Southwest Miami Sr. High

Miami, now there is where you get HEAT.  We used to go to schools--cinderblock construction with flat, black tar roof-- and the south Florida sun would make that roof tar boil.  The streets and parking lots rippled all around you and all the whole world looked like a mirage.  South Dade.  Coral rock and canals.  Banana trees that nobody wanted and sticky sap Brazilian Pepper and papery Malalukas spreading through the native swampy trees and sawgrass.   When we kids went fishing we would rest cool in the shade of the Australian Pines that lined the Tamiami Canal.  The pines were welcome invaders.  Shade is valuable.  They provided shade.  But at Southwest Miami Sr. High School there was no shade. 

Southwest Miami Sr. High School.  Newly built on a denuded parcel of land in the floodplains of the ‘Glades.  Not a mature tree to be found.  No A/C to be found.  At least not in the student area.  The class rooms all had an outside wall on one side, the hall on the other side and two interior walls, one with a “black board” that was green. The outside wall had large, unshaded awning windows that cranked open and closed.  If the outside wall was on the north (shady) side of the building you were hot but OK.  But if it was on the south side you roasted in the winter and charbroiled in the spring and fall.  Sitting in those Formica desks with the sweat running down your neck was brutal.  We never gave it too much thought because that was all we knew-heat and sweat. 

The school corridors linking the buildings were open to the weather with just a poured concrete roof over a poured concrete walkway.  They were built ‘open’ to allow the ‘breezes’ to waft through the school.  But there either was no breeze to waft or the breeze was gale force and carried the golf ball sized rain ‘drops’ horizontally through the walkway.  I guess that is why they called them breezeways. 

On the way to class you had go from building to building to stop by your locker and get your books/gym uniform/lunch/ lunch money/ etc and you only had a few minutes so you ran.  By the time you got to class you were either soaked from sweat or drenched with rain.  That was how you got wet when you didn’t want to get wet.  There were times you wanted to get wet but couldn’t…

The previously mentioned gym suit consisted of khaki shorts with elastic waist band, white ‘T’ shirt, white socks and sneakers.  (The girls wore a strange, one piece uniform that looked, simply, like a pale green or white sack with arm and leg holes.  There was elastic at the waist that cinched the hour glass figure that was just beginning to develop in the young women of our class). You were supposed to bring the uniforms and sneakers home once a week and wash them-and I guess air out the gym lockers over the weekend.  In fact they rarely were washed more than once a month and the lockers themselves smelled worse than most gas station rest rooms and never, ever got a breath of fresh air. 

During this period of American history physical fitness was taken very seriously but primitively.  No fancy gyms with exercise bikes or treadmills.  No mirrors or carpeted workout stations and (as I have said before) No A/C.  We had a gym with a hardwood floor and floor mats hung on all the walls to prevent anyone from smashing a head or kneecap on the cement block walls.  We had basketball hoops and huge rolling laundry carts filled with all kinds of balls-volley balls, basketballs, dodge balls, heavy exercise balls, etc.  But all this interior luxury was reserved for days when the rain (flying sideways through the breezeways) kept us from enjoying the outdoors.  Outdoors we had a four hundred and forty yard unpaved track, a huge field of weeds and small stones, an asphalt pad with six hoops and three full basketball courts or four volleyball courts or any number of other sweaty games outlined in a graphic of two and one half inch, multicolored, lines painted like hieroglyphs on the sticky black asphalt.  We had tetherball and volley ball and touch football and softball.  My favorite was track and field-I had read the autobiography of Roger Bannister and the great American Jim Thorp-and imagined that one day I would set records like them.  Even with the sweat and heat this was the best part of my day.  

I always played full out, even though my ‘full out’ was laughable.  I was a chubby little guy who dreamed fast but ran slow.  I couldn’t do a pull up.  I was always chosen either last or very, very close to last, to be on anybody’s team.  Even when we had dance lessons (Oh Yes!  We had dance lessons as part of physical education!  And even the dancing was sweaty!) I was a loser.  To begin the dance lessons we would line up-boys on one side of the gym starting with the tallest guy and down to the smallest-that would be me.  The girls did the same on the other side of the gym.  The gym teacher would start a march up on the phonograph and the lines would begin to march forward.  The head of the boy’s line would head for the head of the girls line and they would pair off.  Then the second pair, third…etc etc etc …down to me, whereupon I would get either no one as there might not be enough girls (a true blessing) or I would get Linda Brockstein. 

Linda Brockstein (real name not used for reasons which will become obvious) had a problem.  She had some kind of horrible condition that made her nose always run.  Not some clear snot but very green, gooy looking snot that she had to constantly wipe off with tissue.  The tissues became sloppy looking.  I never could figure out where she got rid of them.  We had a lot of classes together and I saw her most of the day-wiping her nose-and I never did see her get rid of one of the tissues.  So there was the snot and the tissues and the bubbles that used to blow up out of her nostril sometimes from the snot when she talked really fast answering a question in class and she did answer a lot of questions in class.  She was smart.  Class to her was like track and field to me-full out.  And I wanted to be nice to her and not be disgusted but I couldn’t.  Especially when I had to dance with her.  I just kept thinking ‘where does she ditch the tissues?’

When it wasn’t raining and we were outdoors we’d work on the President’s Official Physical Fitness Program (the President was very serious about Physical Fitness and his counsel had laid down goals for running the mile, pull ups, push ups, sit ups, and a dozen other real exercises!).  We also played foot ball (touch), did the high jump and broad jump (that was when my imagination ran wild), played softball (I was always in right field), and even did archery under the (unknown to us) cancerous Miami sun.  I loved it!  After forty five minutes of exercise and sweat we would go into the locker room and clean up for our next period.  That meant undress and take a shower and get back in ‘street clothes’. 

A hot shower after playing in the sun in Miami opens up your pores to dime size.  What little water your body can spare (that it doesn’t need to keep the blood liquidy), comes out of the pores and soaks you down to your socks immediately.  You squish.  You will be sitting in a puddle in your next class.  The cure for this is a cold shower.  In the boys locker  room there are twenty shower heads in the long, open shower.  Nineteen are blazing hot and one is like ice.  There is a line at the icy one.  The steam blows out of the others and it is only when you are sure you will be late for your next class and have run out of waiting time on line at the icy one that you grudgingly take a hot one.  This is when you would like to run naked through the breezeway in a hurricane.   This is when you wouldn’t mind being soaked with the pure, cool water from the clouds that blow in from the Everglades and horizontally through the breezeways and soak the students of Southwest Miami Sr. High.

Pepper Blight

It was a horrible thing, Lou said, he was a friend of my daughters.  I was walking the dog when he came out of his house with Domino and his men were showing up for work and were gathering around the trucks in the empty lot across the street.  Lou had seen me passing while he was dragging the empty garbage cans off the street.  The truck had emptied them and dropped them in the middle of Carolyn Drive an hour earlier.  The day after a holiday they are always in a big rush to get the pick-ups done.  They have two-days-work-in-one to do and they don’t pay a lot of attention to leaving the cans neatly. 

Lou told me about his daughter’s friend who had been driving with his buddy in his dad's new muscle car.  The car flipped over last night on Sprout Brook and he was killed.  Thrown through the window were Lou’s words.  No seat belt?  I asked.  No.  The driver was ok, he said, he was wearing his seat belt.  I’m sorry, I said.  My mind flashed on a man who was killed a couple of days ago when he lost control of his motorcycle and he had no helmet on.  The doctors said he would have been alive if he’d been wearing a helmet.  He was participating, at the time, in a rally of motorcyclists protesting the ‘helmet laws’.  Irony.  I knew there were no logical parallels between the two stories.  One was a tragedy of youthful inexperience, the other of a fool who should have known better.  I knew how Lou felt, needing to share his thoughts with someone even if it was just a casual acquaintance like me.  I listened and then kept walking.  He started over to his men to get them started on their work day. 

Back at home after breakfast I went out to the garden with thoughts of a dead biker and a dead teenager in the back of my mind.  My mission this day was to decide how to deal with what I thought was an incurable blight on my pepper plants.  Dark spots leading to yellowing leaves that, eventually, drop off and circle the plant with a wreath of withered foliage.   My biggest fear was that in doing nothing my other plants-tomatoes and eggplant-might be infected.  I was prepared with my shovel and some plastic pots to try to transplant a couple of the plants and grow them outside the garden.  But when I looked closely at the plants and thought as clearly as I could about possible solutions I knew that I would have to pull them all up. 

I carefully pulled each plant from the soil and dropped it into a small pile outside the garden fence.  Then I raked the topsoil and all the offending leaves into a pile and shoveled them up into the lid of a garbage can.  I tried to imagine being a doctor and having to decide whether or not to remove an infected leg from a patient.  Or whether or not to shut down the equipment that maintains a coma patient on this side of death.  I could do it.  I am sure.  But it would never be easy.  Lives are lost or terminated everywhere, all the time.   These were only pepper plants.  But they were alive and it wasn’t easy tugging them out of the ground.  Now there is a space in the garden where I don’t think anything should be planted for a while…perhaps something will grow there now but I think I will wait until next year.  In the mean time, I thought as I dumped the plants and dead leaves into a heap far from the compost and the garden, there will be a space that will make me remember about how fragile life is.

Henry Kissinger's Light Fixture

I wish I had taken a photo of it to show you.  Unfortunately, the day after I took it off the ceiling it was the ‘bulk pick up day’ and I threw it out before I thought of documenting it.   Regardless, I am sure you have seen a dozen just like it.  Oak frame, with an oak ‘egg crate’ patterned lens cover.  It took four fluorescent lamps and had a milky white Lexan lens.  Very popular in the 70’s and 80’s.  It matched the finish of the kitchen cabinets perfectly and if it was strictly up to me it would have been there for ever, but the kitchen belongs to the ‘little woman’ (in fact everything belongs to the ‘little woman’ while we ‘men’ fool ourselves into thinking we have possession, or control of anything at all!) and she has been on me about how ‘dated’ that fixture looks for so long that she finally wore me down.  It was easier to take it out, pay for new recessed lighting, open the sheet rock and rewire the ceiling, install the lighting, close the sheet rock, tape it, and repaint the entire ceiling than it was to listen to it any more!  I will admit-but please don’t tell her I said so-that the kitchen looks wonderful now.  But if I admit that I will end up replacing the countertops and all the appliances as well and I would rather die…

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, the light fixture.  I got it out of a demolition job at 1345 Avenue of the Americas.  It had been the offices of a large law firm and was soon to be the latest in a series of floors taken over by Sanwa Bank.  The bank was eating up space as soon as it became available in that building.   The competition for the space was keen and as fast as the old school American companies were going belly up the Japanese were taking up the slack. 

Right wingers across the continent were predicting the enslavement of the American working class and world domination by the Yellow Tide.  Japanese Trading companies, banks, automobile manufacturing companies, design/construction firms, you name it.  They were in the U.S. to do business and business in the U.S. meant a headquarters in New York City.  My life in construction was fifty per-cent trading floors for the U.S. stock traders (Smith Barney, Donaldson-Lufkin, First Boston, Alliance Capital…etc) and fifty per-cent Japanese banks.  Didn’t make any difference to me so long as the pay check was on time and I could keep on churning out the spaces.   I learned to bow to the architects at Takishimia and argue with the architects from Gensler.  Made no never mind.  Just keep on building.

So I was ripping out this law firm and in one of the offices I noticed the light fixture.  I had been spray painting the walls with a can of red paint to indicate which walls had to be taken out and which ones had to be left alone.  The demolition crew would be in the building in a few hours and I had to have it marked before they could start destroying.  If you didn’t have it properly marked it could be a disaster! You would not believe the mayhem once they started.  There were pipes in some of those walls.  There were live wires and telephone lines in some of them.  You had to read the plans carefully and mark the walls properly in order to literally avoid fire and flood.  These were the rules.

First you would identify the wall on the plan.  If it was slated for demo you would mark a red line all the way across it and in the middle of the wall paint the word “OUT”.   If it was supposed to be saved you would just write the word “STAY”… Nothing else!!!!  Very important!!!!  The laborers who did the demolition were all foreigners.  They worked for Italian Americans (for the most part) but they were usually little guys from Yucatan or Ecuador.   They didn’t speak any English and the only thing they understood was if it was 3 letters they had to destroy it.  If it had 4 they had to leave it alone.   You could have sprayed “YES” and that wall would be history.  If you painted “CRAP” they wouldn’t touch it.  That was the plan.  “OUT” or “STAY”.  Nothing else.   And when they started they were all ‘assholes and elbows’.  Sledgehammers, snips, an occasional Sawzall or a cutting torch-Simple tools and simple minds but man could they work!  I learned to appreciate the economy of motion and the systematic way they could dismantle two months of construction work in an evening.  Forty thousand square feet of office space in three or four nights.  Dirty, noisy, horrible work but they were wonderful at it. 

After spraying up the job I went back into the office and took the fixture out of the hung ceiling.  The Electricians had been through the space during the day and “safe’d off” both the  120 volt and the 277 volt power to the ceiling lights so I easily and safely disconnected the light.  I dragged it over to the freight elevator vestibule and thought to myself that I was lucky to find a fixture like this.  It was a perfect match for the cabinets I was hanging in the new house I was putting up for my family.  I would store it in my ‘shanty’ until I could find a way to get it home.  I had brought all kinds of things home on the subway but this was too big for that.  I would have to wait until I could drive in and pick it up.  While I was waiting for the freight elevator to get to the floor I noticed a tag glued to the fixture.  It said “H. Kissinger”.  I became curious.  After I dropped the fixture off in my little room in the basement I went back up to the floor and searched the office for any other indication that this might have been the office of Henry Kissinger.  Maybe I would find some memos alluding to the bombing of Cambodia or a note from Richard Nixon or a ping pong paddle signed by Chairman Mao Zedong.  If I was really lucky I might find a naked photo of him and Angie Dickenson or Bridget Bardot.  I once found the income tax filing for Raul Julia…so why not something cool on Henry Kissinger?  But, alas I never did find anything else of interest that night. 

The laborers came and by twelve midnight they were finished for the shift.  Piles of rubble were left where there had been offices only six hours before.  The next night they would finish the demo and the clean up and in eight weeks there would be a new batch of offices or an employee cafeteria serving sushi and pea soup.  I would pick up the fixture and eventually put it on my kitchen ceiling.  When the ‘little woman’ would complain about how dated it was and how wonderful it would be to have modern recessed lighting I would say, “but that was Henry Kissinger’s light fixture…It looks great” and we would both laugh and I knew I’d bought a little bit of time before I had to bite the bullet and give her what she wanted. 

Spaz-R.I.P.

Talked to Richie  yesterday.  If I hadn’t asked about him I don’t know if he would have told me, but when I did he told me-Spaz had died.  Spaz was a real friend and I don’t think it foolish at all feeling real grief over the passing of my friend.  

Spaz lived most of the time (and most of his life) in the offices of Richie's construction company.  The offices are in the lower level (read “basement”) of a strip shopping center in the South Bronx at the corner of Randall Avenue and Castle Hill Avenue.  Around the back of the stores and under a bodega, a Laundromat, and a dental clinic there is a roll-up door and a glass storefront door and that is the entrance to the construction office.  The offices consist of several rooms including a hallway off the entrance, a receiving room with a sliding glass window where the UPS guy drops off boxes, Richie’s office, the plan room and the conference room.  Each room is successively recessed further back into the bowels of the basement and progressively darker and less ventilated.  There is also a small pantry and a restroom just outside Richie's office.  The other ‘spaces’ are storage closets and water closets that are too gruesome to describe.  One such is the closet with the main building house trap buried in the floor.  When the door of this space is opened sewer gases and their smells invade the plan room and make working there impossible. 

Spaz’s food and water bowl were in the hallway just inside the vestibule door.  His bed was a pad in the conference room but I don’t think he slept on it, preferring to sleep most of the time in the front of the building where he could hear the sounds from the parking lot or the subsidized housing projects close by.  His food was (a huge bag of kibble) stored in a heavy duty trash can with a lid-also in the hall.  Every day he got fresh water and kibble but that was not what Spaz subsisted on.  He was a not a ‘kibble’ kind of dog.

Down the way from the main entrance to the office was a basement workspace or shop where tools and material were stored.  The crew also used the space to put together parts of the job and work in when it was raining or when they needed to do work on one of the company vehicles.  During break time they would crank up the radio (Spanish of course) and sit around drinking coffee and eating cake, cookies, chips, sandwiches, rice and beans, chicken, pizza…you name it.  If there were any way in the world that Spaz could get down there for the meal he would.  He was slick.  There was almost no way to keep him inside if he wanted to get loose.  He’d sneak out with the delivery guys or anyone else coming and going from the office.  And the men got a kick out of seeing him drink a cup of coffee, crunch a bunch of chicken bones or devour a couple of slices of leftover pizza.  He would sit patiently waiting for his turn at the food…sipping his coffee from a paper cup (the men regularly bought him his own cup).  I believe that if he’d been given a chance he would have smoked cigars or cigarettes as well.  And when the eating was done, and break time was over Spaz would take off in the South Bronx looking for adventure. 

When he got loose he would roam the ‘projects’ and as scary as he looked almost no one was afraid of him.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew Spaz.  He was the neighborhood dog.  When I walked him on a leash everyone-Abuelas (grandmothers), little children, junkies, hookers, the toughest looking bangers on the block-all knew Spaz.  All the pit bulls, poodles, and other miscellaneous pouches knew he was cool.  All the cats knew he was not.  Spaz hated cats.  But everyone else was Spaz’s friend.  Oh, except the cops.

There are stories about Spaz and the cops that still circulate and are mostly true.  It is not that they didn’t like Spaz, it is just that they had to enforce the law and Spaz was an outlaw! 

I personally got a ticket because Spaz was not on a leash one day.  I hadn’t even been walking him-he’d just slipped out of the offices and was roaming the parking lot.  When I saw the patrol car coming I tried to get Spaz back into the office but the cops said I was walking him without a leash, and gave me a court appearance ticket.  It cost me a fine and a day in the Bronx courtroom.  Spaz was the reason Richie spent a night in jail and who knows how many other tales could be told if all his adventures were known?  I’ve been told Spaz was once personally given a ticket by the cops-the ticket was attached to the dog’s collar and he was sent on his way.  He brought the ticket back to Richie.  True story.  It has also been said that a woman once came to the office and demanded support payments because Spaz had ‘knocked-up’ her dog.  Paternity was never proven, or so I have been told. 

Richie tried to bring Spaz home with him on some weekends but Richie lives in an apartment and most of the time the dog had to spend seven days a week living in the office.  One of the men who lived nearby in the ‘projects’ was supposed to come to the office and walk him.  Sometimes on Monday morning there would be a pile of dog shit and a puddle on the floor when I would come in.  Obviously no one came to take him out and he’d been locked up all weekend long.  When I could I used to bring Spaz home with me on the weekend.  He would stand in the back seat of my car-never sat or laid down-and he’d bark at everyone he saw, as if to say “Hey! Look at me!  I’m goin’ to the country!”  Of course I have to assume he was saying it in Spanish.  And once we got to my house he loved to lie on the porch and bake in the sun or walk with me down the shaded street.  New smells.  New sights.  On Monday morning he was happy to get back in the car-standing up, of course-and go back to his home in the Bronx, his friends and his cup of coffee.

Good luck my friend.  Hope you are happy and free, where ever you are now.

Ordinary

It's been a while since I put anything up here.  Not that I don't want to communicate but the things going on in my life have been so run-of-the-mill (nice phrase!) that I didn't think there was anything anyone would be interested in.  Normal stuff like working in the garden and cooking and little projects around the house don't seem worthy of comment-or are they?  These "little things" are what make up my life and if they are not important then what is?

This weekend (Memorial Day weekend) has been case study in the ordinary.

Saturday Lizzy and I drove down to the "Island" and began the weekend-long chore of looking after the Oma's.  Great Oma is now 104 years old and Mutti is a youngster of about 84 plus or minus.  Lizzy's sister and other caregivers are usually around to do the heavy lifting six days a week.  Lizzy drives the 100+ mile round trip every Saturday (after working a job all week) and bathes and cleans the "girls", the house and then does some shopping and coordinates the rest of the week with her sister.  The two of them are saints.  It has been said that the prime determinant of longevity and quality of life is whether or not you have a daughter.  These two hard working women are primo examples of this theory.  It is important to me to go with Liz when her sister is away.  It is not that I can be of any great help but I can be there.  Just be there.  But sometimes I can fix a window screen, or cook blueberry pancakes for their breakfast or weed the flower beds.  Not important, I know.  Ordinary. 

On Sunday we drove into the City and visited Jake and TT in their apartment in Brooklyn.  They are there for the summer, working internship jobs at law firms.  They will both graduate from law school next year.  We are so proud of them.  There is very little we, as parents, can do for them anymore.  They are mature and self reliant and about all we can share is a meal in a quiet bistro, a walk in their new neighborhood, a laugh or two.  Ordinary.

Benny is home taking care of the fort while Liz and I are away for the weekend.  He is my bulwark of innocence and strength.  He can be counted on to feed the cat on time, water the garden if need be, and do a modicum of cleaning around the homestead while we are with the old ladies.  He will not drink too much of my beer or call me needing bail from the Peekskill jail.  He will spend time with his friends or his lovely girlfriend and buzz me with a IM if he plans on going away...just so we can coordinate.  Ordinary.

Matt is far away right now.  Down South.  Living in his little cottage with B.L.  Working (?).  Growing his own garden and searching.  We are taking a sort of break in our communications right now.   Don't ask.  This is, I suppose, what fathers and sons do sometimes.  When they need time and space to be able to expand their chests and just breathe.  When they don't want to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or have the right thing taken the wrong way.  I spend a lot of my time quietly contemplating this hiatus and hoping it will be over soon.  Life is too short to waste one moment of Ordinary.

The Beauty Shop at the Corner of Here and Gone

With the twilight
of the work day
in your eye
You said-
Do you have any idea how many
of my customers are dead?
Were you actually counting?
But I should have known
the answer to the question
is improbably high
just thinking about it
extinguished what was left
of the twinkling in your eye.

We are both using reserves of force
we’d been saving
for our own rainy day.
Life, love, the children, the job,
the cars, the house, God and now
your mother
my dad,
in their comatose
state of survival…
Most nights we are lucky
if a shot of whiskey
or a glass of wine
will aid in our revival.
And when the evening
like a candle burned
presents us to the bed
we try to rest but
we plug our selves in to
the universe of
diminishing returns
instead.

I am so sorry.
I should have known better
than to dream at the table,
especially while
you were contemplating the dead.
Co-mingling Wednesday night leftovers,
whiskey and wine,
along with the dearly departed…
it was bound to end badly.
And here is the proof-
You gave me permission
to have my little dream
and leave you
at the corner of Here and Gone.
While I am away,
I am sure,
you will still be counting
the bodies-
You were counting them still
in the glow of the TV-
I could see
your lips were moving-
but you never said another
word of it to me.

Dog Poop Zen

The old lady who lives in the house on Ruth, one house in from the corner of Jack, stared out at me and her little mutt dog yapped mercilessly all the while as we passed crunching on the brittle snow.  Girl just ignored them and I did too.  It is becoming evident that arguing about most ever’thing has never done me no good.  I’m gonna change my ways on that account and never make a fuss no more over anything if I can help it.  So, we just kept up our pace and kept to ourselves despite the ruckus from that mutt banging up against the big picture window that looked out onto Ruth.  That is until Girl decided to cross over and jump right up onto her ice-covered lawn, over the berm of plowed ice and dirty snow she went and before I could even call her she squatted and began to shit.  A couple of big ol’ steaming bars of dark brown poop come out and I glanced up quickly and could see the two of ‘em-the old lady and the mutt- jaws dropped, watching behind the glass.  There wasn’t nothin’ to do but to jump up over that high mound of snow myself.  Girl finished up and made like she was a bull pawing at the ground and then she ran off leaving me there. 

Luckily I carry a Wal-Mart shopping bag with me in my jacket pocket.  It comes in handy for times like this when Girl has gone in an inappropriate location, or for collecting deposit bottles from outta the weeds at the edge of the lake (or secretly from the recycling collection on Thursday morning.  I try to go out before light on Thursday so’s no one will be looking at me rootin’ through their bins.)  It came in handy today!  While that old biddy watched I put the bag over my hand like a glove and deftly picked up those turds, flipped the bad inverse and walked off swinging it just like it was the most natural thing.  I never looked back to see what the old lady did but as I walked to catch up to Girl I could hear her little mutt’s yapping voice receding into the past.  Like a boy scout who saved the little tyke who broke through the ice or started a fire to keep warm after his commuter plane had crashed in the wilderness of the Alaskan bush…I’d come prepared and I’d triumphed!

Well, Girl seemed to sense the success of that episode too ‘cause she took a dump on that same spot every day for a week after.  Little runt ranting.  Old lady fuming.  Me scooping up the evidence.  Truthfully, it became a pain in the ass for me but I didn’t say a word to Girl.  Like I said I am not gonna be arguing anymore especially for little stuff like something as natural as a dog crapping.  So far the old lady had stayed indoors and I didn’t know what I would do if she ever came out and bitched but I was practicing my dog poop Zen in such an event.  I would keep cool. 

Girl got tired, I suppose, of the game and stopped going there after a week and I was glad.  The dog in the bubble was there every morning anyway yapping at us and banging against the glass picture window as we walked past his house.  Once in a while the Lady was there watching us too.  Then one day (it was in the afternoon-not our regular walk but one of our random strolls we take when I get bored of my chores at home and cant stand the thought of the four walls anymore even though the ice was still horrible and it was very, very cold outside) she was out on Ruth just up the way from her home.  She had her little runt dog on the leash and he was trying to pull her down the street.  When Girl saw them she took off like a shot and while she will almost always come to me when I call her she ignored me completely then.  The little dog on the leash pulled right and left and yapped ungodly when he saw Girl coming.  He was only about thirteen pounds but the Lady still seemed to be struggling to keep him under control.  When Girl reached them the little dog nipped at her and I was impressed at how he tried to protect his master.  Girl wagged her tail and thought it was a shit-load of fun to dodge the little dog’s furious defense.  I walked slowly up to the scene and called Girl over-and she came.  I petted her while the old lady began to lecture me about keeping my dog on a leash.  Said ‘some day a big dog would get her’.   I failed to see how being on a leash would help in that situation but I kept my mouth shut.  I just smiled and wished her a good day and Girl and I just sauntered away.  Dog poop Zen. 

Time has gone by and Girl and I are fixtures walking in the neighborhood now.   Cars see us and mostly slow down and watch as Girl comes over to me and waits for them to pass safely.  I clean up the poop and I think people appreciate the effort.  Occasionally I will pick up garbage can that the garbage men have left in the road after the pick up and put it carefully in the my neighbor’s drive.  I like to pick up paper and trash and put it into someone’s can so it’s not littering up the road.  And all the kids in the neighborhood know Girl and call to her and play with her while they wait for the school bus.  We have pleasant walks.  I have stopped ignoring the old lady too.  I wave to her when we pass if she happens to be in the window watching.  Up until yesterday she has never waved back but then something interesting happened.

Yesterday she was there as Girl and I walked past her house.  I stopped and waved at her but noticed there was no sign of the little dog and something else was different too. Next to her, behind the glass, was a little boy.  The bright reflections on the glass made it difficult to see inside but it was plain that there were two people in there-her and the little boy-both waving back at me and Girl.  I called Girl over and she came and jumped the icy berm onto the crusty lawn.  The old lady held the boy up to see and she pointed to the dog on her lawn and they were both laughing and the muffled sound reached me and Girl out there.  I called girl off the lawn and she jumped the berm onto the black asphalt street.  The little boy pointed and clutched at the old lady.  I waved once more and Girl and I resume up our walk back home.  All the way I ruminated on the old lady and what had happened to her little dog.  And who was the boy?  Will answers come to he who waits?  We’ll have to see if Dog Poop Zen works that way.

Chainsaw

I want to thank you for your invitation
To play music at your place
I don’t want y’all to worry
But I might be
A little bit late.

Chainsaw, chainsaw
Put a hole in my knee
Chainsaw, chainsaw
Happened so quick
They say it’ll heal
It was only a nick.

five stitches and some bandages
and the doctor says it looks great
so I’m comin’ to play
that bluegrass music
though I might be a tad bit late.

Chainsaw, chainsaw
Keep away from me
Chainsaw, chainsaw
Leave me my hands
So I can play music
With the bluegrass band.

Pumpkin Pie

Making a pumpkin pie is something I have always wanted to do but, for some reason, never got around to doing.  Like a lot of things… So I finally got myself cranked and just did it and am I glad I did.  Now I know what a pumpkin pie is really like when it doesn’t come out of a can.  It is a multiphase project but each of the steps is simple when taken one at a time.  This is how I did it. 

First, steal a pumpkin (or two if they are small).  If you live someplace where people don’t decorate their houses with pumpkins for Halloween or Thanksgiving you might have to steal it from a grocery store and that could lead to jail time so I’d suggest you 1) take a trip out to the country and find one of those houses or 2) pay for it.  In my case I found three small pumpkins dumped in the woods across the street from one of my neighbor’s houses.  They were nestled in a bed of dry leaves just blown off the guys lawn so were protected from the recent frost and free of bruises or damage of any sort.  There are many fine pumpkins still sitting on porches all over the neighborhood and now that I know how good the pies turn out I might just go “stock up”.

Secondly, cut the pumpkins into big chunks and scrape out the seeds and stringy muck with a big ol’ spoon.  The seeds can be saved for toasting-yum!  Use the big ol’ spoon to gently push out and separate the seeds from the muck-- kinda like tiddly winks when they fly all over the kitchen.  Throw out the muck that looks like the red head’s hair on Desperate Housewives.   I put the seeds, unwashed, in an aluminum pie pan, and sprinkle a drop or three of olive oil and some Morton’s kosher salt.  Pop ‘em in the toaster oven and stir them every 3 or 4 minutes while they dry out and toast.  Keep a close eye on them and when the first one burns they are done!  Start eating them right away or you will have to fight for some when everyone else finds out you made them.

Thirdly, take the chunked pumpkin and put it in a caulender in a pot with some water and steam the chunks for about 25 or 30 minutes.  You’ll know they are done when a fork goes in really easy.  Let them cool while you drink coffee and eat the seeds and when coolish scrape the soft flesh out with the big ol’ spoon.  Mash up the flesh with a big ol’ spoon or a potato masher and 1) put in a container and save in the refrigerator (last a week plus or minus) 2)put in a container and save in the freezer for the middle of the winter when you are wasting away and starving for something good, 3) start making pies right away, which is what I did.

Beat 3 eggs, add ½ cup of whole milk or cream (if you are not scared of dying from thick blood or obesity), ½ teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, salt (unless you are scared of dying from apoplexy in which case stop eating the seeds!).  I used fresh ginger which I shredded up with a zester and I threw in a little lemon zest as well.  Glad I did.  It doesn’t come through very strong in the final product but it really does spark up the recipe!  Mix the mess all together with the mashed pumpkin and pour it into a pie shell.  I cheated and used store-bought frozen shells ‘cause I suck at pastery.   Bake at 375 until the crust looks like it’s gonna burn if you don’t get it out of there.  (similar to the timing of the seeds.  Do you note a pattern in my technique?)  Let cool.  Start eating right away before the household finds out you made it and you have to fight for a piece!  (Note a pattern in my eating habits?)  Enjoy. 

You might want to share some with the neighbor--the one you stole the pumpkin from.  Maybe next year he will be bringing you some pie!

Bear Mountain/China Pier

The air was so fine and thin
up on Bear Mountain
I felt I could just walk off into the sky.
The day was so clear and cool
the breeze flowed like a stream
and the moss on the flat rocks
lay like a carpet
beneath my feet.

The stratocasters silky plumes
waved like Arabian fans
over a dozing baby
asleep in a hammock.
I brushed the dry lichen
from my hair
when I got up from the lawn
and climbed up
flights of concrete stairs
to the top of the overlook tower.
A map lay blooming
seventy five miles in all directions
I twirled
and became dizzy.
I have no right to want more from life
Today was a definition.
_______________________________

On the other hand

The China Pier rots.
Thick, lime water licks at the piles
bits of steel--integral bits
snagging the whole
clutching at the whole--
disintegrate.
The waving mass
undulates in the Hudson
like a jellified dead animal
it’s soul
anticipating burrial.

The China Pier cringes
in the white background sound
of the onslaught of the twentieth century.
It waits in a manicured frame
of lawn and brick
and wrought iron
beneath the power
of Indian Point--
Hogging up the sun
the huge utility lays a shaddow
over the water
flowing under China Pier.

Stars through the Blinds

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Lying in bed this morning I watched a star through the slats of the Venetian blinds. This is the same star (I assume it is a star but know nothing about the night sky-could be a planet or an alien space probe, I suppose!) I have watched on a couple of mornings recently. As I am not sleepy and lying in the same position, in the same bed, every morning about this time, I watch it “move upwards” past slat #4, then #5, then behind the leaves of a tree in the distance. The perspective of “stars” is such that it only takes a branch or a leaf down here on Earth to obliterate the “star” from view, even though the “star” itself is a scajillion times bigger than the leaf. It is so far away it can hide behind the leaf. And then it moves up towards slat #6. I know it is not the star that is moving. Again it is perspective that allows me to feel like it is the star that is moving, not the rotation of the Earth, which is actually what is happening. By the time it reaches slat #7 and has hidden behind several other leaves it is beginning to get light and I know, from other mornings observations, that I will loose the “star” entirely in a few minutes. The sun will obliterate it as it climbs out of its red bed and the sky becomes winter white.

In the last few minutes in bed I find myself mentally writing poems about the day and the light and the winter and the morning but, curiously, in a story within a story, I find I am writing a poem within a poem too. It is a haiku about the “star” It is about the Venetian blinds. Now that I am awake and I have had my coffee and toasted Sunday Bialy, the haiku eludes me. I can’t remember it now. I feel badly. Like I did something good but there is no record of it.

That is one of the nice things about photographs. When you see something that is worth recording you can capture it (hopefully with skill) right then and there. Perhaps I should put a camera on the bed stand and shoot from my pillow through the Venetian blinds? There is something that separates the photographer from the painter or the writer. The writer and the painter both have to capture the image in their brain and then transfer it to something concrete. The photographer (especially digital) has the luxury of capturing the moment directly-with no ‘middle man’ or memorization to delay the creation. No excuse though. If it is worth recording (film, canvas or keyboard) one must still get out from under the warm blankets and work for it.

Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow morning the poem will come back to me and I will get up and write it down.

Reunion-2010 (for Kathie)

We were all smiles

For a short little while

We were all about

A long time ago.

So old times-

Thinking old times-

Lightens a dark, dark heart

Brings a warm smile

For a little while.

For a little while.

We traveled further west

Than we ever would have gone

When we were babies

And the world was young.

Penetrating the dark, dark land

Between ninth and broad

The street lights were bright

And we all felt good.

Abraham’s son

Had a Tasty Cake smile

We spread out in his tent

For a little while

For a little while.

His own child shared

His exotic clothes

And I thought I got a glimpse

Of where the future goes.

But I was mistaken

I was looking behind

In the rear view mirror

Of my dark, dark mind.

Abraham’s tent

Tinkled in the night

With walls of glass

And it’s ceiling of sky

And it’s steps to nowhere

And it’s bars on the street

And we promised that some day

We would all meet

Even further west

On the bad side of town

Maybe in the river-

Wash up in the river-

Where the bad times drown.

We were all smiles

For a short little while

We were all about

A long time ago.

So old times-

Thinking old times-

Lightens a dark, dark heart

Brings a warm smile

For a little while.

For a little while.

Document Control

Up in the bed room, behind the mirrored closet door was a bag. The bag was filled (it was one of the standard-size, grocery brown bags, with advertising on it) with twenty-five pounds of paper. In there were old bank statements and oil delivery tickets with the number of gallons of oil put in the tank and the price per gallon for the stuff. There were books of checks for accounts that no longer exist, mostly in the name of number 1 son. IRA Investment statements. Receipts for bills paid and bills due-- that one must presume were eventually paid and the receipt thereto was probably in the bag somewhere as well. Ten years or more of the financial documents deemed too sensitive to be discarded via the trash or the recyclables.

When the mail comes into our house it must come up the driveway, inside to the kitchen where it is deposited on the work surface of the kitchen counter. It might sit there for a minute or overnight, but it is eventually opened and half digested and left to sit a while longer. Again, eventually, it either finds it’s way to the dining room table to linger some more, to the computer to be paid electronically or upstairs to be paid by check or to the mysterious bag. I did not know (or really, I did not fully understand) the substance of that bag until a few nights ago when Elisabeth brought down a big, handful of papers which she threw into the fire. We had built a fire for entertainment and to roast marshmallows. On the way into the house at the end of the evening Elisabeth commented cryptically --It didn’t even make a dent!

What didn’t make a dent? I asked. She said a dent in the bag. What bag? The bag full of papers up in the bedroom. The checkbooks and the financial stuff. Oh! I said and later I looked at “the bag”, seeing it really for the first time. Big. Brown. Brimming over the top. I didn’t have the desire or inclination to peek at the contents. I was fairly sure that much of it was not so sensitive that it required a military shredding or a funeral in the bon fire. I know Elisabeth’s much more concerned about paperwork and how it will affect our security than I, but I was certain that there was much in the collection that was benign. No matter. I promised myself that I would get rid of it-sooner or later.

Today it is cloudy and I fully expect (read: hope) it will rain. The eggplant and tomatoes need it. Everything in the garden or out could use a little bit of a washing. I also considered that to be a prime time to make a fire. On second examination that makes very little sense as a raging, out of control campfire or hot embers landing on the roof will not wait to do damage until the rain starts (duh!). So that means either waiting to build the fire until it rains or waiting until after. Naw! I just lit the thing. Some loose paper. Some twigs and some branches. I waited a few minutes and began to burn the papers. Slowly at first a few pages at a time and crumbling each one. Then six or seven pages at a time. Then entire sheaths of papers and half a dozen checkbooks and deposit ledgers. All went well until there was so much paper piled on that I had to take a long stick and flip through the piles like pages of a book, exposing the leaves to the oxygen in the air. One by one the flipping sheets caught flame and again there was a roaring fire. I threw on more wood and kept feeding the documents into the inferno.

It took about and hour from start to finish to burn the whole mess. I was careful not to throw in any plastic or items clearly not of a sensitive nature. There were a few advertising pamphlets and some shipping envelopes that had nothing on them or in them. These I put back into the empty bag. Now that the fire has cooled it looks like a pit with a thousand gray leaves fluttering in the wind. (it still has not rained). In the fall I will shovel out the pit and put the ashes into the garden. It is supposedly good for the soil and inhibits slugs and cutworms. We’ll see.

Back to the mail for a moment. I have a habit of tearing unwanted mail up into strips. Each evening when I read the mail. And then I tear the strips into squares. We have a shredder but I can’t make myself set it up and leave it conveniently out for daily use. I can’t. I am pissed off enough at phone chargers, computer power supplies, power strips and wall warts, batteries, modems, cordless phones, VCRs (yes I still have one) CD and DVD players... one more appliance will tip the scale. I don’t think the most accomplished Nigerian con artist will have the time or energy to bother to try to reconstruct one of my hand shredded phone bills especially once it has been soaked in olive oil or stale cat food in the kitchen garbage. And in the case of twenty plus pounds of ten year old cable bills and cooking gas delivery tickets, it is the low tech fire for them. Good riddance.

Coffee Ballet

An arm over here reaching for the pot

A hand on the spoon, over there

We cross paths on the way

To a perfect cup

Of java to start our day

Our minds on "Hold"

Not a word is said

In this morning routine

Too early for words

Anyway

Our bodies

Doing the coffee ballet

Last night we worked together making “shells” and cooking up a batch of sauce. The tomatoes seem to multiplying on the counter top. It reminds me of the scene in Disney’s Soccer’s Apprentice where Mickey is chopping the brooms trying to eliminate them but they multiply with each hatchet whack. Same with the tomatoes. Every time I go out to the garden there are three or four more ripe ones. And that is not counting the tiny cherry tomatoes that come in daily waves of a hundred or even two hundred. It doesn’t matter if I go out to the garden once or twice or three times, there are always more ripe ones and I bring them in and put them in the bag along with ten pounds of others or on the counter-which is now (even though we cooked as many as we could last night) covered in red.

We were both exhausted yesterday after work. Elisabeth had a mildly rejected look that sent me hiding on the front porch. I was in my own world of shit so it was best we went our separate ways for a little while, at least until the question of dinner came up. When we are like that-tired and lost in the outside world-we work! It is just what we do. Some people go bowling. Some might write stupid journals and drink whiskey-we work! We both stood in the kitchen and simultaneously began chopping and clanging utensils and pots until our old selves returned. It only took about five minutes of labor to begin to make us whole again and by then all of the anxiety and exhaustion fell away like Batman’s cape and we swung for an hour on our web of activity and the smells and feel of the tomatoes and the popping oil and crunch of garlic on the cutting board.

At one point She asked me to put the cubes of fresh mozzarella into the finished shells. She was in the process of filling them with the stuffing and there were many stuffed and sitting on a plate. I reached over her arms and picked up a shell and pushed a dice-sized cube of cheese into the stuffing and set it down in an aluminum pan that had a small amount of fresh sauce on the bottom. She continued spooning the ricotta and egg and spinach mixture into the al Dente shells and putting them on the plate. I was on the wrong side of her and our arms cris-crossed as we worked on our separate tasks, but it was somehow orchestrated. Our arms wove a web of work that was funny but awkward. At some point we both recognized the disjointed organization and Elisabeth told me to exchange places with her. I did. It was as if a knot came undone. We worked then with a physical independence that was soothing but, somehow, less intimate.

In a half an hour the pan of bubbling shells came out of the oven and we sat to eat. The air coming through the back door screen had turned autumnal and I felt somber but comforted by the smells of the cooking and the company of my wife. By then we were both very, very tired but it was good tired. The day had passed.

The Recipe

Shells cooked just shy of al Dente.

A mixture of ricotta,

salt,

pepper,

egg-beaten,

and spinach-cooked and squeezed dry of all water (I like to use the water in the sauce but Elisabeth won’t hear of it!)

mozzarella-cubed to ¾” x ¾”

grated Romano or parmesan of ?? your favorite hard cheese

fresh gravy-

put a large tea-spoonful of the ricotta mixture into each of the shells and push a cube of the mozzarella into each stuffed shell. Place the shells into a pan with a little of the gravy and when the pan is all full spoon the gravy over all of the shells. Coat the whole pan with some of the grated cheese and pop into the oven for a while until everything sort of melts and melds. Serve with more sauce on top and some wine. Eat Up!

Cherry Tomatoes

Sunday, September 05, 2010


This year I had one bush of cherry tomatoes that produced more fruit than I have ever seen on any other plant. Every day I go out there with a bag and pick a hundred mature, sweet (but tiny) tomatoes. Now at the end of the season the actual ‘crop’ has come in and this morning I picked about six or seven hundred. There are three times that many still on the plant. It is unbelievable.
So I decided to try something new. I am roasting a big batch on the barbeque right now and I think they are going to be wonderful. I prep’d them by putting a couple of tablespoons of olive oil on an aluminum lined cookie sheet and then covered the sheet with a solid field of the little, ripe tomatoes. I rolled them around to get them coated and then sprinkled a little Morton’s Kosher Salt on them. I set the barbeque at low (one burner only) and put the cookie sheet on the top warming rack. I actually started on high on the bottom but things progressed so fast that I didn’t want to end up with stewed/burned tomatoes so I changed the settings as described above. I think they will turn out nicely and I hope they will keep for a week in the fridge. I imagine them on pasta and maybe cooking other things with them in the recipes. We’ll see.

Well, they turned out great. Lizzy says we’ll have them tonight on some pasta. The whole cookie sheet made one nice plate (picture) so will serve about three for dinner. The oil that was left in the pan looked beautiful so I threw on another batch and added one of my ‘devil’ peppers. Hot damn! I like it too much!

Pushing the Ton

I don’t know where it came from.
Just a bowel deep growl
that took me
as I tapped it into first.
And knowing I hadn’t seen
a cop
or commuter
or a minivan
in a few minutes
I felt compelled
to twist the grip
until the back side slid
and caught
with a high-sided snap
and the rear wheel gripped.

I watched the pointer
of the tach jump.

The needle
of the speedo
gyp’d passed all the lower numbers
and the cuffs on my pants
danced on my shins
and the cool wind
flapped up my jeans
like water
under pressure.

The road took on
an amplified quality
each tiny motion
building on itself
each small bump
rippling into a panic attack
each twist a thought less effort
each thought
an immediate order
to be obeyed--
consequential.

And when I hit the Ton
the smallest touch on the grip
swore to the road
and explained itself
like a spy
who shit in his pants
when the gallows floor
dropped.
I was affraid to look down.
To confirm.
I could only see
where I was going
and had not one care
for where I had been.

End of the Garden

It is near the end of August. I have not made an entry in about a month. I suppose a rainy, Sunday morning (7:45am) is the perfect time to “catch up”, though sitting here I am not sure exactly what it is I have to say.

Ben and Liz are both upstairs sleeping away. I came down as quietly as I could and fed Sylvester and made a pot of coffee.

The week-long drought has broken with a gentle gray morning rain and the raggedy looking garden is getting what it needs to complete its mission. The fruit was waiting for this boost to push it into final plumpness and color. This year the garden has been amazing in its bounty. All I had to do was the usual weeding and tidying up with stick and string to keep it tied…Oh, and labor like a coolie to keep it watered in the face of Nature’s stingy rationing of rain. But it has paid off. The tomatoes are bursting and red. The eggplant (purple and white) and summer squash big enough to bust the limbs of the plants and plentiful enough that I wish I had another freezer to hold them. There was broccoli and three kinds of peppers (green bell, pale green banana, and the brightest, red-est, devil’s peppers, who’s taste and heat delight me) as well as a crop of butternut squash yet to come. The butternuts are my favorite and they are lying all over the floor and in the fence of the garden waiting for the umbilicus of their vines to brown and wither while they tan in the sun and bath (today, anyway) in the rain. I can’t wait to taste them.

For future reference I allow the following as the reasons for the success of this year’s garden:

1) Hot, dry weather. Without a doubt the single most important factor. Of course if I had not hosed and bucketed amazing amounts of rescue water the whole thing would have withered, but that is not important. There was no blight. The rot that affected almost everyone last year was kept away by the sun and the drying breezes. Last year I got a few middling fruit on each of my tomato plants and the rot took the rest. This year I got pounds and pounds of the plumpest, red-est tomatoes that I have ever grown. The same for the rest of the veggies. The only plants that did not thrive were the peas and the beans, and I blame myself for that. When they needed help I was not in the mind to lend a hand. I was too busy with the other plants and I suppose I am not all that fond of peas and beans. I hope there is no place in hell for people who don’t care about beans.

2) Unusually good placement of the plants and good varieties as well. It was luck, mostly, and the barest bit of intuition on my part that the plants found enough sun and enough room and support to prosper. No, actually it was all luck.

3) The butternut squash found it’s own way to grow up into the space between the fence and the netting around the fence. There it hung like sailors in hammocks and they grew plumb and healthy. The deer fed on the fat squash leaves that grew out through the fence but they had no way to get to the fruit. It looks like a “squash hotel” out there now and next year I am going to try to plan a long fence like that on the inside of the garden and see if the butternuts will do it for me the same way.

4) Fertilizer. Not much-just a spoonful per plant when I put them in the ground-but what a difference. This fall I plan to get a small load of manure and turn it into the soil instead, but I am not ashamed of the fertilizer I used this year. Nor am I ashamed of the newspaper or the shredded Microsoft Word documents, or the chopped leaf mulch I experimented with for ground cover. I have learned that newspaper is my friend while Bill Gates is not.

5) Minute use of insecticide. Last year I had two eggplant. This year I had over a dozen and more are coming on the tree-like plants. The reason-insecticide. Just the tiniest amount at the right time. Last year the flea beetles ate the leaves of the young plants (turning them into lace doilies) while I struggled to defeat them. I tried all the internet/hippie/organic methods to control the pests but nothing worked. I struggled with the tree-hugging instincts of my 1960’s philosophy and returned the unopened box of “Sevin” to Walmart and, as a result, the plants punked out. This year I re-bought the poison and lightly dusted the affected leaves when the beetles struck. One application and the bugs marched down the driveway and ate my neighbor’s dog instead. I ate eggplant!!! I am now a “Goldwater Republican” in the garden. Nuke ‘em!!!

6) God helps them that helps themselves. Especially when it comes to cut-worms. These little buggers chop through the tender trunks of newly planted peppers like chainsaws. Again, thanks to the use of newspaper, they were defeated. A cylinder of newspaper around the base of the new plant stops the cut-worms cold. It seems they are a lazy species and a mere two inches of barrier is enough to send them off to find easier pray. By the way, I do not like to buy newspapers so I steal one of my neighbor’s instead. That seems very ecological to me (toilet paper roll works as well! But again, nothing from Microsoft seems to stop cut-worms).

Well, that is pretty much it for another year of gardening. The fall will be here early this year. The leaves in the trees are already tired of hanging on and are dropping for lack of water. A prelude to the real thing…and then the snow. I am looking for a suitable substitute for my gardening-something that will give me the same sort of occupied feeling during the cold weather. I am open to suggestions.

Words Don't Count

Words are not nails or pearls or drinking glasses full of milk

Words are not sails or the wind that fills them

Words are not eatable or bankable or capable

Of cooking dinner or putting a sandwich on the table.

Words are hot air, hisses, and lisps

Pushed by our lungs over our lips

Our tongues and our teeth get in the way

Turning the air into something we say

Words disappear as fast as we say them

And depend upon ears to validate them

And the printed page to illustrate them

And memory loss to eradicate them

Still, sometime, words are all we have

And they flow over doorways we build in our brain

Like cool breezes flowing

Over a transom

Like the sound of the moan of a far away train

The chill that raises the short hairs on my head

And the sounds of the night

As I lie in my bed.

Hot One

Coffee is not good for Spaz,
but I share mine anyway.
his tongue long and blue
laps down into the cardboard cup
down on the concrete,
and he drains it,
spilling not one drop.
He waits for me to pour him more.
I do,
and when he is through
a spot of the sun
breaks past
the baggy buttonwood trees
between us and the projects
and he begins to pant.
It's going to be a hot one
again today.

We are right in the flight path.
White, red and blue tail-sections
of the prop planes
and the commuter jets
on their diagonal way
to cities within five hundred miles
of LaGuardia,
fly right over the projects-
right over where I sit-
on the curb,
in the last of the morning shade,
retreating from
the gravel
and broken asphalt drive,
behind Randall and Castle Hill...
it promises to be a hot one
again today.

Spaz and I retreat
from the expanding
seven a.m. sun.
Into the office
painted
not white or gray or green
but some disturbing color
in between.
Strangely agitating
and morbidly routine.
Piles of papers
garbage pails of dog food
computer screens
and dust bunny's
bits of hardware
and sheets of glass
a coffee maker
and an adopted family of dish-ware,
in the pantry
unwashed
and waiting...
but the portable A/C
is running
and the ancient stereo
is humming.
It is cooler here
than anywhere
else
on this block
in the Bronx.
it promises to be
another hot one today.

The phone rings
and the other end
unswervingly demands.
try and try,
as best I can,
there is no purchase
no a-mens
sufficient.
and I find myself believing
it is me.
it is my fault
I have gotten too old
for this grind-
If not for Spaz
and a laugh
now and then
I would never come to
the Bronx again.
Certainly not
for the weekly pay.
Certainly not
during a finite summer's day,
and it appears
it's going to be
another hot one today.

Penny in the Crapper

In the crapper there is
a penny on the floor
it sits in a dust ball
below the hinges on the door.
it has been there
a couple of years
(or more)
and I see it
every morning.
Dozens of people
must have seen it too
but sits there still
as if it is glued
to the asphalt tile
strangely unmoved
by human hand,
bucket and mop,
or broom.
Along with
the K-mart towel
(a new one
each year)
a florescent bulb
an immobile fan
the penny lives on
on the floor of the can-
as a point of focus,
an example
of inflationary trends,
as a testament to
those tiny pleasures
shared by man-
a cup of coffee
a toilet
a private moment
contemplating
a single cent
on the floor of the can.

Snippets

All these snippets of “news”

From the great Northwest

From the heartland

From the campgrounds

Are like smells coming from the kitchen

When your mom is cooking

My favorite meal.

I have looked at the photos

Of our trip down south

Four or five times in the last month.

Postal cards from the past

When the future was the next gas station

And the only span of time

Of any import

Was the duration between

Oil changes

And greasy spoons.

Getting into the Golf

In the mornings now

At 5:30 only to drive

To the job in the Bronx…

Is torture so sublime

It could only have been

Devised by someone who knows me

As well as I do.

Running through the gears

On the Taconic Parkway

Recalling the snippets,

And thinking about you.