listen to music on broken headphones can make a person go crazy. They are worth replacing
Magic bird
all winter long
i watched a pair of
bordeaux jordan 7s
hanging from the telephone wires
in the sky near near the school
by my apartment
it was cold out there
at times the shoes
were caked in snow
they are still there now
i can't imagine
what they would feel like
to put on
Non-linear bannister
my apartment complex
, which has been
flexing its way through winter
like a wind-blown squirrel
obsessing over a wet rock
, released it's tension
and with it
the residential pheromone
of humidity and bare arms
, it rises triumphantly from the carpet
, peels itself from the walls
creaking into my nostrils
like sleeping beauty's
discarded fart-filled blankets
Altered perceptions
The parents aren't accustomed to public transit. They take seats opposite their daughter and the father says, "I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time with Trevor honey, do you think we disappointed him?" in a voice from a sub-urban living room.
The girl, in her all black canvas shoes, brown leather jacket, mini-skirt and leggings, looks out of place addressing her parents on this train. She would normally be pouting into a novel her roommate recommended, or else plugged into her iPod with hands folded on her lap. She hasn't been living in New York very long.
"No" She replies, "You guys did good. I mean, he's not really looking for any reaction in particular. He's done it to me too. There's no wrong response."
Her mother, a squat woman with a concerned intelligent face leans forward towards her daughter, "Where are we going right now?"
"6th avenue."
"Pardon?"
"About eleven stops. About eleven stops from here."
"Ahh!" The mother leans back contentedly. Like her husband, she never looks around. They glance at the advertisements but their child is the only person on this train.
The girl addresses her father again, "What he's trying to do is create an out of body experience." Her father considers this. "He was trying to make you feel like you were mom and she was you, or like you were both the same person."
He rubs his chin, "Right."
"Did you experience that?"
The dad thinks about the question a little bit, his tone is never cynical. "No..."
He returns the question to his daughter.
"I did... I mean it isn't a completely altered perception and everyone experiences it differently. Like when he had you holding the camera so that it looks like your body is attached to mom's head."
"Right."
"Where is it that we're heading?" Asks the mother again.
"6th Avenue."
"Pardon?"
"6th Avenue, the museum is on 6th Avenue."
"Ahh!"
The girl glances around the car. Her father is waiting for her to continue talking but she doesn't. She is aware of all the faces watching her. They are hurtling under the East River and the train is full of other people in their twenties, all of them completely absorbed in the dynamic of her family, the sub-urban American nakedness of their dialogue.
She makes eye contact with a bearded guy holding a backpack that says Get Lost in his lap. He has decided he hates her simple minded parents. A girl with orange hair is staring at her, trying to guess which museum they are heading to. A guy reading The Pale King is trying to reach an opinion about the far-out boyfriend character - is he corny or brilliant? Could she do better? Would he sleep with her? Would she sleep with him?
Everybody remains completely silent for the rest of the ride. Her parents staring contemplatively at each Delta Airlines advertisement. One, after another, after another.
April Fools #5
Two Very Different Stories About Animals, Plastic Bags, and a Lack of Public Garbage Cans:
I. Intentional Placement
Coming back from Pathmark last year I discovered a dead cat near my house. It had obviously been hit by a car. I'd been the guy-who-scoops-up-dead-cats-in-the-neighborhood before and it's a role I probably took a little pride in. I love cats and I'm not squeamish. Removing their corpses from the afternoon sun dignifies them and it keeps kids from being traumatized. Everybody wins. The complication being that in this particular house I had no access to the garbage bins, only my landlord did - and she frightened me.
So I dropped off my groceries and returned to the sidewalk. I brought two plastic bags but it was impossible to shuffle the creature into them; rigor mortis had stiffened the cat and its guts threatened to flop out. Instead I used the bags like gloves, carrying the cat like one might carry a tray of orange juice and breakfast bagels. 4th ave would've been closer but I went down towards 3rd. The streets were less crowded that way. When I reached the intersection I discovered no public garbage cans on any corner - probably because it's a deserted area.
Not to be defeated, I walked south another block, and another... six blocks. No dumpsters, no public garbage cans, no place to drop an empty Pepsi bottle, a bag of Doritos, or an anonymous dead cat. I was far away from home and my hopes were dwindling. The cat was dripping blood and it's eye was falling out. The sun was high and hot. I tried to stay on the opposite sidewalk from pedestrians.
I passed a construction site and asked if I could put the dead feline in their dumpsters- they said no. A guy stopped me as I was turning to leave saying it would be OK, then his boss reiterated it wasn't OK. Maybe his boss thought I killed the cat. I must have looked a little suspicious, and I'm sure it's a liability to have dead cats in the company dumpster among all the fiber glass and planks of wood. I took the cat further still to 2nd ave, walked north up to 9th St. No garbage cans.
Two Hasidic Jews were leaving a building and in desperation I asked if they knew where I could discard of the cat. They suggested I put the cat in one of the dozen or so garbage trucks lined up outside Lowe's so I walked over there but all those garbage trucks were locked up, nobody around. No way to put garbage in them. Each truck had DON'T LITTER painted on their sides in red. No, we mustn't litter.
I remembered something Big Gimme Jimmy taught be back in college. He practiced a kind of post-modern living exercise called Intentional Placement; a process of leaving something - usually a piece of garbage - in a precise location on the ground. It is not littering, (which is careless and habit forming). Instead, Intentional Placement is a form of artistic expression. I'd seen Big Gimme Intentionally Place orange peels, cigarette butts, soda bottles... so surely it could be done with a dead body.
I left that cat tucked under the shade of a young tree on 7th street and 2nd ave; sprawled out and rigid on its bed of plastic bags. There was nothing to say. This was by no means a final resting place but it was an improvement. Things continued to be alive all around the cat. I could live with that. I went home and unpacked my groceries.
II. Intentional Placement 2
dog sitting for new clients
in jackson heights
i did not realize
there were no garbage cans
on the street corners
around the building
where the dogs live
eventually the dogs were eager
to go back inside, it was raining
so i carried the poop bag inside with us
clutched in a plastic grip
in a crowded elevator
sighing,
"which floor?"
"thanks"
ready with a line
"i'm taking it to the vet
have it tested for worms."
but of course nobody asks
(
can't leave dogshit in the kitchen garbage
flushing it down the toilet
seems like something an insane person would do
and what of the bags if i did?
)
returned alone to the streets
five more blocks in the rain
and no garbage cans
finally dropped it in some residential can
outside a nice house with a patio
some guy leaps out of his car
, multicultural brown
like a jackson height's stereotype:
"that's not your garbage can!"
but i continue
walking fast against the rain
not missing a step
"Hey! Guy!" he tries me again
let him chase me down
you'd have to be a brave motherfucker indeed
to confront a stranger
sopping wet without an umbrella
, not walking any dogs ,
who drops a bag of excrement
in your stupid garbage can
and this is why i make the big bucks
April Fools #4
Primal Spirits
It was my fourth and final week in Costa Rica.
I was 12 years old and there with my best friend's family.
More on my own than I'd ever been.
Iguanas resting on rocks, bats crowding the trees, crabs parting along the shore and I was Moses parting the red sea with a stray dog lingering behind
swimming pools, monkeys, Chicklets for sale everywhere for a few colones, terrible sunburns, ginger ale,
the magic was dense, we moved around a lot
One night I watched a dancing woman turn into a spider right before my eyes.
We ate crab right from the shell -
They seemed to always be dancing
Another time Dino, a five year old blonde kid, fell from the top tier hot tub and cracked his head on the cement below, pool level. Matt and I were the oldest ones there. Matt scooped up Dino, covered in blood, and carried him back to the adults while I watched over his older brother, Max - a seven year old. I can't remember how, but a massive loogie is a part of that story. A lot happened in Costa Rica.
It was my fourth and final week in Costa Rica, like I said,
there was a woman at our table
she was the center of conversation
a very old witch
and we were very lucky to be friends of her friends.
She addressed Matt, his little brother (Joshua), and I
One after another she guessed our astrological signs
She got all three correct
Smiling at us with her strange primal genius
She told us our birthdays
Precisely to the day
And again we nodded with frightened humility
the adults were laughing
they always laughed in Costa Rica
, they laughed while white water rafting
, they laughed among the hornets
and all throughout the rainforest, they
laughed while spiders clacked about
trapped in aluminum pots
in her heavily decorated, wrinkly hands
below the table and in her ancient lap
the old witch held our passports