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

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

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

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

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

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