I watched her sitting atop….a boozy night with smokey hints and allegations…she was not to be touched….just gazed upon…ebony skin with neon green eyes ablaze…
a statue in New York…in Paris….Prague….The Vatican….she was holy…
giving…..loving….just sitting atop…at peace….
what I wouldn’t do….to hold an angelic art….not of stone….nor clay….but…
human….all too human…
I walk past graveyards during daylight…never at nighttime….
just a fear…a fear of being caught…looking-up old friends…past loves…one that got away…
she was volital…half-crazed…we spent a summer making love and drinking margaritas…and Coronas…and more margaritas…
every night was a drunken fight followed by a drunken fuck…screams…yells…crazed midnight howels…
and….then it ended….like all good things do….like all nightmares…she’s long gone…buried deep in the earth while a lover who came after me sits in a cell…
I always knew this would happen…
these thoughts of doin’ myself in, he said, Pills…a gunshot…jump off ah bridge…just end it…done, leaning over…. the old man whispered, Just done…
he’d lived a long life…married for years…kids…dogs…trips…all that was gone now…
I’ve been broke most my life, he said, Tryin’ ta hold on ta somethin’…even when she was alive…I wanted more, lit a smoke, Now…ah…it don’t matter…
No…what pop…
I wanna catch a fish, he grinned, a big ole Catfish….somethin’ I can mount on a wall…
O.K.
Let’s do that tomorrow…, and he went back to sleep..
the clean have kidnapped Christ…you’re allowed to screw over your fellow man….even encouraged…all in the name of profit…
we all make mistakes…no-one is perfect but the son of God….he alone will forgive you of these sins…as only he can…the good book says….
Christ died on the cross for you…you prick…so…go forth and multiply….
rape…pillage…fuck over your next door neighbor….all will be forgiven…
trust me…
the old man kept talking in past tense, I’ve been to Japan….been to Sweeden….hell…I’ve been all over the world, an arrogance spewed…
I was an Eagle Scout don’t you know, he stoically said, Got that at fifteen, another boast..
Your mom was proud of me, he said, She was sure proud….met her when I was twenty…..she was eighteen….robbed the cradle, he smiled….ran brittle fingers through thin gray..
Boy I miss her….ugh….I really miss her…….(pause)…Did I tell ya’ I been to Sweeden…..
a different young man walks North Avenue at this time…on his way downtown with a cup of coffee and a dry roll….keep going….gotta get there…past closed bars where cleaning crews mop spilled beer….thrown popcorn….credit card reciepts….phone numbers of midnight oral fixations….and arrogance…..
the arrogance of youth out looking for a piece….a taste..entitled…the work has been done that keeps this nation afloat….greasing the chains of economic progress…this country is their’s….
there are whore’s walking North in this hour…going home to single room occupancies for a rest from working all night on their knees….bent behind garbage dumpsters….reeking of piss and thrown out with sauer kraute from Polish joints along with drunks by tough old Polack broads at the end of the night…
a Nelson Algren dream….
the black bitches still looking for that last dollar before sunrise….chicks with dicks the same…no saints…only sinners…aren’t we all…
and still he keeps walking…gotta get there…gotta be on time…
Mars shined last night…letting off an abundant light…a glow of red…pomegranate red…or Ruby red…I was told…
missed the show…talks of brownish clay paving walls from West Texas into New Mexico…seen it when I was a kid..
on my way to LA….on the run….
remembered the old man the Greyhound picked up in Oklahoma City…..kept saying, Where’s Phoenix….Where’s Phoenix…, he’d had a few
I thought to myself as he yelled out..on and on…..somewhere in an Arizona trailer park is a family of kids playing poker with beer cans astrewn…
the loser has to go pick-up dad at the bus station…
there is no peace….not for Buddha…nor baby’s momma…or momma’s baby…just the on-going drip of poverty’s riches….a New York benny card with $200 in food stamps…always swapped for some dough at the Arab joint on the corner….
the SSI check comes on the 1st for Buddha..strange voices lurk in the ears of those who listen….baby girl will be taught to hear those voices as well in her life….
voices saying…buy…buy…sell…sell…Wall Street is never far away…it’s as close as a billboard with a curvy black broad holding a bottle of Martel….or sharing a laugh with a lover while holding a Newport between caramel fingers with red long tips……
those nails were never anxiously bit over the loss of a job…a house…a car taken away in the middle of the night….with college loans to get you through trade school….cause baby girl’s pregnant and who done fucked her in the hood….
no time for cheerleading…or speeches at high school graduations….just roll baby…’cause this ain’t Woody Allen’s Manhattan…ain’t no Sex In The City neither….this is Hunts Point…..
and there are no copies of The Times at the bodegas….just The Post and El Diario read by weary eyed PR’s after a night of Sabado Gigante…..
and Buddha blazes….starting another day..Goodnight baby’s momma…goodbye baby girl…
l remember Locust Bayou….an old wooden church down a rocky dirt road with a hundred or so crackers singin’ to the tune of a pitch-pipe…With your heart make a joyful noise….
and every Sunday the stale crackers and Welches Grape juice…Do this in remembrance of me…cash laid in passed plates…bills…a ten….a twenty…leading up to the big show….
a rousing sermon calling for all sinners….,Come forth…confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…and you are but lowly, the cattle call with praises-be shouted out and Amen being sung from a hymnal….
shouts of glory with bodies arising from a makeshift tub of water….pastor and sinner, turned child of God, dressed in soaked white, Death to sin…and alive to Christ…..
I remember Locust Bayou….an old wooden church down a rocky dirt road…with a hundred or so crackers singin’ to the tune of a pitch-pipe….
seated at the table…she seemed so content….almost happy…like a baby in a highchair being spoonfed ….organic carrots..
farm raised lamb…pure…very pure…
always trying to slip past her the truth….nothing is pure…nothing organic…forced…all being forced…
she didn’t want to hear of it…just keep feeding her lies…let her be happy in half-truths…out and out lies….
Fiction is what they want, she said, Why should I be any different?….
You’re right, I told her, You’re right….now…shut-up and eat your peas…
a spoon was thrown…a fit ensued….back to square one…here comes the train….chooo…..chooo…
too late…her mouth was closed….
dmseay 