Times Square Swagger

good look for the strip. Wicked danger available at a price. That is not an actor. He has answers to the needs johns can answer by themselves.

Impasse a la Hormuz

Weeks into the spread of the Eternal War to Iran and Lebanon by the Twins of Terror, the USA and Zion the price of fuel around the world has risen without any cessation, as billionaires, greed, and the financial market have forsaken all reason in order to steal trillions from the billions of underclass citizens of the world. Most recently Trump held phone conversations with a Truth Social AI Iran to claim a truce might be possible with the terrorist nation.

Those in charge of the Islamic Republic have claimed that no such talks had been initiated, as Israel targets anyone suspect of having any say in the matter. Someone rejected 47's 15-pont peace plan and their drones continue to strikeZion-USA-OPEC targets across the Levant. But not Saudi Arabia, America and Zion's other partner in the Menage-A-Trois of Lebensraum 2026. F35s are useless in this war, except to bomb civilians. Trump has called for Iran to open the Straits of Hormuz. First in five days and now in ten days__

Why?

Because our overseas arsenals are empty. The attacks from the US Navy has emptied the missile and jet fuel stocks across America's strategic bases in Europe, the Middle East, and the the Indian Ocean, if not also the Pacific and America. These current pauses in the senseless bombing of Iran are even more senseless in the sense that there is no intelligence to these attacks, since upon reoccupying the Oval Office Trump has eliminated the top ranks of the Pentagon just like Stalin had purged the officer corp of the USSR in the years before the Nazi's Operation Barbarosa. 47 replaced Joint Chiefs with gungho warriors and patriotic sychopants dedicated to the Chiristian crusade against Islam.

Peter Hesgeth.

I worked at the door in nightclubs around the world. We never let in his kind. Nazi racists who spat, "I can buy you."

"You can't even rent me."

And he on his knees to Jesus praying from the Second Coming of Christ.

Madmen in charge of an antiquated global military power.

Solutions - don't pay your taxes, stop using credit cards, stop paying your debt, be kind to people, stop walking in the streets with all your senses chained to the Meta-verse, stop buying the manna of the people, potato chips, and addictive sodas and favored waters. Recognize your chains. They don't belong to you and you don't belong to them.

Meanwhile at the very north of Oman on the Impasse de Hormuz the small fishing village of Kumzar lays safe so far from the conflict protected by steep cliffs and a narrow harbor. Probably not for long as the cocaine Trump has given control of the US military apparatus to a coke fiend ie Peter Hesgeth. How do I know he and Trump are coke fiends? Because I know, because I know.

Salaam Kumzar it has its own language.

To know more about the frontline to be please go to https://www.razanalzayani.co/home/kumzar

Emily D and Snow a poem

The storm's snow sweepd through the bare branches
Of the trees shivering outside my window
Wind-blown white flurries
A threat to blight out the shades of gray, brown, black
Not colors
Somber shades of winter in New England__
Swarms of snowflakes
Swirling
Before my window
My hand on the cold glass
My palm cold
The touch of winter___
In a room
Warmed by a wood fire
I press my lips to the glass
Not your kiss
The cold kiss of winter
With the warmth of summer
Months away__

The Rebbi of Bangkok 1999

In 1999 I sold a 5-carat diamond on 47th Street and moved the Thailand with enough money to start a small business. I had visited Bangkok often on yearly around-the-world trips during the slow season in the Diamond District. A religious diamond dealer gave me the telephone number of his uncle, the city's Hassidic Rebbi.

Upon arrival in Bangkok I called the Rebbi. He invited me to his schul. We met at the a little kosher diner near the Beth Elisheva synagogue, which was strangely located in Klong Toey slum on the Chao Phraya River. A kindly old man. After an introuction he asked, "So what are you here for?"

"I was thinking about going into the colored stone business. Sapphires. Rubies. I have connections in New York and Europe. Can you recommend any dealers."

"No, they are all thieves."

I thanked him for this advice and entered into the schmatztah trade selling F1 counterfeit copies on the internet. Criminal. But the Thais were all honest.

ps in 2009 I sold a 5-carat unheated Burma Ruby to a woman from Detroit. One of the msot beautiful stones I have ever seen in my many years as a gem dealer.

As for the counterfeit F1 business. That is another story entirely.

I GRANT YOU REFUGE Hiba Abu Nada (trans. Huda Fakhreddine)

I grant you refuge
in invocation and prayer.
I bless the neighborhood and the minaret
to guard them
from the rocket
from the moment
it is a general’s command
until it becomes
a raid.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones who change the rocket’s course before it lands with their smiles. 2. I grant you and the little ones refuge, the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest. They don’t walk in their sleep toward dreams. They know death lurks outside the house. Their mothers’ tears are now doves following them, trailing behind every coffin. 3. I grant the father refuge, the little ones’ father who holds the house upright when it tilts after the bombs. He implores the moment of death: “Have mercy. Spare me a little while. For their sake, I’ve learned to love my life. Grant them a death as beautiful as they are.” 4. I grant you refuge from hurt and death, refuge in the glory of our siege, here in the belly of the whale. Our streets exalt God with every bomb. They pray for the mosques and the houses. And every time the bombing begins in the North, our supplications rise in the South. 5. I grant you refuge from hurt and suffering. With words of sacred scripture I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous and the shades of cloud from the smog. I grant you refuge in knowing that the dust will clear, and they who fell in love and died together will one day laugh. Hiba Abu Nada is a novelist, poet, and educator. Her novel Oxygen is Not for the Dead won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in 2017. She wrote this poem on Oct. 10th, 2023. She died a martyr, killed in her home in south Gaza by an Israeli raid on Oct. 20th, 2023. She was 32 years old. Huda Fakhreddine is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer, a translator, and the author of several scholarly books. https://proteanmag.com/2023/11/03/i-grant-you-refuge/

Spring 2010 - BET ON CRAZY NYC

JoJo, the security guard at the diamond exchange, was a betting man. He gambled the left-overs from his monthly NYPD pension on baseball, basketball, and football. His losses outweighed his wins. JoJo also wagered on odd parlays and on March 1st in 2010 I said that there wouldn't be another snowstorm. Two days ago the city had been buried by a blizzard. It was raining outside on West 47th Street.

A hard rain.

The sleety wind peeled ferules from cheap umbrellas like bananas. The piles of snow were slush in the gutter.

"It ain't gonna snow." The big Pole/Mick was a native of the Bronx. The weather was colder up in that northern borough than Manhattan and the retired cop was certain of his prediction.

"I say that we get one more dusting." I was counting on 'global weirding'. The last decade had seen three snows in April, TS Eliot' 'cruelest month of all. March offered an even better chance for a blizzard.

"Dusting is bullshit. It snowed a little last year." JoJo was a knowledgeable gambler.

"Okay, 2 to 1 odds that New York gets another four inches of snow before the end of April."

"In Central Park." JoJo was fixing the wager. Manhattan is 5 degrees warmer than the outer boroughs thanks to a micro-climate created by concrete, steel, and carbon emissions along with the body temperatures of fat people. JoJo had lost fifteen pounds in the last month by ending a BId Lite drinking binge.

"Okay." I had a good hunch. Cops like hunches too. His was a sure thing. Mine was more a feeling and I started singing the Arrowsmith hit MORE THAN A FEELING.

"Hey, no fair." JoJo was a rock fan. Red Sox too. "Keep that Boston stuff out of the bet. This is New York."

We grasped hands. A bet was a bet. JoJo went downstairs to the vault. It was lunch time. Manny my boss shook his head.

"What?"

"That was a stupid bet." Manny had lost every wager on the Superbowl since 1967 or so he told his son, Richie Boy, who always bet the toher way. We all did. Manny was an expert at stupid bets.

"It's only ten dollars. Plus you never know."

Like the lottery you can't win unless you play.

"No way it'll snow in the next two months." Manny returned to his paperwork. A purgatory of bills and invoices. I pulled out the job box. Not a single envelope was from my sales. Money was tight same as last year. There was no recovery for the middle-class from the 2008 bank collapse, although Manny's son was selling fast and furious to his rich friends. Their sins had been forgiven by the Fed buy forcing the peopple to pay off their losses.

March passed with the temperature rising every day. On March 14 the thermometer hit 70. I studied the meteorological map of the USA. Snow in the Rockies. Canada nothing. The Red River was cresting with ice floes in the Dakotas. The trees in Fort Greene Park showed red buds on the equinox. The planet was on an even keel. I wore shorts. This weather is no good.

"Looks like I've lose my bet," I said at the breakfast table to AP, my landlord.

"It was a stupid bet." He had won a bet on St. Patrick's Day for when our party of four would see a green plastic hat. $5 from each of his three friends. Another $5 for one plastic har worn by a female.

"It might snow in April." His wife was from San Diego. Coronado Beach had never experienced a snowfall.

"Thanks for the optimism." Snow crowned the thrones of the mountains east of San Diego. I was positive too. Ten more days of March and another 30 in April. The odds are heavily in JoJo's favor, then again he had bet that the Red Sox would sweep the Yankees in 2004. $100. He was right the first three games of the playoffs and dead wrong the last four games. That was a bet I loved seeing him lose. The Curse of the Bambino no more in 2004. My snow bet was a goof, but neither of us were welshers and $10 will buy three beers in the East Village bar on May 1.

They will taste good.

Win or lose.

Spring Equinox 2021

This year was a so-so winter.

Snow came late in March and bitter cold was a rare visitor to the City That Never Sleeps.

On several occasions I exited from the 387 Commune in my ski gear, which was good for -20 Fahrenheit.

Today the thermometer hit 60 and I celebrated the Spring Equinox by packing away my parkas, fleeces, gloves, scarves, sweaters et al.

Flowers should blossom in Fort Greene; magnolias and tulips.

This day was as long as the night.

The equinox or Alban Eiler in Celtic commemorates the equality between night and day and my tribe regards the 'Light of the Earth' with great veneration, since the feast signaled the time to sow crops with the sun high over the equator.

I honored Alban Eiler with sobriety, having drank more than my share of beer and whiskey on St. Padraic's Day.

It will be good to be warm again.