Seagulls Adrift - Staten Island Ferry

Sea gulls drafting behind the Staten Island Out of St. George Manhattan bound The Samuel L Newhouse An old ferry from 1982 Big enough for over 5000 passengers Paint flaking from overhead Top speed 16 knots Churning up the harbor Sea gulls Diving into the wake To feast on the propellers' chum Not the Atlantic Ah, the harbor The inner harbor of the great city of New York___ >Nothing like the Staten Island Ferry connecting St. George to Battery Park. Free still despite the billionaires__

The Cliffs of Moher - 2012

Last Tuesday I boarded a plane at JFK for Orlando, Florida. My two travel companions, AP and his financier Jerry Mumbels, were attending a builders' convention. I was just along for the ride. My seat had been reserved as an after-thought and I was seated by the window in the rear of the plane. The man next to me was about my age. We nodded a weary hello. This flight had been held for a half-hour for late UK arrivals.

"Where you coming from?"

"Ireland," he explained how it was cheaper to fly from Dublin to London to JFK than Shannon-JFK direct. "If my wife had been with me, then I would have taken the Shannon flight. Women don't like connections."

"I flew from Luxembourg via Paris to JFK. The Heathrow-JFK leg of the flight was $300 more than my roundtrip ticket." I had been planning on flying one-way from Dusseldorf, until Jerry Mumbels offered to purchase my ticket. Sometimes the wealthy have good hearts.

"Are you retired in Ireland?" I'm one of the few men my age and class needing to work.

"No, I'm working at a help center in Cork." He shook his head. "I thought it was going to be an easy job, but we've been dealing with a nasty spate of suicides."

"I read the same in the Guardian." The collapse of the Irish economy had driven a nail of despair into the heart of the nation. "Mostly young men."

"Between 16 and 40. We get about twenty calls a day and at least ten suicides a week in Cork and the government refuses to publish the real figures. They are predicting a thousand for this year. A 50% increase over the previous year, but the figures from my office and those around the country paint a much more dire picture."

"Because they have no hope." Ireland had been on a credit binge. The national debt had led the government to cut aid to all sectors of society, except the banks.

"None at all. Many of the boys I speak with haven't ever had a job and there is no light on the horizon. Russia, Greece, and Spain are suffering similar spikes in suicide and all I hear from the government is more cuts and more cuts."

"Damn." I had been living in the West of Ireland. The oldest son inherits the farm and the rest of the boys hit the road to Galway or other cities in Ireland or beyond. That safety valve is gone. "I wish you luck over there."

"We need luck and not the luck of the Irish."

We bade good-bye at the airport in Orlando. The fat Americans seemed untouched by the economic crisis strangling the world economy. Maybe they were better at putting on a brave face. I didn't mention my conversation to AP and Jerry Mumbels. They had their own problems, but once I got to the hotel I went on line to check on the facts as presented by the Irish press.

irishcentral.com reported that a suicide prevention group had 'received over 33,000 pleas for help in the past 12 months as the suicide rate rises dramatically.' and that 'police are watching known suicide spots like the quays in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.'

'Corkman Pat Buckley, founder of the charity Let’s Get Together, told the Independent, "The problem with the suicide statistics is that they take about two years to compile and even then they are relatively inaccurate and under-report the true scale of the problem. The problem is now so serious it is terrifying. We’ve battled to raise $7,000 in funds and it was spent on counselling in just a few weeks over November and December.”

Minister of State for Health Kathleen Lynch revealed in the Dáil, “The increase is mainly in men in the middle-age group, however, we are also seeing a rise in the number of women dying by suicide, although the numbers are still significantly lower than in men."

The State recognizes the seriousness of the problem.

The IMF and banks do not care about these people.

They think that they are weak links in the mesh of society.

Until they too find themselves on the Cliffs of Mohar.

The drop tells the truth.

Connemara Whispers

My mother's last wish on a bed at Mass General was to go to Ireland.

"You've roamed the workd and never gone to your native land. I want you to go out there after im done and meet a woman like your sisters, cousins, or aunts."

And like that I was obliged to heed my mother's wish, even though its incestuous nature scared the bejus from my marrow. After her passing in 1997 an English arranged an autumn rental of a cottage west of Galway from Lord Robert Guinness. A night in Dublin with my landlord at the Shelburne. In the morning a train ride to Galway. A night of drink. Next dawn a bus the Cliften and a taxi to a cow town between the Seven Pins of tge the Atlantic Ocean. A small town. Not a woman in Ballyconeeley. Just cows and sheep roaming the boglands, so I drank Guinness at Keough's with a handful of sad cow farmers and my good friend Ty Spaulding. In the haunted schoolhouse wandering the bogs accompanied by the whispers of Europe washed into the Atlantic by a westerly wind. Aah, true Ireland, that.

May Day Freedom From Chains 2011

May Day 2011 and I was sitting in a Tokyo Airport bound for Bangkok. A two week unpaid holiday, since Manny decided to stiff my vacation pay. The eighty- three year-old diamond dealer said, “I gave one week off in January.”

“You gave me butkis then.” I had been a math major in college and still had a very good head for numbers.

“I remember one week.”

“Because you want to remember one week. You’re wrong, but then bosses are never wrong these days.” Manny was an old curmudgeon, but I had counted on him for a job since 1989.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you fire two employees and had me work harder without giving me a raise.”

"You're lucky you have a job."

He was right in some ways, only because everyone around the world was a wage slave grinding out a subsistent living.

Years ago unions protected the workers. The bosses fought the forty-hour week, the end to child labor, and other workers’s rights as was to expected from the filthy rich, since they represent the haves, who don’t want to spit to the have-nots. I hung up saying to Manny, "See you when you get back." then muttered,

"Fuck the rich."

I have belonged to three unions; IBEW for the telephone company, IBT driving taxi in Boston, and the union of drifters. I believe in the power of labor and every May 1 workers of the world march in many countries.

Originally the day was a pagan holiday for the first day of spring, although in a different month than the present Julian calendar. Peasants adherents to the old religions danced around the Maypole. The Catholic Church suppressed the practice by naming May the month of Mary, the Blessed Virgin.

As a child at parochial school the nuns paraded us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys had white jackets and slacks. Parents would take snapshots of their angelic children.

Years later we abandoned this pious procession to march in the May Day protests against the Cambodian Bombings.

1969-1970.

Washington, Kent State, Kissinger, Nixon talking to the protesters.

May Day for the Left honors seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago.

May 1 1886 was the start date for the 8-hour day. Big business wasn’t happy with this new law and workers staged a series of protests. Anarchists met in Haymarket Square. The gathering was peaceful until someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, killing one officer. In the ensuing violence more died on both sides.

Hence ‘bombing-throwing anarchist’ entered the American lexicon.

The subsequent trial of eight anarchists based the accusations on hearsay. Evidence revealing the involvement of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the bombing didn’t prevent the death sentence for seven of the accused.

Public pressure for leniency forced the governor of Illinois to commute the capital charges against two ‘conspirators’.

On the eve of the execution Louis Lingg offed himself by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth.

The remaining four, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were publicly hung, but not before they sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement.

All eight were exonerated in 1893 and May 1 became a rally day for labor throughout the world, although in the USA it is called Loyalty Day.

Thailand gives the day off to workers, 70% who have decent jobs say they are happy with their present situation. Others are less so.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs I’m taking the day off too.

Power to the people.

One more thing.

Fuck the rich.

May Day - 2014

May Day 2014 I was sitting at my desk in the Fort Greene observatory. I knew today was an important labor holiday, but I wish that I was working and traveled up to Manhattan's Diamond District to visit my longtime boss from the Diamond District.

"I wish I could give you a job, but there's no business." said the eighty-two year-old diamond dealer and he was right. No one was walking into the exchange.

"The rich have taken all the money and don't want to spend it. All they know is how to gather it." I had graduated sine laude as an economic major in college forty years ago.

"I guess you have to blame it on someone." Manny was an old curmudgeon, but I had counted on him for a job since 1989.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you worked all your life and never prepared for a moment like this." He had lived through the tailend of the Greater Recession. People my age back then had been out of work in the millions. Same as today.

"I was lucky to have a job with you these last years." I had worked for Manny as a salesman on and off since 1990. There had been some good years. None of those were recent.

"And you can't find another job."

"I only know diamonds and writing."

"And you have never made any money on your books."

"You have that right and now everyone around the world are wage slaves grinding out a subsistent living. Workers have no rights."

"And neither do I."

"It wasn't always that way. Once there was a marriage between labor and capital. Years ago unions protected the workers. Union instituted the forty-hour week, the end to child labor, and other workers’s rights, but since Reagan broke up the Air Controllers Union the GOP has been destroying every aspect of workers' rights."

"The Democrats aren't much better."

"We're on our own." I shrugged and made to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"To the 169 Bar in Chinatown. They have $2 beers."

"Have a good May Day."

I showed him the clenched fist and headed to the subway, thinking that over the years I had belonged to three unions; IBEW for the telephone company, IBT driving taxi in Boston, and the union of drifters, yet I believed in the power of labor and every May 1 the workers of the world march to show their solidarity.

Originally the day was a pagan holiday for the first day of spring, although in a different month than the present Julian calendar. Peasants adherents to the old religions danced around the Maypole. The Catholic Church suppressed the practice by naming May the month of Mary. As a child at parochial school outside Boston the nuns paraded us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys in white jackets and slacks. Parents snapped photos of their angelic children with Kodak Brownie cameras.

Years later we abandoned this pious procession to march in the May Day protests against the Cambodian Bombings.

1969-1970.

Washington, Nixon talking to the protesters, four dead at Kent State.

May Day for the Left traditionally honored the seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886.

May ,1 1886 had been the start date for the eight-hour day. Big business wasn’t happy with this new law and workers staged a series of protests. Anarchists met in Haymarket Square. The gathering had been peaceful until someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, killing one officer. In the ensuing violence more died on both sides.

Hence ‘bombing-throwing anarchist’ entered the American lexicon.

The subsequent trial of eight anarchists had been prosecuted on hearsay accusations. Evidence revealing the involvement of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the bombing hadn't prevent the death sentence for seven of the accused. Public pressure for leniency forced the governor of Illinois to commute the capital charges against two ‘conspirators’. On the eve of the execution Louis Lingg offed himself by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth.

The remaining four, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were publicly hung, but not before they sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement. All eight were exonerated in 1893 and May 1 became a rally day for labor throughout the world, although in the USA it is called Loyalty Day.

Thailand gives the day off to workers, 70% who have decent jobs say they are happy with their present situation. Others are less so.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs I’m taking the day off too.

Sadly it's not by choice.

Power to the people.

May Day 2017 Green Acres Tavern

Eight springs ago I traveled north with Kilmer on the weekend in a U-haul filled with antiques. The beautiful blonde had triple-digited on the speedometer on the Interstate. As a lifelong criminal I was uncomfortable with exceeding the speed limit and when we reached Greenwich, New York, I asked to be let out of the Ford SUV.

"I want to walk back to Middle Falls?

"Call me when you are close to home."

I got out at the Batten Kill River and she drove away burning rubber. My friend liked driving fast. I stood the curb, happy to not be moving at all. Small flowers sprouted from the grass. I walked to a railroad bridge rusted by the season of disuse and the river flowed over the old mill dam. I proceeded into the quiet town past the post office and closed stores. Main Street was in ruins and I searched for a bar. There were none.

I stopped to snap a photo of a Civil War statue. The soldier faced south. Ever vigilant against the Forces of Slavery. I strolled on the sidewalk. This side of town was better off than the mill side. Several houses had been refuges for escaped slaves fleeing to Canada. There were no blacks in Greenwich now. No Mexicans too. But the few other pedestrians looked like junkies or meth freaks. Everyone else was in a SUV or pick-up truck. At least none sported a Confederate flag.

The town's commercial section had expanded since my last visit. Tech firms were opening in nearby Saratoga. Property prices soared for old milk farms. Gleaming tractors crowded the parking lot of the farm equipment dealer and brand new trucks shone in the car lot. A lot had changed, but the Green Acres Tavern remained a faithful destination for early afternoon drinkers. I texted Malinda to meet me there and entered the bar. One man sat at the bar. The TV was on a sports channel. I ordered a Labatt Blue from the bartender. Canada was only 110 miles from Greenwich.

The other drinker at the bar was slightly younger than me. His head was razor-cut and skin tanned by outdoor work. A bearded friend entered the bar. He was younger than both of us. No hello from neither. I was the old man on a stool. Afternoon drinkers never sat at a table. They greeted each other and spoke about the Giants. Big Blue fandom reached far north from the Meadowlands. Malinda hated this bar. To her the Green Acres was filled with racists. She wasn't wrong, especially after I heard buzz-cut ask, "Why do people celebrate May Day?"

"I don't know."

"Probably commies dance around a maypole."

I could only tolerate so much ignorance and I said, "No, May Day commemorates the Haymarket Riots in Chicago. The workers struck for an eight-hour work day. The police charged the rally. A bomb exploded in the ranks. The violence as always was initiated by the police."

"Well, if the cops shot in Ferguson, there wouldn't be any marches." White people up here viewed the police as a good job.

"Don't get me wrong. I believe in the right to carry. And the right to protect yourself. Machine guns too. Especially to kill the bankers who are the real criminals supported by crooked politicians, but than then a police instigator threw the bomb at the anarchists. It blew up in their ranks. As for deporting people. I say let's get rid of the Russians. They're all ex-commies. At least the Mexicans are Americans. What will you have to drink?"

They ordered Bud Lite. It was fat fascists' beer of choice.

We changed the subject. They spoke about a seven-stooled bar on a lake.

"Sounds like paradise."

"It was."

"Was?"

"Bank bought it. Shut it down."

I raised my glass.

"Death to all bankers."

We glugged our bottles dry.

A horn beeped outside.

"It's my wife or as I call her my 'designated driver'."

We high-fived and I stepped outside into Spring.

Malinda gave me a dirty look.

Like I said Malinda hated this tavern, but I can drink with anyone as long as they're willing to listen to my bullshit. Down with the Capitalist State.

May 1, 1978 - Journal Entry

None of us at CBGBs were hippies, but some of us liked ice hockey.

Last night the New York Islanders were knocked out of the Stanley playoffs by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Tomorrow the semi-finals of the Stanley Cup begin with the Bruins versus the Flyers and the fucking Habs against the Maple Leafs.

And I'm a Red Sox fan.

The Bosox are in second place.

Enough for the sporting news.

LATER

This morning Alice lays against my body in symbiotic symmetry. I don't dare move to break the link of flesh to flesh. We are one and I want no one else.

Monogamy?

Is that what my friend Andy found in Theresse?

When Alice woke, I hid my feelings, but had to say, "I don't want you to leave."

It sounds soapy, but my alienation has cast me far from humanity. Alice comforts my madnesses, although it's impossible to dispel them for more than a few hours. Alice looks at me and says, "I don't have to leave yet. It's Daylight Savings Time. We still have an hour."

"So winter is over?"

"Yes, and the days will get longer."

"Shit." I liked long night as much as I hated long days.

"Shit, yes, but I'm a zombie too."

"But you have aspirations for a better life."

"And so do you." Her hand touched my chest and waited for me to say something, but words stuck in my throat and she said, "Everyone is capable of greatness."

"Even me?"

"Yes, even you."

And by saying that Alice joined my mother, Sister Mary Osmond, my 5th Grade teacher, who awarded me honors, and my high school German instructor, Bruder Karl, who fairly failed me, "Schmidt, you have not prepared for your lesson und du sprechst Deustche wie ein aschloch."

Asshole.

Bruder Karl chain-smoked in class. His Bavarian-accented voice sounded like a train dragged across rocks, but I heard the kindness in his words, despite my classic under-achievement in Hoch Schule.

Others saw my worth.

Chris Jansen, an MIT genius, had hired me to work at a chemical plant in Salem. The fat woman had wanted to sleep with me. Her husband had given the green light.

But I preferred to risk it all with Therese's sixteen year-old sister, Hilde. The kids I taught at South Boston High School loved me. I hated the racism of the Selma of the North.

Diana Graham saw something in me.

I think they are all blind.

I used all of them to subsist without working.

Survival.

But not as an enemy. I only want to do good one day, even if that day is like Andy says, "You'll make it after you're dead, like Van Gogh."

More a curse than a blessing.

How I lead my life doesn't permit any retreat.

Anti-star.

Failure is easier to achieve than fame, but Alice said, "You should become a movie star."

"How?"

"By being you. Your friend Willem will be one. Is he better looking than you?"

"Maybe."

"Don't you want to be famous?"

"No, I don't want life sucked from me to become a big person on a silver screen."

"I had a dream about you on the Johnny Carson Show, but he was washed up."

"Johnny washed up?" I love the Tonight Show host. He represented the true vein of America.

"It happens to everyone."

"I don't want fame. I want immortality."

"Everyone dies."

"Not me."

LATER

Alice left for work. I went to the movies.

At the St. Mark's Theater I watched a movie about Caryl Chessman, the accused Red Light Bandit of LA. He sat on Old Sparky in 1960. I was eight, but I realized that his life had come to a point of departure governed by certainty of death.

And death always scares an immortal.

LATER

Most young people say that they are not concerned with age.

I know different.

Death is more welcome to anyone seeking eternal life over the aging of our flesh, especially as the life distances from our birth ever closer to death. I am frightened by new people. I can feel life slipping from them. Second by second. Grain of sand by sand. I avoid them. I avoid their death. I avoid their loss of youth. I never think of mine.

Art has no power over the speed of light tearing apart our flesh like vultures of time.

A couple of night I asked a Rockefeller heir at CBGBs, "Where does power lie?"

"Power is money."

His family controlled coal mines, oil fields, banks, countries, but they are merely exploiters of power. Marx wrote that an economy was based on the balance between labor and capital. Now the rich only think about money, whose value is not real, but implied by the belief in money. It means nothing to nature other than Man rapes the world to get wealth. Pockets are not part of the human body, unless we count them as an extra asshole to store our riches.

Shit.

A place to live.

Food.

Education.

Matter

Shit does not, unless it's to grow food, although dogs sometimes eat shit by mistake and sometimes, because shit tastes better than nothing. Money is slavery, chaining everyone to surrender.

I know nothing.

We humans have not abandoned prejudice, hatred, greed, or any of the Deadly Sins, despite America's forefathers writing in the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal..."

Cultures, classes, castes, languages, religions separate our destiny to go to the stars.

LATER

South of Mazatlan
A traveler stands on a highway.
He stands on the hot asphalt.
His bag at his feet.
Parched by the sun-burnt Sonoran desert with Mexico

A drug soothing his Gringo soul
But he wants more

Culiacan heroin

If he was a child he would be lost, but the road only goes north or south.
Mazatlan was north.
San Blas was south.
Black glass cars speed by
Buses roll by.
Faces stare out the windows.
In the desert only fools stand in the sun

The sun rose higher.
Still winter in El Norte.
Here hot.
Where he is is where he is.
Two college girls from Arizona stop.
A Ford Torino.
Going to San Blas for the surf.
The AC cold.
Being out of the sun felt better
San Blas only three hours away and America more distant with every passing every second.