Wednesday, August 31, 2011

lunch (part 3)

and we walk in a line down the scant path to the
restaurants along
the idle rich flanking us lazily on sidewalk tables though
they
seem to shimmer and melt into the
pre-fab midtown cafe-culture backdrop maybe
figurants lost
midtown foliage
reclining into frieze

mythic squadrons of every
genus of truck hustle
oriental rugs
organic food
antique furniture and the
rations of commerce

grocery flowers crowd grapefruit growing out of ice crystals
reflecting the calm post-storm sun

hawkers govern folding tables of mass produced pashminas
cellphone cases
DVDs and knockoff sundries

lunchtime human pachinko around deliverymen
jagged old windowshoppers courting sample sales reflected in
insectile ebony sunglasses
the slow bored gait of tourists
annoyed or grateful smokers
churchgoers and teenage theater

the low hum of city glossolalia
high tide audio
and
immediately
the sun is in the wrong place and
my body is a
badly closed window
thwarted by a light breeze
and none of the architecture is real and
i yawn through strong coffee and
i am completely at a loss
of argument
reason
faith

i
don't
really
return

i disrupt
my own escape

lunch (part 2)

and lunch is somehow both
hummus and whiskey
imagination friskier and starved for
intention I pass shadows cast from
undiscovered countries

offices i'll never grok
parking lots i'll never smoke cigs in
bodegas i'll never order mediocre food in
homeless people i'll never give 1s to
subway entrances ignored
drugstores i'll never need
coworkers i'll never politely hate
laugh with
enjoy or
ignore
doormen i'll never share shaky solidarity with
mailmen i'll never cough drifting dryhump smalltalk with
coffee i'll never aggregate quality of
garbage smells i'll never morning fastwalk through
ancient computers i'll never bellyache over
doors i'll never unlock
worlds i'll never speak to
roles i'll never fuck up

and lunch lies and each hypocritical minute
lies shaken and thirty minutes are
a gran mal seizure and
fifteen minutes in
everything is nonsense and it could be
days before i am
grasping the confident
humiliating brass handle of the
entrance and jerking it open with
every last ounce of endurance for
the last time

lunch (part 1)

noonday chatter mesmerizes post-
hurricane sugar weather
flavored breeze coats cars
colors debris
skirts swing weightless
perpetually above the knee
we court greatness in walks
in these moments
horizon above the park like
pork pressing cilantro in a banh mi
and cabbies stretch aimlessly
carnivorous
down hostile grids softened by the laughter
of new lovers and swaths of fast food
cartilage caught in the hereafter of
unswept midday avenues
hipster coffee bustles across
200 tour guides praying to Mecca
spilling out of the storefront temple reuniting with
400 shoes
feels like paying dues to a loanshark
blues
these
days
carrying on feeling like last call
carrion
constantly summoning new frequencies
to glide sanity off of like a skipped stone
all gathered together yet
somehow completely alone
when I collect what's severed
i'm organizing what's known

Monday, August 29, 2011

48 hours of the news

and the news floods us with greedy images and
video non sequitors of dogs sadly swimming through
the mud flood of other states
other lands and cities on other
more dangerous
winds and
pieces of roof siding and tiles heli-
coptering deadly past slightly insecure newscasters in
corporate ponchos yanking at the gawkers
around them
oh you didn't have insurance
oh your basements flooded lets take a look at that
oh the old man can't climb in the raft
oh you guys are packing sandbags from the beach
oh that was your car that fell into the sinkhole
oh you didn't have insurance
and it continues this way and i keep watching with dry
bronx windows with my five stupid mass hysteric cans of tuna fish
and my air conditioner on

but later
much much later
around 11pm
it changes

and the newscasters on location don't have anybody to
yoke into frame
and the camera lenses are all destroyed and sandblasted from
80+ mile per hour winds rendering their targets
dreamlike and out of focus
and the moon pulls over new jersey evacuation areas and
they are just standing there
alone
soaked in the weird escapee silence
excitement drained from their souls and sometimes
they find odd miserable poetry
almost exasperated with their homebase anchor family with looks
on their face like
what the fuck do you want me to say

and all the houses are empty and they
preside over these darkened neighborhoods with
crumbling keep-it-together soliloquies
pacing around abandoned suburban streets
attempting to equip broadway smiles tinged with boredom some
small panic an almost existential countenance to
face the unknown elemental plague

they become like happy children reunited to parents
when people wake up the next day and they can
gratifyingly mouthfuck them with mics and fill
that previous evening's severe swirling questioning silence
with the sounds of people excited to
complain and posture before
their homes and the energy returns to them and
they are like
these homes
emptied of chilling nature
drying in the cloudy morning
thrilled to be around humanity

except i now know that i would rather
do nothing but watch
late night lonely
hurricane news

Saturday, August 27, 2011

prelude

at 11:40AM the rains start in the bronx almost
musically
the andante soaks the sidewalk
intro is measured before
the sounds of droplets run divertissement
through the chewy fabric of treeleaves that
rustle cryptic movements
hypnotic in the sizzle of brushed snare and
the street is made of heavy eternal material
perhaps shuddering
perhaps prescient or
ominous but currently just
wet with celestial improvisations and
i take my steps from the door in 4/4
only to mopishly
return to my apartment as i try
to figure if this is rhapsody or
deeply known and i've
never seen so many windows in my neighborhood
closed in the summer as
plunged earplugs by the orchestra we
position and believe that
we are listening

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

polytheist

frayed ends of the immigration of
morning lay oily and sheer on the surface of my
irrepressible cup
of bustelo like rainbows in car wash puddles rendering
Monets reflecting nailbiting customers

the car wash was a strange and exhaustive period
every morning I would suit up in coveralls and pick up
breakfast for the boys
Nick was an affable wiry italian crewcut who would
strangely and eagerly feed me cigarettes every day
i think we were the only smokers on staff and he was
convinced of developing a shameless bond based entirely on this fact
Looking genuinely happy to fund me with
weightless obligatory Parliaments

the other main guy was Maja
he was a Haitian guy who worked
harder than anyone else
i tried to shadow his confident movements
i didn't really know how to drive but
he taught me some quick maneuvers
and shared the basics of his scrappy quasi-religious philosophy
and i traded with him in the currency of english slang and
looked over his homework from business night school

every morning I would suit up in coveralls
except
when it rained

i became a true pluviophile
sharing a studio apartment with three other
hungover seekers at
5:45AM i was concocting strange
birdlike ritualistic dances winged by
the blanket i slept on the floor with
i would sing and crow and wake people up
make odd exclamations at the balcony
pray to my half-remembered jewish god or
any available and
yank at my hair

when it rained the carwash was a ghost town and
my fuckhead of a boss would wait for us to call in
equally happy to be told to stay home as he was
happy not to pay us shit for the day

some mornings the sky teased which only
produced a more intense
almost sexual display
invoking any and all unknown religious techniques and
promises and
some mornings the sky was pitilessly clear and
i hopelessly mumbled and murmured and eventually
just left
defeated to my long walk to Woodside

on a good day we barreled through 200 cars
primarily taxicabs
if the drivers were Jamaican there was a good chance
to save some decent roaches from the vacuum snake or
sometimes we'd pilfer the change we found if it
was a few bucks worth
we couldn't rely on tips because the fuckhead very
obviously curbed at least half of them
either him or the scumbag bastard who had
funded the enterprise and liked to kill time
there relaxing
fucking with us and
scrutinizing our work

one time he clipped me behind my knees with the
hood of a moving car almost
dropping me on my face on a post-inebriated
morning
i turned around and saw him laughing in
the driver's seat the
exact way a
fat useless piece of shit laughs when his day is spent
fussing over his little pet project and not doing any
work and i swore up and down i would get his number and
obviously never did

the only other thing of worth i remember was
driving a nice car onto the rails and hearing
one of the most horrible crackling sounds i had ever
heard
i had jammed the tire at an odd angle
which caused
the hub cap to press against the metal rail and
shattered the plastic metallic disc into a million
pieces all
sent skittering down the grating with the hose and
quick thinking
the fuckhead saw it but hid his shock from the customer who
was looking at a kiosk with those little airfreshening tree things
i could feel myself getting fired a spooked yet almost sweet and
gratifying moment but
fuckhead kept it together and waited carefully
the customer never noticed it and drove off with three
hubcaps and the fuckhead never mentioned it

it was one of the jobs where you learn to drink coffee
learn the hot smell of a set of sweaty coveralls that got
washed once a week
memorized the faces of junkyard dogs that crowed a welcome
daily

it was also one of the hardest jobs of my entire life
on that weird stretch of queens boulevard absent of all
life not compelled by no-tell motels or auto chop shops
coming home at 10PM it felt like the world had ended and
i would call my girlfriend from a payphone on the way down
the street and
-mind emptied and muscles expired-
not have a single fucking thing to say to her and
have a stupid brainless chat before hanging up and walking
the mile and a half home

the only thing i think i learned from that job is
how to
purely and ignorantly
commune with many gods

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

camera #2

tight long skirt folds in with
each metric step down bedford park wearing a
sharp curved short wig
a child scolded by his parent walking with
chin pressed hard against his chest and i'm
familiar with the move
a woman in what looks like an orange burka curled
asleep in the corner of the d train or maybe awake
hard to tell
two giggling girls duck under the turnstyles
when i was younger the tollbooth guy would loudspeaker that shit but
he stands there
staring but silent
bengal streetcat semiseriously chases pigeons in the korean church garden
drunk elderly man on a rolling walker sloths across a green light
1000 piles of dogshit in a neighborhood with 500 dogs and no oversight
kids in the recess yard throw trash over the black iron gates
the aftermath of a birthday party in mosholu park brings the smell
of ribs and the mild chuckling of beat parents
green apple core browning leans gangster on apartment stairs
pigeon rides the wind for three oblong loops before
settling down to eat deliberately placed uncooked rice
marked for death outside the liquor store
where single asian mother tickles her child before getting me a bottle of cheap rum
stage left an MTA employee buys a fifth of hennessy with no small subtle
snuffling insult to my meager pickings
daughter maybe 7 years old cries those heavy hallucinatory tears
into her father's stomach
he stands somewhat embarrassed watching the street
the tattooed shirtless hold court outside bronx tenements
smoking cigarettes and playing dominoes
cars briefly disturb the basketball game in the street
one of the kids slaps five with the old man in the passenger seat

Monday, August 22, 2011

books

literature haul at the corner
of 28th and park
a grinning bus driver residing lordly
over a bag of bizarre scripts and
books in a recycling bag

i pore over this literary detritus
and obsolete tech
Angels In America book 2
a pinkback copy of Quills and
Glengarry Glen Ross next to
some Eugene O'Neill hardcovers
which i save from trash like some
slighted child

gotdammit close those windows!

every time I walk by this wall on the way to work I wonder when we're gonna have a dedicated irl popup-blocker


Sunday, August 21, 2011

i'm here / i'm not here

in the stark outlines where
confidence bristled against dream against
faint phantom freight train adolescent knowitall
guru drugfueled mantra resonator confrontation mind
melter fuckhead i am
playing kick the can alongside coloring book designs
thinking to paint past the curb drinking paint drips
drunk on emotional alloys and intercontinental drift
subsumed in deep sediment

atomic clock shift
the seconds hand secondhand
thrift store timekeeper
and i can't summarize a life lesson when
the life lived feels epic format
drumming fingers on the unused dryer
philosopher in the laundromat
wet with time to spare
clothes tumble like emotional totem scraps
feeling like quarters out of an owned machine
an old machine functioning simply off the
scrape for green future possibilities

i'm inability calling itself maturity
lurid when the time permits
fluid as an iceberg
nearing evolutionary city limits
smashing through the hudson i've
arrived i thrive photosynthetic like
alaskan wildflowers wavering in an
endless sun
and maybe this clumsy growth has just begun

splitting poetry libation into its
common parts a marathon runner intoxicated
on the blurry scenes i pass by or
develop a path by
and fifteen years of composition notebook autobiography
is its own laughing adolescence and
on a mission of purification i'm
sussing out the essence

algebra

past lexington where they sell
couches for the beautiful people 20
yards away at Park ave near 11 identical
faux-gourmet delis and the
7 or so Halal trucks so close they could
wave to one another a stone's throw from mickeydee's and
madison housing the smell of charcoal
chicken skewers wafting almost delicate through 90
hairstyles and patterned identification pirouettes painted
on 36 casually insecure women commanding salon identities with
each concrete saunter invitation to 10 unashamed stares emanating
from couriers confident suits and starbucking lifers walking on
5th ave without thinking about walking on 5th ave i steal 5
minutes for an unpaid cigarette musing luck under 2 ladders
beneath infinite immortal indiscriminate scaffolding carcasses for the
endless construction of ceaseless manhattan material in the
shadow of el loco junkman pushing his daily scrap cart nodding
proudly at 3 doormen and clouds tease rain above 9 office monkeys dreaming
the same lottery comfort food fantasy and 1 minute to go i am
trying to inhale something permanent in a city that is always
changing and breathing
years
out i am trying to exhale something
transitive and inhaling unadulterated flatiron air i am
trying to do the
math

Thursday, August 18, 2011

tide is high

diggin that
rocksteady
from jamaica
pure
and most
music is a faker
that's foolin your
cure

thinkin bout the sounds
of John Holt
the paragon voice
sweet like a sugar
thunderbolt
we carry on
lost in mixed elements
but the chunky guitar got my
fix like burroughs and
Griffiths singing bout the
sorrows in the ghetto straits while
the world shudders missing
Lynn Taitt
the heavyweight sound
with a feather stroke
it was never lackluster
when Kwesi spoke

bumpin Prince Buster
and misstepper modern pop hits don't pass muster
trust the
musty vinyl
sweatin island into trojan
miles of the unheard
exploding

i dust off a 45
hits me in the forehead
even mp3s leavin more dead
than Judge Dread on the radio charts
Alton Ellis arts speakin peace
from stages above cultural
rage til old age
dusty pages from LPs
tell a story of lost
misprints and out-of-print
allegories

but the curl of an upward strum
will save you
keep your dancin shoes drummin and
hum bravely
head nodding
babylon is here
it's broad and bright-eyed
we rearrange and strive
and somehow
we
never
arrive

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

sweaty dancer

soaped and moving matter the
music of disgusting food scraps mixed with
poison and the illusions of hot water
blasted against metal like a
dislodged scream escaping down
the drain

collate the hours spent staring at
porcelain transforming and remaining and
collecting shitty soapspecked boombox in
the corner spitting distraction at half-
eaten sandwiches and pancake inkblots tucked
in stainless steel corners while 6
bucks a fucking hour bleed like
the sweat down a sleepless neck

*

these days i push paper for quite a bit
more but drift on the slow
minutes expand and extend and
manicure each careful second distinguished like a
work of acutely belabored sculpture and
i'm good on the phone i
wear weird masks and
strangers on the other
line think i'm one of them and
tally my sweet voice and can't
tell that i'm just another
sucker

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

screwmug

reflex effect
brows clenched with 30 years of wrinkle i'm
angry or focused
possessed by insecurity or too
secure
defensive against the world
innocuously fucking with the populace in

quick
steps i

gather momentum against
the rush of walksign careful half-steppers draggin
kids macy's bags and man-purses against newyorker
nonstop get-there disease

manhattanhenge on my back grab
a free strawberry smoothie sample on
5th ave glidin in one
smooth motion carryin
comicbooks and flashed memories of too-cool asian sunglassed
skirtlegs outside
the k-town radisson sippin on a bubbletea
thoughtfully
drumbeat b-bap emerald veggie dumplings at
Mandoo round the church on
29th by the masterful dude tooling xboxes by the
halal joint where 1pm finds a crowd of 200 tourguides prone to Allah
soft-shoeing round transvestite towncrier flyerers pacing


er ummm i'm

dumbfounded but keepin brows clenched
like fists disjointed round stalled cabs vomiting
no-schedule professionals against gumtacked sidewalks round
scaffolding and badluck ladders i'm a cup of coffee round
the ace hotel under sunshower and british accents i
vent hostility
in: shitty workweek
out: lovin the wander and
just
chill

can't quit the cigs i need
smokebreaks to think
illnesses harmless
leak
out of fingers like filtering the beautiful
linger-philosophy when a million motherfuckers
stress about apostrophes & ownership i'm a distant character and
these moments are
theosophy

Sunday, August 14, 2011

hereditary

easing down to think staggered by
a slope of pills and budget alcohol as
witness to what next

in the seventy degrees of summer evening when
the car alarms gather an unsynced symphony beneath fireworks smashed
glass anger and the ten thousand lonely Bronx hearts wired
to searching for hours into the dawn
balancing a whiskey into my throat wielding all
the colors of surrender the evolved form of
dignity with a chemical aftertaste

these are grasps gropes scrambles and
affected reachings to some
central and real guiding molecule hypo-
thalmus hypoglycemic hypnotic calming in the
blood like a soft hand soothes like a flush
of vasopressin it

creeps into the mood

Friday, August 12, 2011

shiva

shifting on well worn
concrete loops these jagged
paths of practiced instinct
honed, really

interrupted by
the shadow of an irrepressible bastard and it is
cyclical the way all torrents of sin rain down and
become like a flag unto death and
why not
shirk the shell for the
visitable scrutiny of the strained grasping evinced by
selfish youth handjob stranded in the murk of maturity like a stain and

then in strange moments of peace it is
as if through soft repetition the world opens and
decency drifts out and an impressive series of lies & fuckups isn't the
long grift of gray dangling in the backdrop a self-
composed religion of bad decision compost bedding down
new growths and tomorrow is actually stunning mathematics and
infinity and
gold-hued comfort and
stable chemistry many-handed and both

concepts

are really all there is to grasp at and
all i deserve

Monday, August 8, 2011

stormchaser

the season melts to a crawl like a
good book and i meander in the
footnotes

in the summer of language
in the clutch of warm throats
words spread spring and unease
speaking lewd colors
unable to draw near
distanced by
stumbles dares me closer to

silence when the daylight
leans hinting of a portal
in time where a warm night shuffles
bold reso- & revo- & convo-
lutions luscious in the
graceful outlines where
you might ask me to remain

minutes beg for hours and time
snakes hungrily for more moments more
real feeling more elaborate confirmation that
this is the path of the bled discordant
struggling mad souls suffering slow
dull paycheck death and enacting
intimate skirmishes we are

counting the days

Sunday, August 7, 2011

silver

london burns and other cliched headlines mark
the death of a young Mark Duggan and
resting in peace is obviously not
in the cards so across the water
we refresh news sites and
watch for riot footage the way
we always wait for changes and
weird smells in the wind what

we
do
know
is

he thought the feds were following
he was strapped and on his way home
he was slaughtered with the H&K MP5 and
it
is
all
happen
-ing
again
and

people loot because they are robbed and
communities rooted in forgotten soil reap
screaming ghosts in the afterglow and the
cops wait until they are unafraid and experience
leaks the resolve into twisting hands and the
sidewalks will always
grow dangerous
and always grow hazardous
burning blooms

the family hasn't seen him yet

lapser

at 10am it's hard to muster
sensibility in the
face of injury

and in the doorways of this
scramble to sensibility from
dulled inoperative
anesthesia hands
test the air for rain
making sloped
sensitive
movements in the humidity and
hover
waiting

in a cold private moment a
sweetly drawn agreement
becomes a heady
compromise and
dances with Shakti a
gathered moment feels
like rain a
young oath expires
ravaged at the
tide of
a strange smile

Saturday, August 6, 2011

it's a free country

on some days there are
the daggereyed
the impatient creatures
waiting for equipment and moving
benches around molesting grinning
trainers and stank-ass accomplices run eager trains
on pullup bar fonts and spend fifteen minutes or
more on flavor of the month ab machines or grunters lift
right at the barbell stand leaving crumbtrails
of dropped dumbbells or the
encircling characters mortgaging the chest press and
it's right there stuck in my headphone universe
dodging the pulldown cult and draping
a towel over my shoulder polite and
secure and
insecure dodging the bolder strident fucks
and fuck you

charging out of the locker room and fuck your
weight dropping and fuck your
friday night genetics and get the

fuck

out of my way

Friday, August 5, 2011

quietly

sometimes it is as if and
never and later on always and
in the secret heart down the
bannister of sloppy ideals in
rare hours of bravery it is as
if it used to be and maybe
in a little while longer it is
self-composed and then in the
minutes or years that follow it is
as a cruel shadow some
fragment of a whole and
while it compels it is
complete and then it is
shattered and sometimes
it is as if it was
always
silent

Thursday, August 4, 2011

stray

dust particles make it hard to make it out
the lopsided memories the
leopards recycle paradise
the recall is a recital of lost years and we -
paralyzed by self-projected miracles &
tricky distances -
recline mockingly suave, coolly surveying these disguises

in the ten eyeblinks when we are
absentmindedly rearranging
personal elements like a
favorite writing desk or a
bingo table or a
love letter we find
excuses to undo the foundations and
cruelly deconstruct
the fossils of old flames until we are
writing
new
stories and encounters as if
to do so was akin to being an organized person as if
to not do so was akin to being an organized person and

far past the horizon on chilly bored evenings the strays collect with
thumbs sticking out of pockets
murmuring like spent machines maybe
walking their dog or an old bad habit
bumping into their equals like tokens on a board
aging and bearing pained expressions and
scuttling their ambitions into the moonlit grass

i remember pages
warm from multiple reads
and pink-night sky and streetlights and
bagels at 3 in the morning and
freezing early hours and the infinite tongue of a life endlessly
extending almost
boring in its length and
looking for engravings or mottled signatures anywhere to mark my
passing by the moored ghosts of others and finding microscopic
traces that could have as easily been mirages or even my
own stimulated handprints and in their presence feeling
some stupid fulfillment or amusement

it moves so timidly slowly now and yet strangely brutally
emotionally beautifully and the insecurities die so frequently in the
next daylight the ones that were felt so deeply they defined every
motion now cringe into pockets of understanding like
crickets under leaves and
populate who i find myself as and with
what hands and poisons i
draw the
rest
to
view

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

rumble

strands of perspective melt around the sunrise and we
wake like reporters, journalists of
war, riders of the bad weather thinking
it's a good day to

dice rolling cross the street in manhattan when
i retrace my steps to the the daily duress and i
humm to myself appearing cheerful but
it's surgical distraction from the bad
songs fucking with

you share victories
minutes outside the cafe
curls of smoke punctuating what amounts to escape
returning to the cyclical cache
no drama but the ones that

separating molecules of time in a rented hole
bartering curious misery
envies cascade like clumsy chess moves and
pondering the patterns why not just

walking with chaos she's got
tight jeans serene voice wavers when
it's haunting your dreams
over too quick rocking the visine
an obvious scene but you

Monday, August 1, 2011

the same sky

in the rumble cold in conditioned air on summer days as a lost mincing
soul breath staggering half-clenched breath scrap by scrap is how
a creative kid dies not

fucked sweet or
hells ride
bludgeoned expression or
wicked knowing smile or
drunk on visions or
sacrificed for ideals or even
back to the wall but

so engaged to a well of endless days he can
drift on paid somnambulism and aggravate an empire
of brutally indulgent fantasies in the ticks between a
document load

was never a big dreamer after all just
a malfunctioning bad luck spigot trying
to splash past the low enthusiasm
convincing the former dedicated
middle finger thrust to stick around and make good on teenage threats

these were strange weapons back in those struggling years
of unthinking immaculate genius when almost
nothing was understood

this is a theft of years