Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Re-Alive Again

In early October I headed north to attend my nephew's wedding on the South Shore. First time in a year leaving New York. With Jack Haven. I noticed a hospital tag on my bag. Dated 12-27-2022. The day of my liver transplant. Lazurus II wanders the world.

The Cage Haiku Plus Two

The Cage West 4th Street Ball in hand Shooting Left Right A semi hot hand Hoops

World Wide Destruction

As the world skids out of control with the Endless War penetrating every corner of the globe, a Jewish friend texted that he expected an imminent nuclear exchange, because of The Gaza War.

I had been born with the Caul, the placenta, wrapped around my head. Celts believe it gives you the vision.

Despite the frenzied havoc in Palestine my inner sight doesn't see such maddog destruction. Genocide maybe, but a world-wide holocaust no, but back in the 1970s I had several vivid dreams about nuclear bombs. Once in the East Village sirens sounded and everyone scrambled to the Astor Place Subway. A frenzied terrified scrum. I looked up. Saw the missile. White flash. Vaporized.

Second dream Moscow. Red Square. Sirens. Everyone filing orderly into the Metro. I look up. A missile. White flash.

The last was in the Nebraskan flatland. I was fucking this blonde. A schitzah. Sirens. She leapt up and dressed in a SAC blue uniform. Wished me luck, as she got into a B52 bound for the USSR. Mushroom clouds marched in my direction. A missile. White light.

I realized I had woken before the nuclear blast killed me.

I still see the bombs dropped on Manhattan crossing the East River Bridges, however never on my return to Brooklyn.

Lucky and I feel lucky now. As would someone who has survived the worst. The best is yet to come

Monday, November 27, 2023

November 27, 1978 - East Village - Journal Entry

for us all.

Two weeks ago Bill Yusk fronted me an ounce of hashish. I've yet to sell any of it. I can't even be a drug dealer adn worse I've smoke a quarter ounce. Ann brought home Sherry. I have slowly acquire a taste for the British liquor, although sherry tastes too much like altar wine for me to like it. Too many memories.

As an altar boy the priests required our wearing cassocks and surplices, so we looked like devotees to Jesus headed for the black cloth. Latin was the language on the altar, until Vatican II changed the Mass' litany to the worshippers' language. The magic of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa lost its magic in English. I still remember 'forgive me, forgive me, really forgive me' as one of the Latin phrases I didn't have to mumble.

I stayed an altar boy into my teens, because my services were required at funerals during the week, which meant my older brother and I went to St. Elizabeth's at 8 instead of St. Mary of the Foothills. We could go through the motions. The mourners weepy before the close coffin. They were never open in the church.. That was only for the funeral homes. The priest rambled through the liturgy with a short testamonial for the departed. Mostly old people. The exit procession is very solemn. Priest leading the way with us carrying urns of burning incense. Sometimes rich families had the parish organist play a dirge for their loved one. We stood aside for the casket and the priest sprinkled a blessing of holy water of the casket. We never saw anyone arise from the dead. THe dead stayed dead. Even as a proto-atheists I respected the solemnity of the service.

I was a virgin then.

Somehow I abandoned holiness for libertinism.

Maybe when I first touched Ann McCellan's tits. She was one of a set of identical triplets. Her sisters Beth and Cathy were also fondled freely in their basement. Having impure thoughts was an easy sin to confess, until the thoughts became deeds and lust a goal for the ages.

CBGBs Pinball 1978 VDO

Throughout the late 1970s I stood at the front of CBGBs for the Contortions, Damned, and the Voidoids. Afterwards I drank beer and play pinball at the back of the club. I was never friends with the big names. The bartenders were my friends, the doorman with the yellow construction helmet let me in for me, college co-eds thought I looked like David Johansson from the New York Dolls and by the time they discovered I was simply a poet, it was too late to try for someone else. I was lucky and CBGBs became my home away from home.

Sunday, November 26, 2023

November 26, 1978 East Village - Journal Entry

I'm completely broke once more after two week's without work. I suppose this depression about money will be my guiding light for the futre, but I can't worry about the trivialities about which I can't do anything. Somehow I have to find a job.

THE HUDSON DOCKS NOVEMBER 1978

November night>

Derelict docks stretch along the Hudson
Empty berths for miles
Once home to
Clipper ships, ferries, upriver ships
The Halve Moon
Robert Fulton's Clermont
The Cutty Stark
All
Gone into a forgotten history
No more ocean liners going to Europe.
Yet the Hudson flows back and forth
Twice a day

The piers home to rats, tramps and sex adventurers
I walk with Libby
A blonde model
All in black panther leather
Long legs, haughty hips, a breastless chest, an aquiline nose.
In the deep dark
She could be a he.

We enter a collapsing wharf.
Under the protection of darkness
Men huddle in silent orgies.
We deeper into the ruins
We stop in a room
Two shadows
A foot apart
Now.
My leather coat on the floor
Libby's clothes on a battered crate.
She
Near-naked
Except for expensive lingerie.
My Levis drop down my legs.
The November wind baffles through the open bays
On the Hudson
The thump of powerful engines

Something big on the river
Very big
An ocean liner
Its diesel engines
Powering the ship
On the tide
Sea bound
Into the Atlantic

Libby pulls me down
Between her thighs
Her legs hooked around my knees
Her
Naked
Yearning
A cool hand guiding me
A thrust
A gasp
Two animals humping
Men watch gather to watch.
A warning glance
Retreat into the shadows
I groan the potential of life
Into Libby
The ships long gone
The ocean liner too.
Into the night.
Now
Done
Libby back in black leather
A dim silouhette
We leave.
Behind
The men in the shadows
By the Hudson
In the November night

PAINTING BY REGINALD MARSH

Saturday, November 25, 2023

David Henderson's Vortex 2021

David Henderson's Vortex.

THe mixture of mathematics and magic welded together by a lost mind.

Friday, November 24, 2023

Dives of Pattaya - Entry Date - Aug 3, 2007

Aug 3, 2007

Wikpedia defines a 'dive' as a rundown drinking establishment offering the cheap drinks of a high alcohol content to a questionable clientele frequenting the bar for the sole purpose of drinking and not petty drinking either.

New York City had been loaded with such dubious haunts on the Bowery ot the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. 50 cents a beer and $1 a shot and no red-faced stockbrokers lusting after big-haired secretariesb on a Friday night. Only busted-down drunks with a couple of front teeth like Pattaya during low season.

Wendy Mitchell who wrote NYC's BEST DIVE BARS considered a good jukebox, a seat at the bar, an affable bartender, and not-too-bright lighting as essentials for accreditation as a dive. Gotham Books' staff prided itself on having drank in most of them. My favorite was the beach bar in the Rockaways. Drunken Indians and transients at a end of a subway line. Everyone knew this was nowhere.

Pattaya is reputed to have 1400 bars

No one can claim to have drank at all of them, although some Englishmen have sacrificed their livers in the attempt.

For Queen and Country.

None really qualify as a dive, but a few come close.

I've never seen a juke box in my 20 years in Thailand. Not a pin ball machine either, although many have condom dispensers in the bathroom. The music tends to be HOTEL CALIFORNIA or pop music for the girls. Lights too bright with bar stool stressed by overweight drinkers and bartenders with moods rivaling the Wicked Witch of the West. Drinks might be cheap but the measures are more a whisper for hard-drinkers.

There are few exceptions.

The Welkom Inn on Soi 3 with its dim lighting comes close. You can usually get a seat and the old ladies behind the bar are good-tempered despite having to listen to the drivel of drunken farangs day after day after day.

Soi 6 bars are sleazy and dark, however no one goes to a short-time bar to drink. 90 baht for a thimble of vodka and tonic. The Bus Stop isn't bad because the music is almost punk. Viking Bar is awful, but Mint used to work there. maybe she will again once her boyfriend's money runs out.

The only actual dive is Maggie May's on Soi Chaiyapoon.

It only features drinking.

No girls.

Stale peanuts.

Sports on the TV.

The dregs of society on the bar stools.

"Drinks for me and my drink," Mickey Rourke called out in the movie BAR FLY about the poet Charles Bukowski's drinking life. People are shouting out the same in Maggie May's. The music sometimes sucks, but the beer is cold and during happy hours as cheap as it gets in Pattaya.

The other day I saw Dave from the old Dang Bar. We had fought on Soi 6 last winter. He had called me a spineless cunt too many times. Something about not liking that I didn't drink in his bar. 50 year-old men fighting on Soi 6. My mother should be crying in heaven over that sad spectacle.

At least I won, Ma.

I hadn't seen Dave since the fight and said, "Hello."

The bald Aussie nodded and drank his beer.

Maggie May's.

You wear it well.

#1 Dive of Pattaya

Still open in 2023

Maggie Mays, 383, 21 Soi Chalermphrakiat 25, Pattaya City, Bang Lamung District, Chon Buri 20150, Thailand

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

ANDRETTA'S HAT - Video - 169 BAR

Sadly I lost that hat on a plane from Detriot in November 2021.

Why Detroit.

The Rolling Stones.

Paint It Black you Devils

Irish Cold Revenge

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

It was a beautiful autumn day.

Then Mother Mary Superior spoke over the intercom and tearfully announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

These words did not change our lives for more than a few weeks as America accepted the single gunman theory.

But not for all of us.

Irish Cold Revenge tells a different story than the Warren Commission.

It's a true as anything else.

Peter Nolan Smith filmed by Kai Effron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goI6LuLco2E&t=166s

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and the coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margarita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing?" I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time, but his was the modern times and gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

שוב רצח עם עז

Facebook has censored most of my comments on Gaza. I believe in the one state for all the peoples. Isrhael stole the land of Palestine with the help of the British and French after World War I, but that history don't matter now. All the wars fought and the uprisings crushed and the apartheid oppression and suicide bombings don't matter after October 7.

Hammas fighters burst from the invincible high tech stalag and unleashed a 9/11. <>

For the forty-three days Gaza has suffered the wrath of Yahweh.

Dead children, women, and men.

ไม่มีความเมตตา

None at all.

The Gaza ghetto to be razed to the ground and the people forced into the al-Abyaḍ] al-Mutawassiṭ or the Middle White Sea or the Negev desert in the dead of winter ala The Ottoman's Final Solution. The bombings and tanks are only spurs to force the people into death of their choosing.

Not everyone in the world is behind this genocide, but the American Seventh Fleet is stationed off Gaza to insure Israel has a free hand in acheiving the annilation of the Palestinians in Gaza as well the West Bank. Like the Nazis they will fail, because like the Jews the palestinians are everywhere in this world.

All we want is peace.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN UNLESS YOU MEAN IT FOR ALL

ไม่เคยอีกเลย

Thursday, November 16, 2023

April 11, 1985 Paris - Journal Entry

One Easter morning in Paris I'm playing backgammon for money with a Chilean coke dealer in a basement apartment across from Notre Dame. I have two Moulin Rouge dancers with me. Dressed in their show gear. Snorting coke, drinking whiskey coke and beating Jose every game.

Dawn comes and the cathedral bells are bonging out the call to masses. I call it a night and the two girls in their skimpy attire head into the April morning across the bridge to the courtyard of the grand church. I'm dressed in leather.

A magnificent procession led by a large cross carried by altar boys approached the doors and we cut right in front of the cardinal in his dog outfit. He stops seeing us. I salute him. His lips moved with his eyes seeking to scorch my reprobate soul. His followers; priests, brothers, nuns, and the faithful scowl us. I offer them an atheist's smile and continue to my Ile St. Louis apartment to fuck the bejesus out of Bernadette. She was a good girl and ready to be wicked and I was a bad man in the eyes of the Holy Roman Church. Ah, the life of a sinner.

Points of View for the Shabbat Goy 11/16/23

Since my return from the Land of the Dead, my friends have been phoning to hear my voice. They all say I sound better than before and this afternoon Big Abe called from $7th Street to say that he had seen an advertisement online for a Shabbat Goy ie that is a gentile to turn on the lights and anything else during the weekly Holy Day. I laughed and he asked, if I had any clients selling jewelry for the upcoming goyische holidays.

"Zal zeyn." Maybe was a better answer than no, which was more the truth.

"You get someone I'll cut you in."

"I get someone, I'll get the stone from you and I'll give you a piece." I had to find new customers. Most of my old clients thought I was dead and my new young friends had no interest in diamonds, since their only possessions were their cellphones and the attached apps. As for their clothing they wore sacks so they looked like beanie bag furniture.

The conversation with Benjo immediately vectored to Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas attack. It had been over a month since Hamas overwhelmed the sleeping IDF in the Negev.

"I don't want to hear any history. There are only three possibile outcomes; occupation of Gaza, genocide, or re-set."

"We have to right to defend Israel."

"Yes, but there is not one Hassidim serving in the IDF."

"I'm religious and not Hassidim." He had never lifted a gun in his life.

"I know this, but this does not affect the outcomes. The IDF had given up occupying Gaza in 2005. It was too expensive and deadly for the young troops trained only for shooting civilians."

"The IDF is the best army in the Middle East."

"Except that Shin Bet has instructed them to shoot stone throwers instead of fighting 20,000 gunman." The border troops had been stripped by the PM before October 7 and the Hamas fighters armed with ak47s and RPGs had flooded the Negev to wreak bloody havoc.

"Now the IDF will teach them a lesson."

"Zal zeyn." "Yesterday troops had occupied the al-Shifa hospital and found fifteen AK47s and computers with Arab videos of October 7.

"There were no fighters in the tunnels."

"Never again."

"The Holocaust, no. Never, but one of the solutions and Netanyahu's options is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure and march the Palestinians en masse into the desert where they will perish in the winter like how the Turks exterminated Armenians in 1915."

"What?"

Abe like most people Abe's limited view of history had been sculpted by his beliefs. Everything was colored by the Holocaust, one of the many attempts by the Gentiles to unsucccessfully exterminate the Christ Killers.

We would never do that."

"So occupation and genocide are out, leaving only reset."

"Reset?"

"Yes, start from the beginning. Before October 7, the Infatidas, the wars, back to before the Partition of Palestine and redraw the land. There are more than two people, so create one nation with rights for all people. Peace is the only outcome. Humane outcome, but no one wants peace now. So it's back to genocide."

"The wisdom of the Shabbat Goy, feh."

"I am also a sheygutz." It was a perjorative term for a goy, but also offered the connotation of a wise starker or tough guy. Before my transplant operation I had been both. "Gedenk tat." I intoned a South Shore accent with a touch of Yiddish.

"That you are."

Shalom." The word meant peace in Hebrew and Arabic. Every language has a word for peace.

I hung up hoping for a customer or a G, which meant Goyim on the street. Peace was my mission. It was an impossibility in most Americans and Zionists' eyes, but so had been my chances for life a year ago. Gut glik far ale. It was the only way to go.

Saturday, November 11, 2023

GUNGA DIN

GUNGA DIN You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. Now in Injia’s sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them blackfaced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din, He was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din! ‘Hi! Slippy hitherao ‘Water, get it! Panee lao, ‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’ The uniform ’e wore Was nothin’ much before, An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind, For a piece o’ twisty rag An’ a goatskin water-bag Was all the field-equipment ’e could find. When the sweatin’ troop-train lay In a sidin’ through the day, Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl, We shouted ‘Harry By!’ Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all. It was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been? ‘You put some juldee in it ‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute ‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’ ’E would dot an’ carry one Till the longest day was done; An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin’ nut, ’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear. With ’is mussick on ’is back, ’E would skip with our attack, An’ watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,’ An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide ’E was white, clear white, inside When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire! It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’ With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could hear the front-ranks shout, ‘Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!’ I shan’t forgit the night When I dropped be’ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been. I was chokin’ mad with thirst, An’ the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. ’E lifted up my ’ead, An’ he plugged me where I bled, An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green. It was crawlin’ and it stunk, But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was 'Din! Din! Din! ‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen; ‘’E's chawin’ up the ground, ‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around: ‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’ ’E carried me away To where a dooli lay, An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean. ’E put me safe inside, An’ just before ’e died, 'I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din. So I’ll meet ’im later on At the place where ’e is gone— Where it’s always double drill and no canteen. ’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals Givin’ drink to poor damned souls, An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Autumn # 71

Kicking leaves in the air Forever a pleasure Autumn # 71

11-11-1918

Tomorrow I will toast the millions of sad sacrifices of men to imperialism. I also thanked the stars that I’ve never had to fire a shot in anger.<

The truce between the Axis and Allies was signed at 5am, but ceasefire didn't take effect, until the 11th second of the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and for six hours guns along the Western Front unloosed their last cannonade.

Soldiers on both sides had ammo and they weren't taking none of the death home from 'over there'.

It is estimated that over 10,000 men were killed or wounded between 5am and 11am.

The last casualty was reputed to be a Canadian, Private George Lawrence Price.

He was struck in the chest by a German sniper at 10:58am.

One of the 60,000 dead from the Great North.

Pacem in Terrem.

Tomorrow I will ask New Yorkers about Armistice Day, which is a national holiday.

I doubt that less than 10% can say why they had a day off from work.

None of them will know Private George Lawrence Price

"As you get old, you forget. As you get older you are forgotten."

But not by me.

I'm a true old git.

End the Endless War.

11-11-11-11-18


The Great War of 1914-1918 ended on the 11th minute of the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. My grandfather and grandmother were in France, serving as doctor and nurse with the Royal Canadian Medical Expedition. They returned to Maine with German helmets, bayonets, zeppelin debris, and medals as souvenirs of that horrible conflict. My grandfather died shortly after my birth, but my grandmother never spoke of her years tending to the wounded and dying soldiers. She never mentioned how the shooting went on well beyond the ceasefire hour, only how she met my grandfather and how they fell in love.

Today I thank them that I've never had to fire a shot in anger and appreciate the sacrifice of the fallen so that I can remain a pacifist.

Bring the troops home.

Monday, November 6, 2023

Fort Greene Obsevatory

Saturday morning I took this photo from the top floor of the Fort Greene Observatory.
The sunrise was gray and the Mamas and Papas' CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' rang in my ears.
I was 2900 miles from the West Coast and rain sloshed on the sidewalk.
I went to work in wet gear. The streets of Manhattan swelled ankle-deep with the overflow of every deluge. Thankfully I was wearing a good boots and returned home at dark only a little wet. My landlord and I smoked some reefer after which I fell into bed with the windows open to the cool autumn night.
Sirens sang on Fulton.
Ambulances, not fire or police.
Brooklyn was dangerous in the rain.

I read PORIUS by John Cowper Powys.
The Celtic fairy tale was a tough walk through the weeds of words obscuring the Arthurian legend.
My eyes shut after two chapters, dreaming of my Pictish blood.
lasted two seconds as a near-sighted thane with a dull sword against the Roman shield and I wandered through the sleeplands until a whoosh of wind withered a shiver through the trees outside my window.
Golden leaves fluttered to the floor.
My breath floated on the darkness.
The temperature dropped every second.

Autumn was here.

Winter was coming.

I shut the windows and watched the wind rip away the leaves.
Mercy was out of the question for the new season's invaders.
Three layers of blankets shunned the cold, but this was only the beginning.
Winter was coming. It bound to get colder. Earth was in Space and the temperature in Space was Absolute Zero.

Saturday, November 4, 2023

Autumn en Ile St. Louis

Autumn en Ile St. Louis

November Paris 1984
Early morning
Cold wet rain
On Rue des Deux Ponts
On Ile St. Louis in Paris

A gray morning
Comme chaque autumn
Sur le Rue Des Deux Ponts
Kicking leaves into the gutter
Heading to the corner cafe
With my mistress' Scottie in tow
Angus
Sniff sniff sniff
For the scents of dogs.

Arrive at the Cafe Louis IX
Push the door open
Angus I enter.


Inside thick with Gitane smoke
Three workers a le bar
There
Chaque matin comme moi et Angus

On their third Calvados
A nod
A nod back.
Another nod to the barman.
Henri serves a cafe, croissant, et Calva.

Rain outside
Angus rests his head
On my boots
The floor smell of Gitane cigarette ash.
Tobacco and other men's boots.
Outside
Cold wet rain
No hurry in none of us
Except Angus
Eager to press his nostrils
To the gutter
To treasure the bouquet of dogs.

Pas encore
A nod to Henri
Un'autre Calva
Si vous plait.
The three workers nod approval.
We have never spoken a word.
Just that nod.
We all believe in Sloth.
Especially with the autumn rain
Sweeping the Rue des Deux-Ponts
Paris
Autumn
1984
Une bonne matin
Le pluie
Angus and me
Ile St. Louis.

TV Sign Off Snow

Oh the beauty of the sign off into the TV blizzard of snow until dawn when the world was only 24/7 for us.

Friday, November 3, 2023

The Cage - West 4th Street 11/1/2023

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B-ball

Over the years

Two mornings ago I exited from the West 4th Street station Early for my eldercare of Professor Ollman. A forty year-old player spoke with two ballers. I had seen the bearded ace before. He had a great handle And even better shot.

I asked if I could take a few shots. It had been ten months since my transplant. He passed me the ball and challenged me to a game. For money. He didn't play for free he said. I replied that I only play for free. For the game. I've played everywhere. Boston, the Cage, East Tenth and A, Isla Mujeres, Lake Atitlan, North Hollywood, Doi Mae Salong, Sumatra, Penang, les Jardins de Luxembourg, Nottinghill Gate, Moscow, Lhasa.

He chllanged me to play to 11. I said a game to three. He nodded and started his trick dribbling. I wasn't buying the magic. I cut off his right. It didn't matter. I lost 3-0. Maybe better next time.