What Bastille Day balmy breeze blew past her brainwaves and into the fountain of dreams and schemes? All the phrases of the heartaches and hearts burning and hearts a-fluttering going full blast into the setting sun…
And why and what for and for how long nobody knew when they cast and were casting their lines for all they could get and all they could fathom was as deep as that foghorn somewhere out there in a rhythm maybe, if you listened long enough.
It's only as good as your last save they tell me. And I'm savin’ like a maven. All packratted in my place but not placing any bets on how it's all gonna turn out the longer I see how the wind can toss us about. And isn't it now for certain and in a very big way that the whether is such a big factor these days?
Whether you will or won’t…what with all the news breakin’ and all the commercial hotspots we watch and we wait with our finger on the mute. What it's been like here these last few years I could tell you some of it and still wonder what not to tell and what I'd be tellin’ if I were you instead of me bein’ in the same picture. Picture this from the first floor instead of the seventeenth, or across the street from the Hell's Angels where I used to live vs The Marriott Marquis now. Those windows glaring across from mine like some TV set left on but the show's over maybe for a minute and then it could start again anytime in a shadowy blur of figures in an exhibition with music by Mussorgsky.
Fat chance that the sound track is Mussorgsky – Times Square just doesn’t sound like that long as I been here – some bagpipes appear and sound for the tourist dollars every now and then and a lone trumpet player with a four song repertoire at midnight. My neighbor next door runnin’ scales on his piano and rehearsin’ some Broadway singers. Grindin’ rumblin’ garbagetrucks, car alarm sirens, ambulance sirens, fire truck sirens, stuck car horns, ear bleedin’ noise, ear bleed – din noise, but for the clop clop of the carriage horse nearin' midnight's own heartbeat, short lived and shiverin' in the wind. Shiverin' in the wind clop cloppin' horse, pullin' the top hatted immigrant and his fare somewhere somewhere in an old-fashioned way in the neon glare, in the freon air.
It was all intro to her and when would the play begin? The ploy, the plot, the pilot, the pillow and the pleasure were waiting in the wings and the wings couldn't melt. Ever. They shouldn't melt, dare not melt, and could always still be felt. Clipped and growing back. And right on the back where they belonged.
So the wind told her to. Last night out by the river dock with the sunset glorious was the invite she was looking for.
"Christ if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again!"
And lest this get all too documentarian on us all, all yearnings and all ambivalences present and accounted for... a course wanted to present itself from some navel base, some inner eye, some third base, some invisibility with ability to launch new life.
Age a day. A page a day. Cut it paste it. Enlarge upon this and and warp it or wrap it around whatever fingers you can have in the pie.
Afraid the phone would ring and take her away. Some message unwelcome and unwanted insisting itself or politely supplicating attention..................
………….When the elevator collapsed and stopped traffic, stopped time, stopped heartbeats, it was too close to home. All the towering egos of the architects, construction moguls, the city planners, the mogul mayor, the bribers, bidders, unions, and bosses were forced to reconsider how to cover their asses on this one. Like heart disease, with so-so many clogged arteries, the buildings jammed and rammed the city, higher and denser, the ground smothered with concrete squeezing in more towers, more “luxury” complexes, compactor homes and apartments breeding psyche complexes and bad complexions. Where once the air blew light...
Looking for a where-to, a where to go now where wisdom reigns.
"The small rain down can rain."
Looking for a when. A when to go now where the soul breathes free.
Living to tell about it. That's all it's about and worth – for what it's worth if you can get something from it, it's worth it to you.
Who was it I saw stuck her ass in anybody's face on 8th Avenue in the heat of July round midnight in no kinda jazz ballad way but some hardcorenoiserapbitchwomanbadassIwannabe… angittin'PAIDforittoo way?
Buttugly stretchmarks in the signothetimessquare tripleXXXtheater of the absurdly sad&lonely losers gittin' it ON an gittin' it OFF.
the faces in the nightlight – the glare/the snare/the game/the lame
three faces in the nightlight – the bare/the dare/the fame/the shame
three faces in the nightlight – the dress/no caress
paces in the nightlight – the heels/the steals
places in the nightlight – the purse/the hearse
faces in the nightlife – the stain/the blame
On the avenue where the Great White Way got a way… has their way… gets away… with it all… the ancillary theaters of fantasy constructions/destructions can feed upon the unknowing and the unsure, the disposable and the dispossessed.
Obstructed by buildings — no sky - no horizon, too many money eating machines & soul draining schemes.
Windows on the world…putting up the blinds helped seal the cocoon here but it was time to move the cocoon or move out of the cocoon and fly blind or map a course.
Saw her wrapped in something, sitting on a chair in an empty room in front of a fireplace maybe with a bare mantle & thought of a simple pencil drawing I made some 25 years ago. Woman's head with antlers growing out of her. Now those antlers were more elaborate, with more points and some kind of wire or strings propping them or strung from point to point. She seemed to be tied to that chair, isolated or abandoned with fibers or twigs wrapped around her. Thoughts of Liberty's spikes, her headdress ...
Is there a tree growing out of this head of mine with a net over the branches to keep the birds away from eating the fruit? Like the nets I had just helped my father put around the fig trees to keep the sparrows from pecking away at the ripe ones?
LATER
Saw it was time to see what doors were still open… doors that might still be worth going thru... to see if what I wanted was still there for me or if it had moved away from me or if it was maybe but a counterfeit or a bad fit or a knock off or a knock up or maybe a knock out.
Trusting eyes, trusting ears, trusting nose, trusting touch, trusting taste and trusting that sixth sense that never was wrong but too-often got overruled by disbelief … trusting that and mounting it on the wall – to sip brandy by – to light candles by. I forged ahead.
A day in a bathrobe - palest pink and chenille, despising the buildings going up that are falling down… that defy logic… that spit in the eye of the beholder… that defy beauty.
Seeing that trajectory of the cracking, crumbling, the tumbling of the bumbling architects of the crossroads of the world.
Jesus preachers mouse amped
Magdalenes stiletto vamped
went down to the crossroads & made a pact with the devil
made a pack with the devil
a 666 pack of steely concrete
to make that easy money off goofy, gooey, chewy and spewy
"I went to the crossroad
fell down on my knees...."
Remembrances of things past, things forgotten, things unsaid, faux pas, faux finishes, of false starts, true blues night sung after a gray day of making other people rich, tending another’s garden/too tired to plant your own.
"I went to the crossroad
fell down on my knees.
Asked the Lord above "Have mercy!
Save poor Bob, if you please?"
O Robert and his johnson left an indelible mark.
And Mark left a mark on John who became a marked man.
And the Johns – all of them I suspect, always left something. Left somethin’ & took somethin' too.
Who knew to lead, who knew only to follow who, and who couldn't move – outta wherever when they ran out of energy or will or money or ideas or friends.
Who could name names of each snide remark, each undermining smirk, every hand withheld that led to pain in a life that shaped it into what it became.
The unsung strangers of destiny stand quiet behind curtains, dedicated as the Crossing Guards crossing themselves with the Papal Swiss Guards…the Queens Guards preening themselves.
When time the crocus flowers up in the parking, sunny, waiting day with horses in the camera lens showing up in the 6 o'clock news in tune with all the waiting, reedy, ready-eyed girls spilling sugar in their tea leaves, adding honey to their brows, browsing funny in their jeans all savory in their saffron rice with the whistling Joes in their strolling toes, sandaled and horseshoeing to the tune of...
o what a… o what a… o what a …o what a… now this is
o what a… o what a… o what a now… yes…happy peace this is… easy eyes yes this is fine
Now that’s a good day!
And lived to tell about it.
When she surrendered and decided to trust herself…really trust herself…all the fortune in her life changed.
Had her radar been on or not? Who has the pitch pipe? Will A always equal 440? Keepin’ it all open & ready. Even when the eyes tire the ears are workin'. And ya want to retire to a soft bed and feathers or feather yer cap it’s all right now…Go on…go on…go on…