Arnold

Whispery whiskered toothless men
Stringy haired
Patient and plodding
Cross my path
And slow my trajectory.

I am a missile
Aimed at hell
I am a rocket
And I know damned well
I am going where I’m going
I am going where I’m going.

Uncle Mel
And Steven J.
Now this guy Arnold
Old men in my way
Crossing my path
And slowing my trajectory.

I’m a locomotive
I’m asleep at the switch
I’m boiling towards the station
Named “Judgment Day”
Why’d these old men
get in my way?

They are speed bumps
They are pulse rates
They are reports from someone
Trying to get to me.
They are my uncles ghosts
They are my fathers secrets
They are messages
From someone
Trying to make me see.

900 dollars in fives

It takes very little to sustain life

Oxygen

Water

Food

but the bare basics lack

the recreational essentials

that make the sustenance seem good.

Enough to eat.

Enough to drink.

Enough to breathe.

may just keep you alive

but the key to life

with a capital ‘L’

is 900 dollars in fives.

A swallow of whiskey.

A glass full of beer.

A steak or a vegetable platter.

A roll in the hay

before you start your day

is the stuff that really matters.

and you can get that stuff

if you marry a girl

with capitalistic drive

who saves all her tips

and socks them away

and gives them to you

on a rainy day

when you need

nine hundred dollars in fives.

Herb's Thanksgiving '09

Ben was half way up the side of the rock face before Ricky could get his cigarette lighter out and fire up the stub of a cigarette. Herb had his camera up and he was moving through the leaves and underbrush looking for the right angle to get a shot of Benny as he ascended the giant rock. He already had dozens of photos of Benny climbing rocks and trees and the wall at the climbing place where Benny worked during the Summer. Benny was a monkey. He had a monkey tattoo’d on his shoulder and had little monkeys on the shelves surrounding his bed up a school. Lean and taut as a wire cable he went up the shear face of the rock like a fly on a window screen and once at the top he stood looking out over the valley. He was not even breathing hard.

Herb replayed the photos he had just taken on the tiny screen on the camera. He looked for his glasses so he could see them clearly but realized he had left them on the counter by the phone at home. When he got home again he would look at the photos and there was an excellent chance they would be mostly blurred and out of focus. Maybe there would be one or two that were ok. Maybe even one that is really good. That is the secret to being a good photographer, thought Herb, shoot lots and lots of pictures and maybe one would be good. The shotgun method. Digital photography has made everyone a pro. Herb thought he was pretty good. So does anyone who buys a digital camera.

He put the camera into his zip-up pocket and moved slightly down hill, out of the path of the smoke from Ricky’s cigarette. Ricky was dressed in his black combat boots and a sweatshirt with a hood that was up to conceal his identity from somebody-Lord knows who. Herb had had a hard time getting down the hill to the rock. He wished he’d thought to wear good boots like Ricky instead of the slick, old shoes he’d put on without a thought. Herb’d almost hit the dirt a dozen times on the way down. Benny and Ricky took turns catching his arm and keeping him upright. After Ricky’d finished his smoke he took out a Swiss Army knife and cut a stiff, thin staff made of iron wood. He trimmed the small branches and leaves off it and asked Herb how long to make it. Herb accepted the staff and the implicit message that came with it. He was getting old and slowing them down. But he was not upset with the gift. Just the opposite. He looked at his oldest son and tried to convey his appreciation for the gift without saying anything. Their ability to communicate had become crippled a long, long time ago. Words no longer worked. The staff worked to steady Herb on the hillside.

Each year at Thanksgiving whoever was eating dinner walked out onto the hills outside the house, sometime before dinner or sometime after. It was “the hike”. This year it was just Herb and Ricky and Benny. Certainly the old lady wasn’t going to come and Irma was busy fussing with the preparations for the feast. The weather was cooperative. It was ten degrees above normal for this time of year and the shallow sun gave out a sweet warmth through the leafless trees. So Herb and Ricky watched Benny climb for twenty or thirty minutes and then the three of them worked there way down the hollow to the side of a clear brook. It ran next to a chain link fence topped with barbed wire that was the border between the military reservation and the loose configuration of houses that made up Herb’s neighborhood. It was quiet on Thanksgiving Day. There was no rat tat tat from the gunnery range or thumping overhead from the helicopters. Herb and the boys were used to the racket and might not have noticed it anyway. The noise was more noticeable for its absence as they stood next to the gurgling water and Herb marveled at the peace he felt. He was feeling his age, but he was also feeling his experience and the strange inner peace that sometimes accompanied him when he was in the presence of his sons. After a short time it was time to go back to the house for the meal. They hiked up the bank and up to the road and then the last couple hundred yards back up to the house.

When they went in the side door the smells of Thanksgiving met them instantly. Turkey, pie, roasting vegetables. Ricky retreated to his room and his cell phone. Benny disappeared someplace. Herb sat next to Oma at the kitchen table where she was sitting watching Irma bounce from one chore to the next-from one platter to the next. Every few minutes Irma would assign her a task-to wash a pan or peel a piece of fruit or fold a half a dozen napkins. She was unable to successfully accomplish any of the work. Herb would intercede and help her to gracefully see her way to the end of each task. She could not find a kitchen towel to finish drying the pot she had washed for fifteen minutes. Herb gracefully took the sponge from her and completed the rest of the pans in the sink. He would tell her jokes and kibutz while he deftly relieved her of duties she would have had no trouble with only five years ago. She thought that she had finished each job and asked for more responsibility, which Irma readily assigned. She would start and Herb would finish. It was not possible for Herb to do this little dance with the old woman without considering his own age. He wondered how many years he had left before his own sons would be taking the lawn mower away in mid-lawn or his paint brush after he had coated half a wall? Or…would they be there at all… and would he start tasks hopelessly, never to finish?

The meal was ready, finally. Everyone mysteriously showed up in the kitchen and hands were lain upon the platters and the table heaped high. The groaning board was duly photographed for posterity and the seats were taken. The one time in the year that grace was surely said it was said in German. Oma honored with a job she could still (and always would) be able to perform flawlessly and without aid. We bowed our heads and listened to her say grace. When she was done Herb called order and delivered his own grace-the chamotsi- and everyone dug in. A flurry of activity ensued where platters and bowls flew back and forth like a Marx Brother’s comedy and everyone packed their faces. For an hour these five people ate and smiled and had everything in common. Herb especially leaned back in his chair, satisfied and Thankful.

A Thanksgiving Fable

"...to Grandmother's House We'll Go..."

Today we went down to Mutti’s and Oma’s to bring them back to our house for the holiday. Lizzy swore we would never get the old lady into the car and if we couldn’t get her to go then Mutti would never go either. She was partially wrong. Oma decided that if she got into the car she would never see her home again. She told us we were after all her money and refused to get her medical care and she wouldn’t budge from her seat in the kitchen. Mutti, in a singular moment of clarity, decided to trust me and go with Lizzy upstairs to pack a bag for herself while I sat with Oma and we stared at each other. A case of an immovable object and an irresistible force.

I knew Oma trusted me. I have never given her any reason to not to. I baby-sat with her several years ago when Mutti went with the rest of the family to Texas for Jennifer’s wedding. My act of self sacrifice apparently did not go unrecognized by the old Bavarian. Lizzy always says she has nothing but good things to say about me. While she speaks not a word of English and I not a word of German we coexisted for a week in that tiny Long Island cape cod house while the rest of the family partied in Houston. We ate take-out Chinese and pizza and sat in front of the TV together in the evenings. I showed her slide shows of family pictures on my computer but she liked my photography of flowers more than the ones of people. The conversations were an exercise in sign language and intuition but somehow we got through and built a trust that she refuses to extend to her granddaughters. Why, I do not understand.

Her two granddaughters have cleaned, shopped, cooked and cared for the two old ladys in ways unseen today in modern America. They have cleaned up their basement after it flooded. They have gotten their ungrateful cat inoculated and clipped, de-flea’d and de-wormed. They have brought them both (mother and daughter) to the doctors, the lawyers, the bankers, and the priest as needed. Still the old lady thinks they are trying to kill her, steal her wealth (which is by no means extensive!) and make her suffer. She thinks they have intercepted her pension from Deutschland. She thinks they took her to the hospital to try to get her “finished off”. Apparently, when you go to the Hospital in Germany (she believes) they weigh the plusses and minuses of your age, social status, ability to pay, and cosmetic appearance and either save you or let you die. I can not speak to such theories but she thinks we have the same sort of medical vetting here in the U.S.A. So when she had a little stroke and her daughters got her into a hospital it was their intention to get rid of her. Obviously! She has never forgotten. She beat them at their own game. She lived!!! She has made it now, an additional four years, to the age of one hundred and two and one half despite them and she will never forgive them.

Once Mutti and Lizzy had a bag packed for Mutti, I instructed them to pack for Oma. When they had done that we began in earnest to get the old lady out from behind the kitchen table and into the Honda C.R.V. Usually that takes ten minutes-slowly down the kitchen porch steps and up a stool into the back seat. Today it took a half hour and was a tour de force, with the emphasis on the “force”. We pushed and pulled her out from her seat at the kitchen table. Once out from behind there she walked under her own power very slowly to the front door. But she had an ulterior motive. At the front door she let the cat out thinking we would never be able to catch it and, therefore, not be able to leave the poor creature alone and out in the elements. Wrong! We hate that cat and if it was to starve or be eaten by one of the neighbors that would be okay with us!

We proceeded to pry Oma’s hands loose of the front porch railing and maneuver her towards the car. She began to scream “police, police!” in German, of course, and Mutti, trained to be deathly afraid of authority, tried to clamp her hand over Oma’s mouth to silence her. This drove the old lady to even greater volume and determination not to let loose of the railing.

Mutti’s face was coloring purple and Lizzy was beginning to loose her resolve. I said to Mutti “don’t put your hand on her mouth. Let her scream…” but Mutti was in a mini-panic. I had to sweet talk her to get her to lighten up on Oma and just ignore her protests. Lizzy was pushing from behind the hundred and two year old battle ax and I was pulling from the front. Actually getting her down off the front porch proved to be much easier than getting her into the SUV.

We were past the point of no return and I, personally, had to succeed as I had already been put on notice by Lizzy that there was no way we would get her home. It was a matter of pride.

Once we had her to the car we literally had to pick her up and drag her into the back seat. Liz got in from the other side and pulled while I picked her up and pushed her in. Once all her feet and hands were in we slammed the door and I locked it. She sat yelling on the inside (for once I was glad I didn’t understand her) and pounded on the window glass. God help me, I thought, at that moment, of Eastern European Jews, banging on the wooden sides of the freight cars, begging for their lives. She yelled through her semi toothless mouth as though she were being sent to the camps, rather than being taken to a warm, cozy home for a week of relaxation, food, and my own soft cat on her lap.

I did get her cat into the house before we pulled away. She sat in the back seat silent while we cruised-the four of us-through the Bronx and Westchester. She muttered her suspicions (which Lizzy translated for me) that she would never see her home again and we would rob her blind.

We have been home for an hour and she is getting up right now, after her first nap on the couch in front of the warmth of the fireplace, to a homemade dinner (which Matthew cooked) and a glass of sweet wine. She is talking about the possibility of poison.

A Walking Tour Through a Home in Peekskill

(To all my friends,

Your response to my last entry was amazing. I have never felt so good about anything I have written. For all of you who are upset, thinking I was just laid-off, I was not! The fact is that the piece was written in 2003! I have not re-read it in all that time and when I did I realized it fit right in with the blog and, in fact, was as true (if not more so) than it was the day I wrote it! Fear not. I am ok.

So, Stu, Jay, Joie, Don, Candido, Judyth, Kathie, and a lot of other people, all my love and thanks for the kind words. I will try to keep it up. In fact, see below.)

A Walking Tour Through a Home in Peekskill

The man of the house was all alone. “My son.” Thought Herb as he pulled up into the driveway. It was difficult at first to be sure which of the tiny concrete parking spaces belonged to the beige and brown house where his son sat on the front porch steps. The houses were so close to each other. It reminded Herb of Queens—different style of house, of course, but something about the neighborhood made Herb think of the row home in Queens where his young family had lived for eight years. It was the sidewalks and the closeness of the homes. The way each house sat in the shadow of the one right next door. And the porches. In the summer Herb could imagine each family living out its overheated private lives right there on those porches with the neighbors watching and yet not watching.

Herb pulled in off the street and rolled out of the car door. He pushed the latch that opened the rear hatch door of the seven year old CRV and walked around the back of the car. His son Rick met him on the sidewalk. Herb knew that under his cap was a Mohican haircut and in his lower lip Rick had a stud like a small collar button sticking out. But none of these fashion statements meant anything to Herb anymore. It was not his business. The menthol cigarette still bothered him, though, and he was just about to say something when he caught himself and let it go. After all, Herb had smoked for twenty years and nothing anyone else had ever said to him had made him stop. Herb felt immensely proud of his self control at that moment. He also felt something else at that moment. The urge to hold his son in his arms and hug him. But before Herb could reach him Rick had dropped his smoke in the grass of the small lawn and reached into the car to pick up the plastic box of tools Herb had brought him. He was smiling like a kid opening presents under a Christmas tree, anxious to see what goodies were in the box.

Herb had collected, over the years, an assortment of hand tools and small electric tools. He was meticulous about keeping his own tools clean and sharp and filed away so that they were always at hand when he needed them. But the odd assortment of extra tools that had come his way over the years sat in buckets and in drawers and on shelves all over the basement. Now that Rick had moved into the old house in Peekskill with his girlfriend, Herb figured he might as well put together a small starter tool kit for his son. He fished though the garage and boiler room gathering screwdrivers, pliers, a few wrenches and a sheetrock knife. He threw in a drill that had once belonged to Irma’s father along with some drill bits and a magnetic screw gun tip. He also put in the first jig saw he’d ever owned, purchased at least 35 years ago, but it still worked well. He had plenty of blades for the saw. A nearly new extension cord and a cheap hacksaw, and he sharpened a one inch wood chisel which he covered with a cardboard sheath wrapped with electrical tape. He threw in the tape in as well. Herb worked on the kit for about an hour. When he was done he was satisfied that the “kid” would have anything he needed to scrape through a little household project. Now, on the porch, sitting on the stoop, Herb watched Rick examine each of the tools. 

“I don’t know if you’ll need any of this stuff” said Herb, “but I think you could pretty much do anything you need to…I mean these tools were just sitting around the house…”

Rick took the cardboard sheath off the chisel and tested the blade with his thumb. “You don’t have a sharpening stone somewhere in there do you?”, he asked.

“No,” said Herb, “I only had one of those. You can buy one pretty cheap though. Sharpening is an art. You’ll have to learn how.”

Herb had been over to Rick’s new house about six or eight times in the past few weeks. Picking him up to come over to eat his moms food at home or once to go to temple on a Friday night. Every Thursday Herb picked him up to go to a meeting at a church on Crompond road. Herb dropped him off and continued on some nights to attend the “Coffee with the Rabbi” adult education in Yorktown. “Coffee with the Rabbi” was every other week but Herb still picked up Rick and dropped him off for his meeting every week. Rick had lost his drivers’ license a couple of years ago for DUI. Getting around was a problem. Work was a problem. Everything was a problem for Rick. Just recently, after a second stint in a rehab, Rick had moved in with his girlfriend and Herb was coming to grips with having an adult son. He was trying to think of him as an adult—not “the kid”. He was trying not to give advice. He was hoping for a little movement from Rick’s side towards adulthood and responsibility but trying not to be disappointed with the slow pace of Rick’s progress. Strangely enough, he was struggling with his need to continue to be in Rick’s life—to get that hug when they met and to be invited into Rick’s home for the first time.

“Want to go out for a cup of coffee?” asked Herb. “I thought I’d go over to the coffee house in Peekskill and grab a cup.”

“Naw. I’ve had enough coffee for one day. Besides, I’ve got a batch of ribs in the oven.” Herb turned to look into darkness beyond the screen door and he could smell the ribs cooking. “Come on in for a while,” said Rick, “and take a look around.” Herb perked up and stood at the screen door next to a muddy colored mutt that followed Rick everywhere. When the screen door was opened they all went in and Herb flashed back to all the old, crooked places he’d lived in his life. All of the threadbare carpeting and broke back furniture and dim lighting and poor heating—it all came back in a rush. The place was not so bad, thought Herb. Certainly better than South Street in Philly. He petted the dog that rubbed up next to his leg and thought back to the cold, damp space, on a dangerous street in Philadelphia where he’d spent a year finding himself after dropping out of college. The basement had been flooded and there was dog and cat shit everywhere on the first floor. He slept in an unheated room on the third floor. He was always broke and hungry. There was always the threat of getting mugged or robbed but even so these were some of the best times of his life. He had been free of family and his childhood past. He had discovered sex and late nights and hard work and it all seemed so good at the time. Now, in this place in rundown Peekskill his son was experiencing the same things. Herb didn’t know which was stronger; his sense of dread for all the things that he knew could go wrong or his sense of wonder at all that he knew could go right.

The house was a small, framed structure, typical of all the working class houses in all the industrial towns of America. Clapboard siding and a crooked front porch and a crooked stoop. On the first floor level was a kitchen and sitting room. The kitchen was very clean and modern with plenty of cabinets and counter space. The smell of Rick’s ribs was sweet and spicy. He was becoming a good cook. The dog had his nose up in the air sniffing the meat while his backside danced on the linoleum. Behind the kitchen was an airy workshop where Rick’s girlfriend kept equipment for a side business she worked at. She silk screened posters and tee shirts. Rick said he was trying to help with the business. Herb looked over the frames with stretched fabric and the cans full of ink and solvents. Rick would be good at that, he thought. Rick was good with his hands and he always had enjoyed art.

The second floor was a warren of small rooms. There were two small bed rooms and a connecting sitting room which was filled with cardboard boxes. Rick opened one of the bedroom doors to show Herb but Herb waved at him to close the door. He had no interest in looking into someone’s bedroom. Herb noticed the rubble where the dog had chewed up the corner of a box full of shoes and the outlets full of extension cords and jury rigged electrical connections.

A narrow, tight stair led to the attic. Someplace meant for storage but now serving as a bedroom and living room for Rick and his girlfriend. There was barely enough headroom at the top of the stair to allow passage and the peak of the house allowed Rick to stand only in the center of the attic space. But where Herb saw squalor, Rick saw freedom and the adventure of being here and now and on his own. He clearly was enjoying his first experience on his own. Herb was trying to be careful not to intrude on this experience.

It will all be all right, thought Herb as they descended the narrow stair and made their way back out to the porch and finally out to the CRV. Herb promised to come back with a test light so they could find out why some of the lights and switches didn’t work. Rick said he would like to come over to the house for Passover seder next week but his girlfriend had to work so she couldn’t attend. Rick and Herb would see each other on Thursday night. Until then be well…

Herb went on into Peekskill and had coffee at the coffee shop alone. He watched the scruffy young fellow behind the counter grind beans and wipe his hands on pants so greasy that Herb wouldn’t have worn them to change the oil on his car. With him behind the counter was a high school girl with a stud in her nose and a red thong peeking out of her low cut jeans. Herb sat in a sunny spot in an old chair. He waited for his friends from South Street to come in through the front door. Tommy and Kathy. Stephen and Saint Looie. Seldom Tom and Cowboy Tom. He knew they weren’t coming but he would wait here a little longer. You never knew.

Take Me Off Your Speed Dial

Take My Number Off Your Speed Dial

“Take my number off your speed dial. I don’t have that phone any more.“

This statement gives me equal feelings of relief and despair. Much like the cell phone itself, which bestowed feelings of empowerment and freedom while at the same time pinned me in space and time to the rest of the electronically enslaved population.

Excuse my introspection. My reflection. I am mired in one of the stages of mourning—if that is what it is called—for my lost job. I was fired. I am in the early stages of my understanding of this loss. I will bring you up to date while you fiddle with your cell phone and take me off of speed dial. They took my phone away. You can get me at home in the early evening. Just like the good old days.

Stage one— “pole-axed”. This sounds physically painful but it is not. It is comparable to the early stages of drunkenness in an unfamiliar bar or at the wedding of a complete stranger. It is an out of body experience. During this stage most of ones time is spent watching oneself from the vantage point of a fly on the ceiling. I was not uncomfortable listening to “Firing Man’s” brief, cold summation of my career and it was not in the least painful. It reminded me of novocaine. The final moments were awkward. He extended his hand. I, being a Jew of unabashed emotional capacity, forgetting, or rather ignoring the last five minutes of professional realignment, threw my arms around him and hugged him. It is a moment (much like the residual pain of the extraction of the tooth itself after the novocaine has worn off) which haunts me.

This moment of emotion, The Hug, is what I am thinking about when I wake up in the morning without an alarm clock at the exact moment when an alarm clock should sound. I know now that I will think about that foolish emotional moment for a long time. I will pay for it. I will pay for it with a diminished sense of self-regard. It makes me feel weak. Sometimes I think that it also made him wonder about me. Was I the right one to fire? Did he get it wrong? But there won’t be a moment of self-doubt for him. That is not the way he is structured. When I left his office I ceased to exist as a concrete being. I became an anecdote.

Stage two—“confusion”. There I was walking out of the offices I had walked through for years seeing people I’d casually encountered, spoken to so many times during my long employment …but it is all different. There is no attachment. I do not belong here any more. Where do I belong now? These thoughts and feelings are not separate stages of development. They are all mixed up. One does not end and the other begin. They flow into one another. I am still “drunk” as I walk past the receptionist and into the elevator. I am not sure if I said hello to anyone. It is the beginning of the workday. People are just coming in to the building while I am on my way out. Where should I go now? My wife is scheduled to pick me up at the train station at 6:13 P.M. She could be there earlier except that it is Tuesday and she is at work herself. I don’t wish to bother her. I have no ride home and I have no place to sit, think, be, for the rest of the day in the city. I do not want to wrestle with my thoughts for ten hours while I walk around Manhattan. Like a milk horse loosed from his wagon I mindlessly walk back to my job-site on Broadway and 56th street thinking about everything and nothing—with the illusion that I must collect my personal belongings.

The following is a list of same:
One pair of black boots.
One box of apple-cinnamon herb tea
One extra pair of reading glasses

I collect these things from a gang-box in the pump room on the 26 mezzanine where I have set up my “office” for the administration of a project that now has no relevance for me. The foremen for the carpenters, the electricians, a couple of the trades men, come in to the pump room to say good morning. To ask me questions about the days work. Clarify a ceiling height. Discuss the dimensions for the sprinkler heads in the fire rated ceiling of the hallway…. I like these guys. We have begun to work well together over the past few months. It is the one thing I can think of right then and there that I am exceedingly proud of. I had to prod the architect, client, engineers, and project manager for the information that was missing from the job documents and provide it to the trades. We have taken this miserable orphan of a space with confusing, disjointed, misaligned systems and details and molded it into a real job. . The trades now have the information to build the job and they believed me when I told them I would be there to get them the answers when the questions arose. It took weeks of patient and persistent effort to gain their trust. We were working together like a team. They knew what I expected of them.

I tell each one of them in turn, standing over my raw plywood worktable, that I am leaving. Their disbelief and warm regard buoys me. The fact that my dismissal takes place right before the Christmas holiday raises their genuine indignation. It adds insult to injury. Tradesmen are comfortable with periods of unemployment—it is a fact of life for them. It is the timing that smacks of deceit and treachery. Once the subject has been fully expanded upon—the handshakes, the buffering jokes and a few words of mutual praise for our mutual efforts—they begin to question the future of the job itself. Their concern for the the job is straightforward. I am not put off by their self-interest—I expected it—and I try to assure them that someone else from the company will maintain the schedule and flow of information. But they know all the other superintendents and project managers associated with this project. They laugh at the idea that there will be someone responsible to replace me. Someone who will take the job as seriously as I have. They are about to “fall into the crack” but they laugh and pump my hand and tell me it was a great job and it is a small world and we will meet again and I know they are right. Their concern for me is straightforward. It is a small world.

Stage three—“Fear”. I recognize now that I have been afraid for a long time. It is not something that just began that morning in the “Firing Man’s” office. I have been afraid my whole life. It is built into the background of my biology. Fear is a component of all my actions, decisions, thoughts… But now it had come to the fore. It is spelled with dollar signs. It is the plastic healthcare card in my wallet. It is in the mailbox. It is “Please Remit”. It is the cost of each oil change, grocery bag, replacement toothbrush, toilet flush, and box of Girl Scout cookies that my family wants and needs. Suddenly it feels true, that “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” because it is at the root of all things in my life. It becomes a sub-plot to all things in my life. Fear to the fore!!! It’s not just for breakfast any more!


Stage Four—“Anger”. I think about all the folks who are still working where I once worked and I wonder who among them deserves their job more than I deserved mine? I was good enough to hire. Good enough to work for thirteen years. Good enough to do the jobs that no one else wanted—the too small, too dirty, too tight on money jobs. Good enough to slide from position to position when it suited the company-—when they needed someone to fill a slot.

Hey “Mr. Firing Man”, do you remember the time when the “President” called me into his office and I sat on his big couch and he and I talked? That was one comfortable couch. He asked me how I was doing and I told him what he wanted to hear. He didn’t want to know that I missed my old job in the wood shop with the smell of mahogany and glue and the company of the carpenters who worked for me. That I hated the new job that you told me I had to take. That I hated the big teak desk in my new office—the one with a view of Park Avenue. That I hated the dark gray suits that I had to wear every day and the meetings and that I didn’t know how to cope with the office politics and the overbearing personalities of the other project managers in the other offices. That, though I hated it all, I wanted more than anything to prove my worth to you and to succeed in the role that had been forced on me. That I didn’t want to disappoint! That the week before I’d sat in my seat on the commuter train in my suit and tie and I couldn’t move when the train had pulled in and gone dark in Grand Central Terminal… and that I broke down in tears because of the stress. Instead I told him everything was wonderful and then you came into the room and gave me your evil eye. (Do you practice that look in the mirror? It is a very unflattering look, you know. Effective, to be sure, but not the kind of weapon one should use on one’s employees and friends.) I tried to understand what I was doing wrong that you should turn that “look” on me and that’s when you told me to get out of the office.

Did you feel you had to protect the “President”? From me? You had to protect your school chum buddy from what? Were you afraid we could become friends? That I would have his ear? Believe me, I did not envy either of you—your positions, your possessions or your aspirations. I only wanted to be employed. You needn’t have feared me.

I am angry for that hug. I can’t get past that hug. I want that hug back, “Mr. Firing Man”. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve the small portions of my life when I gave them to you. The fact that I like to sculpt—you found that amusing. You had your little jokes on my account. I was your little joke for a long time. You and your little click of clinch-jawed, school-chum buddies with your inherited ties to the Republican party and your box seat at Yankee Stadium. Forget that I was never close to a seat at the table, or a seat in Yankee Stadium…or on the presidents’ couch…I was never more than a step from the door, was I?

And at the Christmas party, you gave me that mean little look again. I never want to see that look again. I knew at the party that you were going to fire me when we next met in you office. I could tell from the look. But that look tells more than you can admit. It tells me you are out of touch. You think I was not a company man? That I was not on your side? You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You may never know for sure but I can tell you, you’re wrong.


Stage Five—“Escape”. I became despondent at the prospect of sitting around the house during the holidays. There is no prospect for finding a new job until the New Year is under way. I can not cope with the flood of feelings and endless, circular thoughts, powerless to act. Do you remember the movie “Animal House”? When the fraternity was being punished for low grades and bad behavior and they were put on probation? Do you remember what they did? They went on a road trip. Revelation.

I packed my little VW, put my youngest son into the passenger seat and took off. If it had not been for torrential rain, high wind and tornado warnings we would have gone to Louisiana but we ended up instead on the banks of the Little Econ River and the spoil islands off the coast of Florida. We drove until we were tired, ate sparingly of the pork belly of America, and spent the night of Christmas in the home of dear friends. Jews wandering the land. I did not think of work once. I did not have to see that mean little “Firing Man” look once! I shot a hundred photos of the Blue Ridge Mountains and of my son fishing in a muddy brown river in central Florida. I am home now looking at them. There is still fear and anger in me but there is also peace around the edges.

At first after I was fired I thought “things will get back to normal soon” but now I know there is no “normal”. There is only the continued progression of events shaped by fear and anger and love and circumstance. There will be a new job sometime soon with a new cast of characters and a new e-mail address and a new phone number but until then, my old phone number—the one you used to contact me for years—is no longer valid. Please take me out of your speed dial. Call me in the evening, on my home phone. I am in the book.

Corkbob

To see ones self too clearly

is a curse.

to see one self unclearly

is worse.

to see oneself not at all

now there's the trick.

Cats without balls

wind around my legs

and require love.

Disturbing moments

of loneliness

continue to demand attention.

I thought those days were done.

I thought I had found good places to hide-

a skill which I had perfected-

the good places,

as I go back to them,

in hours of need,

have been taken

by younger men

like seals in the sun

on high lonely rocks

above the ocean.

A night ride

to remember

the lonely

drug filled

twisted grins

when the streets were dark

when there was

nothing open

and the morning papers

wrapped tight with wire

waited to be folded

and packed and

chucked up on porches.

A night ride

to remember

warm hibiscus

wet lawns and other monster moons.

A night ride

to remember

icey arctic blasts

when I peed with the dogs

into snow banks

and stood butt-cakes to the wind

and I showed my bare ass

to the moon

and all the stars

and stomped around

a cherry red stove

full of live coals and dead maple.

Neither soldier, sailer, Indian chief

baker, butcher or successful thief.

Neither coin collector

carver, worker of wood.

Neither mason, craftsman

bad or good.

Neither setter of example

or follower of men

or friend

or foe

a leaf in the wind

and the wind does blow

__________________________

The sun is comming up now.

I have had coffee

I wish I had a smoke.

I have not combed my hair

I have on the same socks that I wore yesterday

I don't care.

I took a shit in a warm clean toilet

I take all the god damned technology I am using for granted

and I don't care.

I have no plans for the day

There is a woman who will wake

and look for me and I will not be there

the subltle mixture that makes up her day

will be wrong--god save my soul--

I don't care.

I will have no answers for my sons

when they ask me questions

I will only have more questions for them

and they will grow to distrust me

and it does not matter if I care.

I will decend

and then I will bob up

like a cork in the water

only to go down again

and this life is deep and cold.

All Talked Out

If you’d become a jar-head

Or a sailor on a cargo ship

And if you’d gotten in trouble

With the local cops

While stopped

On a small island

Off the coast of Greece…

Or what if

Your girlfriend got knocked up

And you made up you mind

That you could be a dad—

A better one than me—

“Whose that? Matt?

It that you?

Who’s that little guy

Ya’ got there?

No! Let me see…”

And while your mom holds the baby

Take a load off

And have a beer

I’d love to know

What you’ve been through.

Tell me. Let me hear.

I ran away

When I was just your age.

My poor folks? I never asked.

We’d tried for ages

To get along

But the good feeling would never last.

My old man would rear up on me

He’d scream and I would shout

But it was no use

We were out ‘a gas

We were all talked out.

Beside me while this train rocks

And the clock ticks

You’re looking for reasons to stay

But finding reasons to go

The moon rises

The moon sets

The sweet cider sours

And the old lawn just sprouts

The more we talk the talk we talk

The more we’re all talked out.

I left.

(You’ll leave--

we all leave--in time)

I caused my damage

And came home to discuss

The things I had witnessed

While riding the cusp.

My mother set a table

For a guest—for me.

Ready to hear the fables

Of my time lost at sea

I could relax in my seat

I was in the company of ghosts

With volumes to speak

Over mashed potatoes and roast.

Old wounds heal—

Take my word,

With nary a scar

That’s what it’s all about

Till you’re talking

To the heavens

And stars

You’ll not be all talked out.

Happy Halloween

October 31, 2009

Matt and Bailey left for the city. They were dressed as ghouls. Fake blood. Matt had made fake intestines out of Saran Wrap and condoms and packed them with some unmentionable stuff that looked very real but it wasn’t--I think. He pinned his fake "guts" to the front of his torn dress shirt. He covered himself with theatrical blood and grime and yelled at me to “get the camera” while he pulled on his suit jacket. Bailey was wearing a dress/gown a la Carrie. Both of them sporting tattoos all over the place, eyes rolled back when the flash went off. Really creepy.

While we were taking the photos out on the front porch the mail lady pulled up to the mailbox and Matt, so proud of his get up, couldn’t help himself, yelled out to her “Happy Halloween” and she yell the same back up to him. She did a quick double take from down on the road as she pulled away and saw the two of them like bride and groom from hell, mugging up on the porch. I am sure they will have a good time on the train to Grand Central. I am sure the train will be packed with the youth of America dressed up for the medieval resurrection of the dead. Matt will fit right in.

I am sitting outside right now in my Sweet Construction jacket, in my green, canvas camp chair, sipping the cider we bought two weeks ago when we visited Jake and Ting Ting up in Ithaca. It has gone hard and is not for the feint of heart. The fermentation gases had built up in the plastic jug and when I opened it up the top nearly blew my hand off. It is kind of sweet and bubbly with a kick. When I got up to get the radio from the tool room my knees were decidedly rubbery. Anyhow…I’m in my chair under the overhang of the metal roofed carport. A determined rain has begun where all day it had just been impenetrable clouds and mist. I have my feet up on the rock wall and a basket full of candy sits on the drivers side fender of the VW next to me. The radio is playing Jonathon Schwartz’s show- Mandy Potemkin, who I hate. He sounds like some one cut his nuts off and took his shirt and put him in a meat locker. A castrato with stiff nipples.

Just your normal Halloween. Sip of cider. I don’t suppose too many kids will be coming up the driveway today. It is only three thirty now but I thought a lot of the parents would take their little ones out early because of the weather. The weather is so lousy. We never get to many kids anyway, even in good weather. The long, dark driveway is just too forbidding. The house is usually dark and uninviting from the street-at least for kids. And then there are the tall, winding, wooden steps up to the porch…even if candy is waiting up top. (Oh cripes! Mel Torme! This guy is picking the worst of the worst!) Sip of cider. I thought if I sat downstairs it would make the place look a lot less forbidding but the rain and Mel Torme will surely keep everybody away.

Sitting out here I feel like I’m out on a camping trip. Cool. At least I get that out of it. That and a giant cider/ sugar headache. I’m gonna give it an hour. By then the sun will have set and I will have run out of cider and Halloween will be a happening thing or it won’t. Then I’ll go inside and have a slice of pizza and watch Halloween Rockin’ Eve with Dick Clark. They still have that on, don't they? I'll watch until the pumpkin drops from the tower in Notre Dame at midnight, No?

Cool Halloween.

Happy Halloween.

A Clean Slate

A Clean Slate

In the spring the mint comes up in a patch in the corner of the little piece of ground Liz and her mother made when we first moved in. A small raised plot bordered by giant granite boulders on the south and retained by a two-foot high wall made of stones on the east. The two Liz’s carried each stone from the hill side and piled them up into a rubble wall. Behind the wall they poured loose dirt which they also dug from the hill. I calculate they hauled, by bucket, approximately 15 yards of soil in all. They seeded it with grass, some of which actually grew, and populated the tiny, level area with a picnic table and two benches, which Mutti bought for us. Over the years the domestic grass has given way to thick weeds and native grass which, when mown, has become a dense, serviceable “lawn” of sorts.

The mint, as I said, grows wild on a small portion of the “lawn” spreading down the slope and into the border of the garden fence. It becomes entwined in the fence during the growing season and spreads into the garden itself, usually up to the marigolds which Liz plants for color and to discourage insects. All summer long I tread on it as I tend the vegetables. It is not discouraged by my carelessness. It is a weed that thrives on the garden soil. It doesn’t care if I walk all over it and it even rewards my trespasses with fragrant mint smell as I bruise the hardy plants. Once the fall comes I spend a lot of time selectively pulling up the spent vines of the cucumbers and squash, picking beans to dry for seeds for next year and pulling up other dead and dying plants-including the mint.

The okra stalks come up hard. As I pull them huge clods of earth cling to the root ball. I smack the ball against the fence so the soil will fall into the beds. Earth worms rain out of the loosened soil and borough into the ground as quickly as possible. I throw the stems and roots into a pile outside the fence and I will collect it for composting later. Sometimes I run the mower over the pile and chop it up before I compost it. Long, stringy vines, the stalks of the broccoli, the smooshy, left-over cucumbers, the weeds and the flowers-including the mint-all goes into the pile. The tricky mint. Little seeds fall like sand everywhere I pull it out and everywhere I throw the dying plants. It plants itself everywhere and comes back year after year. No matter if the tomatoes blight or the egg plant withers from insects the mint grows. This year it threatened to take over the entire little hill where I planted potatoes and was so thick on the fence that the sun could barely penetrate. I pulled it and pulled it but it just kept on coming.

I used to pick some of the leaves and dry them on the dining room table. All winter long I drank strong mint tea. I gave some to friends and to the post woman and I would have done it again and again but now one ever asked for more. I assume it was because mint is so common that everyone has some of their own and they don’t need mine. So now I just make a little for myself and mix it with “Lemon Zinger”.

That tea and its pungent smell… that is what the mint gives in return for its intrusion into the lawn and the garden, and that is enough. Today I will spend an hour and reign in the wild growth. I will pull the mint and as much of the garden plants as I can. There is still some broccoli and hot peppers on the plants. The fall has been warm and just wet enough to keep them growing. Soon the hard frost will come and everything will droop and brown and I will turn the soil after I pull the remaining plant life. I will add last years compost and perhaps some manure and start again with a clean slate.

Tar-baby

Tar-baby

Where did this boy, this man, slow and smoldering tar-baby, come from?

An exhaustive search by my wife and I conclude

that he is ours.

Recognizable traits

can be traced back to us.

The genetic signs all point to common ancestors

but environment has strangely tuned him—

like a sinew pine grown

on a hillside

in the wind

or a blast of trees spindly in a sandy grove

angled in unison

bent into the sunlight.

For hours we have spoken

and spoken…

searching for an emotional dew-point

a spot at which relief forms

in clear droplets.

For years (could it be years already?)

we have tugged at our hearts,

plucked up at the downbeat

ranted

raved and

tapped out time

in search of resonance.

The hum.

A sweet sine.

Science claims the real world

while He, his mom and me

reside in a parallel universe

without physics

or biology.

Where the Earth is flat

and at the center of the world

is a tar-baby--

in a clear patch

among the thorns--

I can not help but touch.

Number 1, Number 2, Number 3

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

That is what I want to look at

That is what I want to see

Not some bright white light

Or an angel coming after me

A simple pencil sketch of the boys

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Locked in a boyish brace

Of tiny arms and perfect smiles

And hair,

A cowlick

A golden thatch

A curly, laughing head of hair

Before the problems

Before the acne

Before the braces

Before the complicated

Rhyme of the world set in

Bring me near

As one sad soul gets

To immortality

A copy of a photograph

A simple pencil sketch

Of Number 1

Number 2

Number 3.

The Meal

The Meal

You could tell by the way he paused between bites that enjoying the meal was the most important thing in his world. At least for that short time while he sat at the table with his coat in his lap like a pet—his hands in the soft fleece lining for warmth while he waited for the steaming plate to arrive. Before it would be delivered to his table he always had one small bourbon in a shot glass. Drinking it down in four or five short sips he rolled it around on his tongue and let the fire burn towards his belly. The after effect of the drink---a slight light headedness—was nothing like drunkenness but more like transcendence, which, when tightly controlled allowed him to savor the meal with elevated senses and fuller enjoyment.

When the shot glass had been taken away and the meal set before him (today it was pasta shells stuffed with a mixture of ricotta cheese and eggs and cracked pepper and basil with a sauce made of Elisabeth’s home grown tomatoes. On the side was a salad with the same tomatoes, some cucumber and mixed greens and lastly a fresh garlic bread just this side of burnt but soft on the inside with garlic and olive oil…) He perched over it as he spooned some roughly grated aged cheese and inhaled the steam rising up from the plate . The first bite. Eyes closed. He chewed the pasta and the stringy cheese as slowly as his hungry mouth and tongue would allow. The entire rest of the meal would be framed within this sweet, dynamic tension between desire and patience. Between each bite he would put down his utensils and prop his arms up onto the table. Resting his elbows and entwining his fingers like the tines of two forks his eyes would close and he would chew. And chew. And swallow. And dab his mouth occasionally with a napkin. There was not a shred of doubt that this was the most important thing in his life and if all else failed he was determined to taste this food—this meal—for all that is was worth.

That he can take such pleasure in the glass of water! There is proof enough of the reverence with which he approaches each and every element of the meal. He once exclaimed to me that “this water came from the depths of the earth. Taste it! It is the only water I have ever had that has such taste.” He took a great swallow and another and asked me for a refill. Easy enough. It comes right out of the tap from the well in the back. “Seven hundred and fifty feet down. That water comes from seven hundred and fifty feet”. He will not allow me to put in any ice. He says that he enjoys it at the temperature at which it rests—the temperature that it has come from the stream below the earth. He drinks two full glasses with his meal. He claims it balances out the meal. He drinks with his eyes closed as if he were in love with the water and he is kissing it—shyly and with trepidation. I can not watch him some time as he eats and especially as he drinks. I am embarrassed by the bobbing of his Adam’s apple and go back into the kitchen to work on the meals of the other patrons.

He rarely eats more than one helping of food. He is not thin. Over the years he has put on some weight but not a lot. He has developed a small belly more from a lack of exercise, I think, than over eating. The one sin he commits, I have noticed, is that he must have a small sweet directly after his dinner. A cookie or a small finger of cake that is all. He usually eats it while he pays the bill—standing up near the owners counter and stool. He is sometimes licking his fingers as he walks out of the door and the tiny bell over the door tinkles to announce his departure.

He will be back again tomorrow night. He is as constant as the stars. He told me once that as he becomes older there is less and less that he has to look forward to. I had been telling him about my children and their recent party for Halloween. He laughed and told me to enjoy them for as long as I could and my patience would allow. “Soon enough they will be gone and you will have to find other things to fill up the space in your life that they once occupied.” I asked him what he did to “fill the space” and he replied “Little. But there is Elisabeth’s food. And the walk home. Occasionally a chess game or a piece of music on the radio.” I felt a little sad when I saw the way he stared off to a far away place. He must have sensed my discomfort. “No, no! These are good things. Food is beautiful! And come here…look at this…” He took my arm by the elbow and led me to the front door of the shop. “Look at that.” He pointed up to the stars and still holding onto my elbow he whispered into my ear. “Look at those stars! They are millions of miles away”. And he said it in the same way he said “seven hundred and fifty feet down” and the warmth of his breath sent shivers down my spine. “The stars are free but so few of us looks up to see them. Our meals are so common that few of us taste them. Our children are precious but who among us treasures them? Do you see what I mean? It is all up to you to take the gifts that are given you.” With that he let go my elbow and bowed slightly at the waist. He looked up at me and said “What is on the menu for tomorrow?” “Short ribs”, I said, “and a casserole of potatoes au gratin”. “Wonderful!! That is my favorite.”