Wearing contact lenses makes people nicer to me but not if I sleep in them. They don't like that squint. I think that's why they kicked me out of a coffee shop today.
On the Church Ave. bound G train a dude gets on at Greenpt wearing a Patrick Ewing jersey for the Knicks game tonight against the Celtics.
I'm trying to love Deep Cuts by The Knife the way I used to but my headphones are broken now and the slightest movement mutes the left earphone so I'm unnaturally still.
A lady gets on at Nassau wearing sunglasses. The Patrick Ewing guy starts talking to her but I can't hear the conversation. Then he starts taking her picture with his iPhone, searching for better angles he sits next to me. Then he leans against the handrail. Then he sits next to her and they shake hands.
Trying to listen to music on broken headphones can make a person go crazy. They are worth replacing
Magic bird
all winter long
i watched a pair of
bordeaux jordan 7s
hanging from the telephone wires
in the sky near near the school
by my apartment
it was cold out there
at times the shoes
were caked in snow
they are still there now
i can't imagine
what they would feel like
to put on
Non-linear bannister
my apartment complex
, which has been
flexing its way through winter
like a wind-blown squirrel
obsessing over a wet rock
, released it's tension
and with it
the residential pheromone
of humidity and bare arms
, it rises triumphantly from the carpet
, peels itself from the walls
creaking into my nostrils
like sleeping beauty's
discarded fart-filled blankets
Altered perceptions
The parents aren't accustomed to public transit. They take seats opposite their daughter and the father says, "I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time with Trevor honey, do you think we disappointed him?" in a voice from a sub-urban living room.
The girl, in her all black canvas shoes, brown leather jacket, mini-skirt and leggings, looks out of place addressing her parents on this train. She would normally be pouting into a novel her roommate recommended, or else plugged into her iPod with hands folded on her lap. She hasn't been living in New York very long.
"No" She replies, "You guys did good. I mean, he's not really looking for any reaction in particular. He's done it to me too. There's no wrong response."
Her mother, a squat woman with a concerned intelligent face leans forward towards her daughter, "Where are we going right now?"
"6th avenue."
"Pardon?"
"About eleven stops. About eleven stops from here."
"Ahh!" The mother leans back contentedly. Like her husband, she never looks around. They glance at the advertisements but their child is the only person on this train.
The girl addresses her father again, "What he's trying to do is create an out of body experience." Her father considers this. "He was trying to make you feel like you were mom and she was you, or like you were both the same person."
He rubs his chin, "Right."
"Did you experience that?"
The dad thinks about the question a little bit, his tone is never cynical. "No..."
He returns the question to his daughter.
"I did... I mean it isn't a completely altered perception and everyone experiences it differently. Like when he had you holding the camera so that it looks like your body is attached to mom's head."
"Right."
"Where is it that we're heading?" Asks the mother again.
"6th Avenue."
"Pardon?"
"6th Avenue, the museum is on 6th Avenue."
"Ahh!"
The girl glances around the car. Her father is waiting for her to continue talking but she doesn't. She is aware of all the faces watching her. They are hurtling under the East River and the train is full of other people in their twenties, all of them completely absorbed in the dynamic of her family, the sub-urban American nakedness of their dialogue.
She makes eye contact with a bearded guy holding a backpack that says Get Lost in his lap. He has decided he hates her simple minded parents. A girl with orange hair is staring at her, trying to guess which museum they are heading to. A guy reading The Pale King is trying to reach an opinion about the far-out boyfriend character - is he corny or brilliant? Could she do better? Would he sleep with her? Would she sleep with him?
Everybody remains completely silent for the rest of the ride. Her parents staring contemplatively at each Delta Airlines advertisement. One, after another, after another.
April Fools #5
Two Very Different Stories About Animals, Plastic Bags, and a Lack of Public Garbage Cans:
I. Intentional Placement
Coming back from Pathmark last year I discovered a dead cat near my house. It had obviously been hit by a car. I'd been the guy-who-scoops-up-dead-cats-in-the-neighborhood before and it's a role I probably took a little pride in. I love cats and I'm not squeamish. Removing their corpses from the afternoon sun dignifies them and it keeps kids from being traumatized. Everybody wins. The complication being that in this particular house I had no access to the garbage bins, only my landlord did - and she frightened me.
So I dropped off my groceries and returned to the sidewalk. I brought two plastic bags but it was impossible to shuffle the creature into them; rigor mortis had stiffened the cat and its guts threatened to flop out. Instead I used the bags like gloves, carrying the cat like one might carry a tray of orange juice and breakfast bagels. 4th ave would've been closer but I went down towards 3rd. The streets were less crowded that way. When I reached the intersection I discovered no public garbage cans on any corner - probably because it's a deserted area.
Not to be defeated, I walked south another block, and another... six blocks. No dumpsters, no public garbage cans, no place to drop an empty Pepsi bottle, a bag of Doritos, or an anonymous dead cat. I was far away from home and my hopes were dwindling. The cat was dripping blood and it's eye was falling out. The sun was high and hot. I tried to stay on the opposite sidewalk from pedestrians.
I passed a construction site and asked if I could put the dead feline in their dumpsters- they said no. A guy stopped me as I was turning to leave saying it would be OK, then his boss reiterated it wasn't OK. Maybe his boss thought I killed the cat. I must have looked a little suspicious, and I'm sure it's a liability to have dead cats in the company dumpster among all the fiber glass and planks of wood. I took the cat further still to 2nd ave, walked north up to 9th St. No garbage cans.
Two Hasidic Jews were leaving a building and in desperation I asked if they knew where I could discard of the cat. They suggested I put the cat in one of the dozen or so garbage trucks lined up outside Lowe's so I walked over there but all those garbage trucks were locked up, nobody around. No way to put garbage in them. Each truck had DON'T LITTER painted on their sides in red. No, we mustn't litter.
I remembered something Big Gimme Jimmy taught be back in college. He practiced a kind of post-modern living exercise called Intentional Placement; a process of leaving something - usually a piece of garbage - in a precise location on the ground. It is not littering, (which is careless and habit forming). Instead, Intentional Placement is a form of artistic expression. I'd seen Big Gimme Intentionally Place orange peels, cigarette butts, soda bottles... so surely it could be done with a dead body.
I left that cat tucked under the shade of a young tree on 7th street and 2nd ave; sprawled out and rigid on its bed of plastic bags. There was nothing to say. This was by no means a final resting place but it was an improvement. Things continued to be alive all around the cat. I could live with that. I went home and unpacked my groceries.
II. Intentional Placement 2
dog sitting for new clients
in jackson heights
i did not realize
there were no garbage cans
on the street corners
around the building
where the dogs live
eventually the dogs were eager
to go back inside, it was raining
so i carried the poop bag inside with us
clutched in a plastic grip
in a crowded elevator
sighing,
"which floor?"
"thanks"
ready with a line
"i'm taking it to the vet
have it tested for worms."
but of course nobody asks
(
can't leave dogshit in the kitchen garbage
flushing it down the toilet
seems like something an insane person would do
and what of the bags if i did?
)
returned alone to the streets
five more blocks in the rain
and no garbage cans
finally dropped it in some residential can
outside a nice house with a patio
some guy leaps out of his car
, multicultural brown
like a jackson height's stereotype:
"that's not your garbage can!"
but i continue
walking fast against the rain
not missing a step
"Hey! Guy!" he tries me again
let him chase me down
you'd have to be a brave motherfucker indeed
to confront a stranger
sopping wet without an umbrella
, not walking any dogs ,
who drops a bag of excrement
in your stupid garbage can
and this is why i make the big bucks
April Fools #4
Primal Spirits
It was my fourth and final week in Costa Rica.
I was 12 years old and there with my best friend's family.
More on my own than I'd ever been.
Iguanas resting on rocks, bats crowding the trees, crabs parting along the shore and I was Moses parting the red sea with a stray dog lingering behind
swimming pools, monkeys, Chicklets for sale everywhere for a few colones, terrible sunburns, ginger ale,
the magic was dense, we moved around a lot
One night I watched a dancing woman turn into a spider right before my eyes.
We ate crab right from the shell -
They seemed to always be dancing
Another time Dino, a five year old blonde kid, fell from the top tier hot tub and cracked his head on the cement below, pool level. Matt and I were the oldest ones there. Matt scooped up Dino, covered in blood, and carried him back to the adults while I watched over his older brother, Max - a seven year old. I can't remember how, but a massive loogie is a part of that story. A lot happened in Costa Rica.
It was my fourth and final week in Costa Rica, like I said,
there was a woman at our table
she was the center of conversation
a very old witch
and we were very lucky to be friends of her friends.
She addressed Matt, his little brother (Joshua), and I
One after another she guessed our astrological signs
She got all three correct
Smiling at us with her strange primal genius
She told us our birthdays
Precisely to the day
And again we nodded with frightened humility
the adults were laughing
they always laughed in Costa Rica
, they laughed while white water rafting
, they laughed among the hornets
and all throughout the rainforest, they
laughed while spiders clacked about
trapped in aluminum pots
in her heavily decorated, wrinkly hands
below the table and in her ancient lap
the old witch held our passports
April Fools #3
Treasure
Chad and I found a small plastic bag from Hot Topic one day. It had cotton draw-strings and the plastic was durable, of the highest quality; black, with pink lettering. It had suburban glamor. It was the kind of bag that could potentially contain a Slipknot beanie - or maybe a Nightmare Before Christmas action figure...
I can't remember where that bag came from but it wound up with us. Gemma had recently moved in with us, she was Chad's first cat, a domestic long hair with chronic diarrhea. She was probably 7 or 8 months old at the time and she would eat grass constantly, which would upset her stomach. She also ate kibble non-stop and was kind of a lard ass.
I had just returned home from an early afternoon class and Chad was not due in at CostCo for a couple hours, so we had some time to kill. Over an episode of Family Guy we decided what was to be done. We filled the Hot Topic bag with Gemma's miserable feces and threw it into the alley way behind our house. Then we ran up to my bedroom and waited for some Rancho Cotati high schoolers to stumble upon in on their way home.
One kid found the bag and excitedly grabbed it, realized it had something in it, and fought his friends off as they tried to take it from him. He loosened the drawstrings, peeked in at Gemma's feces, and exclaimed, "It's shit!" then flung the bag at his friend. Another kid picked it up, confirmed it was shit, and threw it at someone else. The four or five of them ran away from the scene with such urgency you could almost think they knew we were somewhere watching.
April Fools #2
the day hip chris died
too early tuesday
happens all the time
i spring from bed
faster than the hot water heats up
in the shower
and i'm employed
answering the company phone for money
it rings almost all the time
so when my pocket rang
at 11am
it was strange
not to be a third party
It was Mayla texting from California
"Have you been on facebook this morning?"
which made it 8am her time
"No?"
Then she called and started crying
Or sobbing really hard
and told me Chris had taken some bad speed and overdosed
Chris had partied himself to death
Last night / this morning
I got choked up next to Jean, my co-worker
who now had to answer twice as many phones
I'd seen Chris last wednesday
he drummed the shit out of some show
but now he was dead
I went outside and Mayla told me what she knew
His friends, some Tom's River derelicts,
found him on the floor that morning
I called a bunch of people who loved Chris
because they deserved to know
walking in circles
there were tears on my face
on streets where i'd always been normal
It was february but I didn't wear a coat
Everyone consoled,
was shocked and heartbroken
And it made sense
Jean asked me if i wanted to go home
the soft XM sixties radio resurfaced
and i replied with breath
that just floated in my throat
as i got another text
Mayla:
Just found out
it was just a sick joke
, I'm so sorry
April Fools #1
courting a 1pm nap
in two pairs of pants
and three shirts
phone vibrates on the end table
which is not mine
reminding me none of this is mine
no matter what
my phone might tell me
the caller is nowhere
we are both nowhere
near nowhere
home
cast off blanket
and big eyed dog on floor
both tell me so
Somewhere just south of Canada
After several hours on the road we pulled off for gas and to pick up snacks from a Stop N' Shop. I slowly hoisted myself from the seat and stretched my stiff, weary legs. The composed February evergreens indicated we were closing in on the border and the air washed my city lungs like spring water. Looking up, the endless gray sky was as vast and sprawled out as the upstate highways we'd been driving on - but the hum of the road was finally hushed. The still silence of country life resounded in the gravel underneath our shoes.
Vanessa made friends with the overweight teenager working the register. He was frustrated on account of Neil, his co-worker, who should have been at work an hour ago. Nobody knew where Neil was and I never would have known Neil was even missing if Vanessa hadn't told me so. The teenager wore his frustration gracefully, like an old coonhound with a full bladder and nobody to let him outside.
Next door to the gas station in the otherwise-nothingness sat an old gray shack; creaky and crumbly, plopped upon itself like a precarious pile of books. In the driveway were several cars, each one a stoic meditation of cold metal in varying extremities of stillness. They could have been the exposed roots of whatever kept that shack from simply blowing away. The four of us followed our curiosity up the hill and towards the entrance.
Inside was a wall to wall junk sale - books, records, artwork. A man waived us in from a table in the middle of the room, "Come on in folks, have a look around!" his unkempt curly hair was graying but the passage of time was too busy everywhere else to make him old. In fact, his mustache was still tobacco brown and there was a trace of mischief in his eyes. He looked like the third Mario brother and this decaying shack housed his accumulated inventory of frog suits, warp whistles, and p-wings. With him was a woman who barely acknowledged us, transfixed on the game of backgammon she was losing.
The entire shack had the old book smell so dense and full that the act of looking actually felt like reading. There was no place to direct your eyes that wouldn't beg some question. No blank space, no vast horizons. We wandered the labyrinth-like narrows, dwarfed by stacks of tackle boxes, empty photo frames, baseball autobiographies, and Donald Duck inner-tubes. There was nothing to be sought after but everything to find. The man watched me fingering through a stack of paintings, "Oh, you like art! My son did those paintings."
Vibrant wood-wrapped canvases mostly comprised of large deliberate dots of acrylic primary colors, plopped in incredible patterns to create landscapes, chairs and faces. I said, "These are great." I would have bought one but any one of them would have dominated my bedroom with manic authority, I'd have had to pay it rent. Besides that, the possibility of discovering the price on his son's artwork was more than I'd be willing to pay was an awkwardness I couldn't chance. These paintings were perfectly at home in the shack, so there they'd stay.
"We're drinking beer tonight." the man excitedly blurted, as if we couldn't see the box of LeBatt Blue sitting plainly in the chair next to him. Dragon told him we on our way to Montreal from the city. "Which city?" he asked.
I didn't want to spend a lot of money but I needed a souviner so I settled on a Vest Pocket Dictionary that looked like it was from the 1930's. "I'd like to buy this" I said. "Oh, that? You can just have that."
Phil bought a few records including a handsome Leon Redbone album. As he paid for them I looked at the half empty twelve-pack sitting in the chair next to the man and across from the woman. In that moment, and there's no way to explain how I knew it, I was certain that those were not regular beers. Those beers were his son the artist, transformed perhaps by some immortal backwoods wizard, and there with us occupying his space in the middle of nowhere..