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this…what is this…past…promises…oaths…never taken seriously…kids playing house…

yes…these lies upon lies…misrepresentations…cover-ups…leading to this…this…

you were embarrassed…a mate in search of soul…not money nor materials…power or position…these deals we make…in the name of what…

never impressed with sales figures…prizes or dividends…a bottom-line met… Meister Eckhart kept score…i chose his words…not your’s…

and i am at peace in not being at peace…to question…seek truth…looking for wisdom in old books…poems and prose…streets…ravines…forests… taverns across a land that chose commerce and real-estate…commerce and real-estate…

yet Whitman still walks among the dead…Melville fights the good fight…the noble battle…and Henry Miller dances away while Kerouac prays…they keep me alive…i’m not hungry…

so i say goodbye to you and America…home of the free and the not-so-often brave…so-long to this air-conditioned nightmare built upon sand…a beach closed in the winter-time…

it was never in the cards…never was…and that is O.K. …that is O.K. …

*a thanks to Joe Jackson and Henry Miller*

i knew Chicago…her streets…boulevards…back-alleys…busted sidewalks…i knew her well…

she was a saint…a thief…a wife…a whore…drinking buddy…mensch… a worker on call…a loud talker… a friend who would never turn on ya’…not for a dollar…nor for a prize…the broad was true…

we walked the lakeshore in moon’s bliss…read books on trains at 3 in the morning as bars spilled into taco joints and 24 hour diners on Clark…and blacks questioned cops and cops questioned blacks and this kid got shot and that guy shot him and crack dens served crackheads and hospitals pronounced the dead and where were you on the night in question…..with my boys playin’ cards and drinkin’ 40’s…I got alibis…

i knew Chicago…i knew that lady who rolled through good and bad without a blush or pause…just the crossing of her legs perched upon a barstool lighting cigarette after cigarette and snappin’fingers to beats…rhythms…and poetry given out in large doses…soul was always ’round the corner…

she moved from Northside to Southside…covered every game …always lookin’ for action…in Polack joints at closing time…Lithuanian pool halls and Yugoslavian church basements…feelin’-up yuppies who’d made their dough for the day…talkin’ smack with spic chicks in Humboldt…running ’round town with the last of the Irish hoods…money made in the day-labor racket….a nigga workin’ for nothin’….some things never change…

saw her over in Jew town…but Jew town ain’t Jew town no more…and the blues ain’t the blues and all that was now went….gone like a ghost in the night…gone…

and the fat-man went south after linin’ his pockets…left Chicago behind…set-up shop in another town…sure ‘nough a poem’ll be written ’bout that too…wait…just wait…

i knew Chicago…I knew her well….where did she go…where did she go….ain’t nobody talkin’….

the old man kept talking of this great love now gone…passed in the spring with snow and ice…just…rambled-on about this woman…

she never wanted anything for herself, Dad said…rocking in the Lazyboy,…wantin’ to keep her family happy…that’s all…, i listened…kept quiet…unloading dishes…plates…old silverware…

mom said you’d end-up back here, the old man looked-out a front-window…streetlights coming-on, all that galavantin’ ’round for nothin’…where all d’ya go…

all-over pop…everywhere…

well…she was right…gotcha nothin’…, he chuckled, what d’ya prove…

nothing Dad, rubbed my eyes,…nothing…,a butcher’s knife was put away…placed with other sharp objects…thoughts…

‘member the time you ran away…clear out to Los Angeles…what a screwball thing to do that was…, kept looking out the window…never at me…

mom said…why’d he go and do that for…, the old man started laughing again…,always wondered ’bout you…always…the prodigal son…

yes pop…right…, cabinet doors now closed…stuff hidden…

she always said d’ya end-up right back here…boy oh boy could she call ’em…

sure pop…sure…,i placed the house-keys in a fake-crystal bowl on the T.V. stand…one of those five-and-dime specials…opened the door…

hey…where ‘ya goin’…

for a walk pop…just a walk…

I see…

goodbye Dad…

sitting in Union Square…watching America go-by…walking on stilts…juggling bowling pins…howling at a yellow moon haunting Manhattan…yet i have no fear…

not scared of homeboys…zombies… speed-freaks… spice girls…junkies…poets…pawns…preachers…protesters…runaways…roustabouts…and those that have gone to ruin…take it in…take it all in…

listening to the gospel of Kerouac…sermons from the road…leading me…leading me…follow the mystic’s path…

hearing words spoken over jazz riffs…the myths… the myths…eyeballing America…face to face…she ain’t backin’ down…

I want a clean fight…follow my directions…when I say break…break…watch the clinching…now…go to your corners and await the bell…good luck…

no longer in cornfields…nor smelling sweet alfalfa as evening falls…in Midwestern hamlets where a god punishes…and there is fear…

this is not a new England…just one of old…with bloodlines and bank accounts praised daily at an alter made long ago…by Puritans…right…

sitting in Union Square…watching America before me…always before me…

ding-ding…

god is nothing…nothing….

God is nothing…

god is nothing…has to be nothing…

how’d you figure…this is wrong…just wrong…gotta be…

’cause if god was something…then god wouldn’t be a deity…right…

nothing…

nothing…nothing…nothing…

I don’t get it…

you’re something…yes…you are human and you are something…right…

yes…

and you my friend are far from a fuckin’ deity…

God is nothing…

yes…god is nothing… barkeep….

it was Sunday dinners with family and friends…bottles of wine…front-porch chats…music played…watched…only watched…

songs sung off-key…no pitch…notes stretched…never a chord struck…the clan had spoken…you’re out…

so…i watched from afar…mouth closed…laughs on cue…talk when spoken to…ideas kept…a foriegner…not blood nor kindred spirit…just a stranger in a strange land…

transitions…

and we go from dance to dance to dance…observing the floor…listening…looking for a partner…sticking to the punch bowl…collecting what along the way…

these choices are made…

there were fears for a real long time…just scared…always scared…

of what…

of being alone…by myself…

uh huh…

at the end of it all…alone…no-one wants to be alone…can you take solace in being alone…I don’t think so…

no…that’s why there’s shopping malls…Mc Donald’s…churches…group therapies…

you think…

yes…to save us from being alone…go join the masses…right…there’s a thousand places to go by yourself but the chosen spot is amongst the people…

yes…

and at night in America…hell …the former Soviet block…maybe the Philippines too…there’s that sick feeling you get by yourself…under covers…curled-up…wanting someone to hold…to hold onto you…scared of the dark…

I know that feeling….

wanting the sun to come out…ending night… alone is put aside…for awhile…for awhile…

too short a time….

what…

I said too short a time…

yes…and you go back home where the night begins again…comforted by what…a TV…a paperback…old records…leftover Chinese…

right…

and the lonliness…the lonliness…yes…until one day…

one day what…

just…one day the mind changes…the soul hits a restart button…gears shift…

to…

to something new…something new…you can’t place it…don’t know what it is…or…how it got there…but…it’s there…truth is seen…after years…walls come down…barriers…placed there by who…by what…a death…a divorce…fired…never hired…an illness…myths…

what…

thinking it all should have turned out differently…if this choice had been made…or…that mistake wasn’t committed…right…

yes…yes…

this transformation…this turnabout…seeing life again…something…

instead of…

instead of emptiness….instead of being alone…you can be alone and not be alone…

that’s what I want…

that’s what everybody wants…

come play in the rain with me…amongst sitting Buddha’s and lushness in a summer’s eve…come…come…

while bongos and congas are beaten by tribal women in search of madmen under rocks and sand…behind willows and juniper bushes…please come…please…

and dances are choreographed to rhythms of water from magical clouds…sent from a goddess whose wishes are good…only good…she never conjured evil…never…

i watch this soulful feast from within..a part of something bigger…allowed freedom to take…promising to give back…all has been paid for long ago…thank you…

Whitman played in the rain…and Ginsberg…Kerouac…Williams…Patti Smith…soaked to the bone and not blue but alive…alive…awaiting the next ritual…we all are…

come play in the rain with me…amongst the sitting Buddha’s and the lushness of a summer’s eve…come…come…

i walked ’round Los Angeles for a week when i was a kid…got out there on a $99 one-way bus ticket bought downtown at a moment’s notice…always an escape clause…

remember seeing all these guys sleeping ’round the station when we pulled-in…few bucks in my pocket…not much…looking in the darkness at vagabonds…and vacancies…truths and dares…people plotting…

the night air was cool…not cold like back east…just cool…pregnant Mexican girls wrapped-in colorful blankets sat there on sidewalks…waiting for their men to return from 3rd shift jobs way out in some Cali-town…

and i was real jealous…’cause those guys had someone waiting for them…someone with a brown-bag of food…a thermos of coffee…lips to kiss…

so…walked-’round some more…past pawn-shops…fancy hotels with swimming-pools lit blue in the night…movie theaters…adult bookstores…GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS…neon signs flashed…

saw squad-cars passing black guys strutting to syncopations…young white chicks smacking gum and talking shit…Korean store owners sweeping-up debris left-over from a day mis-spent…torn pornagraphic pictures…candy bar wrappers…cigarette boxes…condoms discarded…another American town…

never saw the Pacific…

has autumn come…

shhhh…too early…too too early…

i was fooled…morning coolness…

yes…isn’t that always the case…bait and switch…bait and switch…

it is comforting though…very comforting…

don’t get used to it…