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 so yesterday to my old 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 know how to spend it. All they know is how to gather it." I had been an economic major in college.

"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 had been out of work in the millions.

"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 I had belonged to three unions; IBEW for the telephone company, IBT driving taxi in Boston, and the union of drifters.

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 the nuns paraded us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys were dressed 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 honored the seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago.

May ,1 1886 was 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 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.

Sadly it's not by choice.

Power to the people.

Bring on the Revolution - 2011

Last week I went out to eat with my nephews and their parents at a Mexican restaurant on Okochobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. The conversation gravitated to sports; baseball for Trey, golf for Reese, and basketball for their father and me. Their mother was happy to be left in peace. After dinner we stepped into a warm Florida night. There was no one in the parking lot.

Looking at the colorful mural on the wall, I said, “Mexico 1968.”

“What about it?” AK’s slender and ever-beautiful wife responded with interest. We were more friends than before. I was good to her kids and nothing earns trust from a mother faster than treating their spawn well. My clan was far away in Thailand.

“Summer Olympics was held in Mexico City.”

“More like the Autumn Olympics. For some reason they were in October.”

“Summer or fall didn’t matter after Bob Beamon set a world record in the high jump at the altitude of 6000 feet. Rightfully never an asterisk for that jump." My individual best had been in my senior year. 1970. 19'6".

“He broke the previous record by a foot and a half.” AK joined in the telling. He was my age. 1968 was our youth.

“The world was on fire. Only the week before hundreds of students had been shot by the Mexican army and the streets of America were on fire after the assassination of Martin Luther King.”

“Could we talk about something else?” AK and I went back over thirty years to 1973. He was no born-again conservative, but the right-wing Storm Front had their headquarter meetings not far from here, White people in Florida tend to be whiter than most whites elsewhere in the USA and my talk was incendiary to white people, but the parking lot was empty.

“Let him talk.” AK’s blonde wife taught music at a private school. The curriculum was restrained by religion. She appreciated my loose tongue. ”

“Other places were in revolt too. Viet-Nam, Paris, Prague.”

I sang the first stanza of the Rolling Stones’ STREET FIGHTING MAN.

“Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy, cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy.”

AK rolled his eyes. He was more into R&B than rock, having played in the Authentics, a Boston funk band, to pay for his tuition at Berkeley School of Music. On our cross-country trip in 1974 AK had taught me how to play the kazoo.

"No one at the Olympics protested the death of hundreds of Mexican students. The army was in the streets. The olympic committee banned any protests by the athletes. The best runner in the world was Tommie Smith, 220 and 440 champion. A black man."

“From California.” AK was a sports nut too. Knicks versus my Celtics. We had played countless one-on-ones on the playgrounds of Boston and New York. He dominated the first twenty years. I outlasted his knees during the 90s, although now neither of us were in good shape.

“Tommie Smith set a world record in the 220.

“Time 19.83 seconds.” AK was showing off sports knowledge to his sons.

My best time in the 440 was 54.8 seconds. About thirty yrds behind Tommie Smit's best.

"At the medal ceremony Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the bronze winner, lifted their fists during THE STAR-SPANGLED banner to protest the mistreatment of blacks in America.”

My best friend in school is black.” Reese was named after the Dodgers' Pee Wee Reese.

“And what he say in class the other day.” AK was a Brooklyn boy at heart.

“That his father had been killed in Iraq. His father was a soldier.” Reese was eleven. Old enough to understand that death meant death. His younger brother believed in Santa Claus. I wished that I did too.

“Probably a good man as was the silver-medal winner from Australia.”

“Peter Norman wore an American “civil rights” badge as support to them on the podium.” AK remembered the incident better than me. “The Olympic Committee banned Smith and Carlos from the Village and Norman was dropped from the 1972 team.”

“The good are always good at the moment of their best.”

I explained the myth of the rights of man. My nephews were fast studies and loyal nephews. We were two miles from The Breakers Hotel. I told them a story that I had heard three years ago.

“The beachfront hotel had been a world-class destination for over a century. The railroad tycoon Henry Flagler completed construction on his resort for the rich in 1896. That night Flagler held a BBQ for the laborers on the golf course. While they feasted on ribs and chicken, Flagler ordered his goons to burn out the workers’ bungalows, thus insuring that no poor people will ever live on the barrier island.”

‘Is that a true story?” My oldest nephew asked his father. We had been friends for almost forty years. The West Palm Beach school teacher shrugged with suspicion.

“True as far as I know.” My source had lived in Palm Beach since her childhood, but was no historian. “But that wasn’t right either. That’s why we protest against the evil in man.”

“Your uncle tells a good story.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Interesting if true. That’s you.”

My nephews and I posed before the Mexican mural with raised fists. Their mother took the photo. We said good night. It had been great to see AK and his family. The last time had been in the summer of 2008. Things were better now.

Later that night I went online to find out the truth about the Breakers.

It wasn’t there.

Then again the truth is yet to be told.

Bring on the revolution.

The youth is with us and we are coming for your children.

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.

The Scent Of The Desert

In 1917 TE Lawrence of Arabia was led through a palace of an Arab prince. Six rooms were scented by fragrant incensed. The last was bare with a window opened to the wind. Lawrence asked the prince what was the scent. "The desert. It was here before us. It will always be here, even after us." The story comes from his book SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM. Foto Bleecker Street Gaza protest. Lone Israeli supporter. No yelling or screaming Salaam shalom. One way or the other there will be peace.

Slabs Atop The Metropolitan Museum

Last week a friend at lunch in Greenpoint remarked that the Metropolitan Museum's facade had several piles of limestone slabs atop the main entrance. "No one ever notices them, but they are supposedly from the old Penn Station." That classical gem of a railroad yerminal was razed to erect Madison Square Garden in the 1960s. That act of corporate vandalism has been rued by millions of New Yorkers, especially since the replacement's Penn Station has been an eyesore for commuters and travelers for decades as opposed the the previous cathedralof light and darkness. Yesterday I was invited to a rooftop gala atop the museum.

WICKED YOUTH - CHAPTER 6

VI

Sunny Isles belonged to Miami Beach, but the beach strip wasn’t South Beach with big hotels serving rich tourists with a view of the Gulf Stream. Budget hotels blocked the beach view and once off the strip the swamps ran west to the Everglades. The snowbirds' exodus began before the Spring Break and hit stride on the Monday after Easter end of May was low season. Most of the motels on Collins Avenue sported occupancy signs. There were few takers

Kyla Rolla woke up early for breakfast with her father and looked out the bedroom window. Her father's Cadillac convertible was the only one in parking lot. The fronds of two palms hung listless over the desolate sidewalk. Overhead a cloudless sky. Her hand presed against. Warm glass. Everyday the weather was the same unlike the South Shore of Boston. Warm, sunny, and warmer with the morning giving way to noon.

The air-conditioner was set at an eternal 71 degrees. A fine spring day in the Blue Hills, but cold to her skin. The slim fourteen year old threw off the blankets and pulled on a thin nightgown over her pajamas. A swift regard in the mirror and her hands smoothed down her blonde hair. Opening the bedroom door she walked down the hallway to the kitchen and opened the front door to pick up the newspaper in the hallway. She placed the Miami Herald on the table.

After buttering two slices of wheat toast and brewing a cup on instant coffee, she called for her father. Several second the forty year-old appeared in the kitchen ready for work selling luxury property from Bal Harbor to Key Biscayne. His tropical suit had been ironed by Kyla as was his white short-sleeved shirt. He smiled and sat down, putting a pack of LUcky Strikes on the table.

He was dying to smoke, but not smoking in the apartment was her one condition for coming down here.

"Good morning."

"Another sunny day."

"Just like yesterday."

"Your mother said it felt like winter yesterday. Cold and rainy." He spoke to her mother every day, mostly before he or she went to work.

"I doubt it ever gets cold here."

In the winter it get into the 50s." He looked at the top of the Miami Herald and said, "Forecast today in 82."

"Just like yesterday and probably tomorrow. Can I come to work with you? I can get dresed in five minutes." All she needed was a shirt, shorts and flip-flops and a bikini and towel in her bag.

"Sorry, I have to drive around a client all day."

"I wish I could come with you."

"It's all business and you would be sitting in a hot car all day, as I deal with buyers and sellers. Not much fun."

"It's not a problem." She buttered the toast and push the plate across the table. After five days she had only been to the airport and Sunny Isles. She had not expected to be trapped in this one road beach town. "I'll go to the beach and then the library. Could I take the bus to Miami Beach one day?"

"The bus. No one rides the bus here."

"I see plenty of people in the bus." The old, Cubans, and blacks. "I know how to be careful."

"Sorry, Kyla, but I don't think it's a good idea. I have to work the weekends, but next Monday we'll go down to Miami Beach and maybe even take a trip down to Key West later in the month."

"Okay."

Satisfied with her complacency he opened the newspaper to the sports page and shook his head. "The Red Sox are going no where this year."

Kyla resisted saying, "Just like me." and saw under the headline that today was May 28. Tomorrow was Sean Coll's birthday. He had said that he would write every day and not a single letter or card appeared in the mailbox. Only bills and circulars, but she had only been here six days. He couldn't have forgotten her this quickly.

He looked up for the newspaper and then glanced down at her bare feet.

“What I tell you about wearing slippers? You leave footprints everywhere.”

“I forgot.” Kyla shrugged and sat down to an OJ and buttered toast.

After a week in Miami Beach their mornings and days had a routine.

“What are you doing today?”

“Same as yesterday.” She liked sleeping in bed late, but if she stayed in bed, she would miss this time with her father. This trip was not meeting her expectations. "Finish breakfast, go to the beach, lunch, read in the shade, go for a swim, eat dinner. Watch TV and go to sleep."

"Sorry, I'm working so much." His work had been a big promotion and a large increase in salary. When her father first mentioned moving to Florida for work, she had thought her parents were having trouble, but neither her sisters or she had ever heard them fight. Her mother hadn't wanted to make the move. Her family was in Boston and she had given her blessing to the move by saying, "You go make that money. I'll come down later in the summer." Kyla had jumped at her father's invitation to accompany him on the move. Florida had sounded so exotic and she had never traveled father than Cape Cod. She would have like to see Sean. They lived in the same isolated neighborhood under the Blue Hills. A bus ran into Lower Mills, where a trolley along the Neponset River connected with the T into Boston, but neither Boston nor Sean were going anywhere.

Now here she was in Florida. All alone. Every night her father came back late from work. Initially she thought he had a girlfriend, but his clothing only smelled of him. Her mother and father had been apart, ever since his transfer to Florida, but they were separated and not divorced. Her mother as a devout Catholic did not believed in divorce.

Kyla bit into the toast.

Her father finished his coffee, picked up his cigarettes, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Have a good day."

The door was shut.

Kyla was alone, but there weere hundreds, if not thousands of people in Sunny Isles.

And not all of them were old.

Den's Rice Fields

No one works the paddies anymore. The old gave up the game. Enough Work like slaves. Good season, Bad season. Always the last baht in the pocket. Never the first. Work sunrise. Sunset. Breaking back Breaking feet Come home at night The radio on Playing Luk Thong. A good day Today. Children's bellies full Wife smiling Happy And a bottle of lao khao To celebrate The end of the day Happy Chai yo!!!a

BET ON CRAZY - 1ST DAYS by Peter Nolan Smith

Richie was more forgiving. They had made the move to a diamond exchange on 47th Street. No more Italian subs, but the pastrami sandwich from the Bergers Deli was built for two. Richie and I shared one.

“So what are you going to do?” Richie positioned napkins on his lap and chest to avoid any greases dripping onto his Armani suit. He had bought it ‘hot’ from Frankie Fingers, the street’s haberdasher.

“Work in a club, I guess.” Fifteen publishers had rejected my stories.

“Any ideas?”

“None at all.” I stalled getting a job for several months, while I rewrote my short stories. The amount of typos was astounding, almost as if my fingers suffering from dyslexia.

The New Year brought an eviction notice. I didn’t panic. My landlord couldn’t take me to court for another three months. The refrigerator went empty and the heating was augmented by the gas range, as I typed away at my kitchen table, imagining fame and fortune would save me two minutes after I wrote THE END, then the springs of my typewriter broke with a off-note twang.

I walked to the repair shop through a snowstorm. The man at the counter said fixing the Olivetti portable would cost $50. My “I popped both my knees skiing. I’ll be off my legs for six months. You working?”

“No.” I could see what was coming and realized THE END would have to wait until summer.

“I need someone to schlep around goods.”

“Goods?” I knew ‘schlep’ meant to carry.

“Diamonds, jewelry to repair, money. Someone I can trust. Manny, what you think?”

“Why not?” Manny glanced up from a small pile of iridescent stones. “As long as you show up on time and don’t break my balls, you’ll do fine. $100 a day.”

“Cash?” I hadn’t paid taxes in ten years.

“I’m not the IRS.” Manny dropped a necklace into a small manila envelope and wrote an address. “Take this to the setter. Have him call me, then come back here fast. I got more for you to do.”

“Okay.” I had become a worker in less than a minute.

“Don’t lose anything.”

“Sure.” I stuffed the envelope inside my damp jacket. “What time is lunch?”

“Hasn’t been working for more than a minute and already worried about lunch. I’ll order you a sandwich for when you get back.” Manny resumed sorting the diamonds.

“Thanks,” Richie said from his desk.

“Thank you.” I would be able to pay off my back rent within the month.

“Can you two stop the love story and let the goy get going?” Manny sighed with annoyance.

“You know, Manny, I know nothing about diamonds.”

“Whatever."

There would be much more than one or two, because I had survived day one as a goyim on 47th Street and my life wasn’t going anywhere fast. At least not in 1990.

Cafe De Paris - 1984

1984 London Leicester Square The Cafe de Paris Music DJed by Albert de Paname Dancing The young The place to be Black Jack and I At the door A ten-thick crowd Other side of the ropes. We control the destiny of the night. In or out. Ingrid arrives with Alice Svelte Blonde English Jacques and I part the crowd Like Moses and Aaron Kisses on the cheeks Happy to be there Happy they are here. Friends forever Day or night.

Neo-Haiku 3

Haiku by Matsuo Bashō "Quietly, quietly, / yellow mountain roses fall – / sound of the rapids

A haiku traditionally consists on sixteen syllables. Three lines of five / seven / four syllables according to Japanese poetry.

I have been satisfied with a contrary configuration without the guidance of Zen calligraphy. The nuns at St. Mary's of the Hills had been hard pressed to instill in their grammar school students the importance of legible pensmanship ie the Palmer cursor method. I still some of the grace from their instruction, which had been backed by a ruler to the back of the hand for any uncrossed ts and undotted is.

I shall practice my handwriting on clean white sheets of paper in honor of Sister Mary Osmond. My ancient Egyption teacher from 6th Grade. 1964. Sixty years ago. my hand remains true, although originally I had been left-handed. A sign of the Devil. Sister Mother Superior beat the devil out of me. Not completely. I still deal cards left-handed.

A mirror
An image
My Image
Not me
Just how
A Mirror sees me

Moi

4/2024

Brevity
Three syllables
One word
Lasting
An eternity

Poetry
On the subway
To avoid
limbo
On the phone

Bangkok 1928

Back in 2009 www.2bangkok.com put this 1928 French map of Bangkok online. The city has certainly changed considerably in the last century. No more klongs or trolleys or trees, but then the old are always saying, "You should have been here before."

As a young man I thought they were full of cow paddy, but now I'm not so young anymore I know they were right.

"You should have been in Bangkok 1990."

It was really something.

TROLLEYS AND BARS - A POEM BY PETER NOLAN SMITH

Oh, the trolleys of Boston.
The screech
Of steel on twin seams of rail,
The Boston College trolley lurching into Park Station.

I don't know if I will ever return
To Boston.
Like Charley
The man never to return on the MTA.

Orange and white trolleys
Me and my older brother
With my Nana on the tram to Forest Hills.
Then the train to Washington Street
Confession at St. Anthony's
Grilled hot dogs at WT Grants.
A movie at the Paramount
Once THUNDER ROAD
Robert Mitchum as a hillbilly bootlegger.
Nana brewed beer during Prohibition.
She said with a County Mayo accent, "Don't tell your mother about the movie."
We held our sand.

My grandfather drove trolleys out of Forest Hills.
I never met the son of the Aran Isles.
Never heard tales of him
I only saw photos
Never in a trolleyman's uniform.
He died in the yard.
A trolleyman union rep
No money in his pocket.
Damned Boston cops robbed his dead body.

Still I dream the trolleys
Squeaking sliding from under the shadows of the elevated subway to Dudley.

Irish drinkers at the Concancannon and Sennet Bar
Listening to the trains overhead
Watching the trolleys leave the yards for Mission Hill.
Never saying a word.
A Gaelic nod said another beer,
Trolleys rolling all night long.
Yardbirds on the juke box
TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN'.

Not such thing as late in the bar,
If your beer glass was full. We there were us.

The steel rails ran in our Jamaica Plains bones.
From Forest Hills to Park Street to Boston College.
To the other Concannon and Sennett's on Comm. Ave.

There.

My girl Hilde,
Quarter beers,
A juke box
BU co-eds,
Brighton townies,
A HOT HAND pinball machine,
A naked woman atop a pink elephant painted over the bar
Up three steps
To the Phoenix Room.
Mexican food.
The only enchiladas in Boston.
A long-haired woman from Chiapas.
She had one-hand.
No one knew why.
Her enchiladas better than good.

Last trolley thirty minutes after midnight.
Last call 1AM.
The Flannery brothers waging a going home fight
On the sidewalk.
Interference was taboo.
Everyone's business was their own.

Drunken blood slushed through my veins. Listening to the last song. Aerosmith on the juke box. DREAM ON 1973

The band lived down Comm Ave.
By the Hi-Hat Lounge
I sold them mescaline in caps.
Laced with strychnine
Stronger hallucinations
$5 a cap.
We all saw the night.

At 1AM the music went dead
The bartender threw us out.
The doors shut.

I walked across the tracks.
With Hilde.
Making sure the teenage got home.
Hand in hand.
Safe
Sound
Her with me
And me with her.

Comm. Ave. quiet.
No more trolleys
Only the night

Foto Hilde and me 1974

Earth Day 2009

This evening I drank organic vodka in celebration of Earth Day. The mixer was organic ginger ale. Glass bottles. A glass glass. No plastic. It went well with my Happy Meal #3.

Supposedly civilization started when hunter-gatherers discovered fermented fruits. One of them drank it. He survived and explained his out-of-the-body experience. The primitives understood that to achieve this euphoria with regularity they had to grow crops.

Thus the birth of agriculture.

Unless you believe in alien abduction.

Passing Judgment Over Passover

Passover is the most important religious holiday on the Jewish Calendar, celebrating the Angel of Death passing over the first-borns of the Hebrew as Yahweh's Holy Annihilator murder the first-born of the Egyptians. This last plague of Moses freed the bonded Hebrews from the Land of the Pharaohs. The actual date is lost to time as is the name of the Pharaoh. Some religious historians date the Biblical tale to the rule of Rhamses II, although no historian from that time recorded the plagues and the story of Moses sounds a lot like the Neo-Assyrian version of the birth of the king Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.

But if Passover is not plagiarism, how to explain the last plague.

The massacre of the first-born.

Possibly the first-born were first given food in the morning and the bread could have been poisoned by a toxin or else died from sleeping too close to the ground as was their privilege and breathed a toxic gas or more plausibly the children were poisoned by the slaves.

Every slave-owners feared that fate,except the Hebrews were never slaves, just workers trying to flee their debts.

Serves you right, but all part of the ruthless God of Israel.

"I'll fuck your eyes out." Exodus 12:11

And people ask why I'm an atheist.

Many reasons.

Happy Earth Day Plus 1 - 2012

Lately I've been arguing that the age of the car is coming to an end.

Supporters of the meshing of fire, steel, and wheel guffaw at my prediction.

"Cars will always be with us." Older adults are adamant about our addiction to cars without recognizing the generational shift in progress.

"There are no cars in Star Trek, but there are trains," I counter without reservation. I am a firm believer in 'Live long and prosper', plus more young people are abandoning the car in favor of alternative transportation. According to a report in the New Republic "In 1976, three-quarters of all 17-year-olds had drivers' licenses. By 2008, that was down to 49 percent."

Once trolleys connected America.

The auto industry bought them and sold us cars.

Everything good comes to an end when it isn't good anymore.

Poor lil GTO.

Boston Trolley Map - deep into the last century

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH - BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station wagon to view the epic with a cast of thousands at the South Shore Drive-In in Braintree, Massachusetts.

After paying for our entry my father cruised the left-handed lane looking for a good vantage spot. He was an ace at parking. My mother spotted an open slot, but before my father turned and a rock struck our car.

My father's head spun to the left and he spotted a teenager scrambling up the grassy slope. He jammed the column shift into P and jumped out of the car. He had played football in college and caught the young man within seconds. The hillside was too dark to see if he had punched the stone-thrower, although my father returned to the station wagon rubbing his knuckles.

"Damned kids today."

"Watch that language." My mother considered swearing a sign of moral decay and had never used a bad word in her life.

"Sorry." My father loved my mother almost as much as he loved his six children.

After parking in the perfect spot, he gave my older brother and me money to buy popcorn from the concession stand. Frunk was eleven and I was ten. This was the first time that we hadn't worn wear pajamas to the drive-in and we walked over to the refreshment stand. Teens loitered under the neon lights. They looked so cool.

Returning to the station wagon my older brother and I handed the popcorn and soft drinks to our parents to divvie out to our siblings. We set up lawn chair before the family car and watched the movie in the warm summer air.

Moses heroically faced down the Pharaoh's magicians, yet the bald Yul Brenner refused to let the Hebrews leave his land.

Moses warned of plagues.

His childhood friend laughed in his face, then the Nile turned into blood, frogs overran the land, gnats infested the dead frogs, wild beasts were driven crazy by the gnats, livestock died from the diseased wild beasts, a pestilence of boils spread on the skin of the Egyptians, a hailstorm destroyed the remaining crops and locust clouded the sky.

The worst was saved for last.

A darkness fell over Egypt and the first-born of every Egyptian died with the passage of the Angel of Death.

Azrael or 'Help from God' was merciless in his mission. I had been a non-believer since the age of eight and this depiction of God's ruthlessness rehardened my heart against the faith of America.

"Why would God kill innocent babies?"

"God acts in strange ways." My older brother had possession of the popcorn. This wasn't the place for an argument about God. Charlton Heston was awed by the burning bush under the starry skies of the South Shore. Hundreds of tiny speakers echoed his voice across the drive-in and at the movie's end the Hebrews reached the Promised Land, although without Moses who doubted God's promise or insisted Philistine wasn't the Promised Land.

"God doesn't act in strange ways. He acts like a creep." My best friend Chaney had drowned in Lake Sebago and he had been a first born.

"Sssh, you want Mom to hear you?"

I shut up, since my youthful atheism would have deeply hurt my mother, but over the following years I questioned my Jewish friends about celebrating Passover's ancient decimation of the Egyptian young.

One year Passaich I wandered into 47th Street to pick up a diamond before everyone rushed home for the high holiday.

Richie Boy greeted me with a shrug.

"When are you leaving?"

Everyone else in the exchange was closing shop.

“Ask the old man.” Richie Boy pointed to my former boss.

I knew the answer.

His father planned on staying to the bitter end of the day and I said, “Manny, it’s Passover. Go home already.”

“And what’s that to you? You're a goy.” Manny shared my anti-religious beliefs. “When you pay my rent, then you can tell me what time I close my business.”

Manny’s desk was cluttered with the usual piles of paperwork. In all the years I had worked for their firm, the pyramid of papers rose and fell without ever disappearing in entirety.

“Close now and I’ll buy you a martini.”

“I’m busy.” This office was the octogenarian's home away from home.

“Manny thinks he might make a sale,” Hlove commented under his breath. The junkie had replaced me when I left for Thailand two years ago. He hadn't a good word for me. I had none for the snitch, who's main skill was brownnosing Richie.

"No one is buying nothing today That’s it. We’re going home." His son signaled his two employee to pack up the merchandise. Hlove and Deisy didn't have to be told twice.

This decision ignited a fight between father and son.

I went outside to wait for Richie Boy.

“Damien, you have something to give for Passiach?” Lenny the Bum shambled up to the window. His bloated face shined with sweat and strands of hair were plastered across his balding skull. He was dressed in his usual attire of a filthy tee shirt and shabby trousers.

“For you, I always have something.” I dug into my pocket for a dollar. “Where are you celebrating Passaich?”

“I’m working the street.” Lenny was a workaholic like Manny. “I have to get money to take care of my sister.”

“You’re a good brother, Lenny.”

“Plus I don’t really celebrate Passaich.” Lenny didn’t look healthy, but he had disproven many rumors of his demise.

“Why not?” Lenny was no atheist.

“What does Passaich celebrate?” Lenny leaned over to whisper what he had to say, as if it were a secret.

“Passover commemorates the Angel of God passing over the Jewish houses in Egypt, but I agree with you. How can anyone in their right mind celebrate the death of innocents?"

"Damian, I didn't kill any Egyptians and I didn't kill Jesus either. I'm just a harmless Jew," Lenny whined with a shrug. "But the Pharaoh was a bad man."

"Or so the Bible says."

"Please." Lenny lifted both his hands in defense. He was a religious bum. His head was always covered by a yarmulke. "Don't think bad of us. We have had a hard time over the centuries. You know that there was no angel of death. The young probably died from infected food, since the first-born always got the food first. Who knows, but it was a sad scene when Yul Brenner carried his dead son in his palace."

"You know the Hebrews weren't slaves. No one working on the pyramids was a slave. They got paid for their labor."

"The Bible says different."

His Yahweh and the Father of the Nailed God of my rejected religion were cruel gods. Jehovah let his son die on a cross. As a father I could never sacrifice my son, but then I'm human and gods are divine. They get away with everything.

"You know I saw THE TEN COMMANDMENTS at the South Shore Drive-In."

“It was a good movie, but Charlton Heston was no Jew.” Lenny rocked back and forth on the heels of his busted shoes. "Plus there was nothing good about the Ten Plagues as you say. Especially the death of the first-born of all Egyptian humans and animals. Yahweh instructed the Hebrews to sprinkle lamb’s blood on this doors, so his spirit would skip their houses in his search for the first-born males of the Egyptians.”

“I was taught that God was all-knowing and all-seeing, so why couldn’t He see which houses were Jewish?”

“Damien, Yahweh moves in strange ways.”

“Most people think the killer of the male first-borns was an angel, but it was actually Yahweh blundering through the night killing young boys. Do you think there was any collateral damage like how smart bombs hit schools in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there, but enough of this narishkait, because Passaich is a celebration of death. Death of the guilty, but also the innocent. This I can not celebrate. Freedom, yes. Extermination, no.”

Several people had gathered around our discussion and a religious diamond dealer angrily demanded of Lenny, “You really think Yahweh was a murderer?”

“It wasn’t the first time.” Lenny depended on the kindness of this street to support his sister and didn't need this attention.

“Actually I think that the second-sons of Egypt plotted to kill all the first-borns to destroy the rules of primogeniture and then blamed the Hebrews.” I was talking nonsense to deflect the flak aimed at Lenny.

“Primogeniture?” The diamond dealer had a yeshiva education.

“Primogeniture is where the first born inherits everything from the father. Like Cain and Abel.”

“Cain killed Abel.” Lenny nodded in agreement.

“The second son plot."

“Es iz nit geshtoygen un nit gefloygen," the diamond dealer muttered in Yiddish.

“What’s that mean?”

“It never rose and it never flew.” Lenny smiled with the pleasure of hearing Yiddish, which had been abandoned by the Hassidim in favor of Hebrew. “In plain speaking ‘bullshit’.”

“It’s not foolishness,” I protested with the fervor of a devotee to the untruth. “Worshipping murder is an abomination."

“God does not murder. He takes revenge.” The diamond dealer spoke with words with conviction. “And in this case it was his Killing Angel doing the killing.”

“Isn’t that the same name used by Josef Mengele?”

"Feh." The diamond dealer was feed up with us.

“That fucking Nazi was called the Angel of Death.” Lenny soured on the mention of his name. He had lost family in the camps. “Passaich was over 3000 years ago and the apotropaic rite actually predates Exodus."

"Apotropaic?" I had never heard the word.

"Something to ward off evil."

"Magic, feh." The diamond dealer spat the two words."

"Not magic, just a ritual of daubing the door lintel with a blood-soaked hyssop to prevent demonic forces from entering the house."

"Hyssop?"

"Yes, a mountain flower."

"Magic. Devils. Double feh." The diamond dealer looked at his Rolex watch and stormed down the sidewalk.

"I shouldn't be so smart. People don't like smart, especially when you challenge their religious beliefs and my people love a good book."

"The Torah?"

"It's the only book to them and they would be even more disapproving, if I told them that Passaich was a combination of a Canaanite and Mesopotamian rituals. The Exodus connection came later, but what do I know?"

"More than me."

"I'm still a bum."

"A smart one."

"That and $3 dollars and I can get a little bottle of brandy. You have something to give?"

"I already gave you, but what the hell." I handed him another two dollars.

“I love you Damian and pray you see your children soon.”

“And a Happy Bunny Day to you, Lenny.

The slumpy bum wandered off pestering another diamond dealer for a dollar. He was a hard worker.

“What was that all about?” Richie Boy exited from the exchange.

“The origins of Passaich.”

“Passover?” He looked into the exchange. His father was still at his papers. “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. What about getting something to eat at the Oyster Bar?”

Shellfish were very tref, but Richie Boy was a bacon Jew, “Sounds delightful.”

Richie Boy and I headed for Grand Central Terminal, passing Lenny.

“Happy Easter.” He offered us.

"I only celebrate the bunnies."

"And chocolate."

"I love chocolate."

I gave him another dollar.

"Enjoy." As a sinner I was willing to forgive almost everyone for everything, since to err is human, but to forgive is a divine trait.

Only forgetting is more human.

Just ask Lenny.

Until then I wish everyone had a good sedah.

Hag kasher vesame`ah, for the only exterminating angels I ever see are the bartenders at the 169 Lounge in Chinatown.

Dakota and Johnny know how to murder the next day, but I lived through this Passover.

After all I'm just a goy.

COVID Plus 4

COVID Plus 4

Four years ago
April 21, 2020
No planes
In the sky
No people
On Vanderbilt Avenue
Alone.

Same today
2024
Afternoon
April cold
Gray clouds
A pale silver sun
Over a bankrupt luxury condo.

Now a few people
On the sidewalk.

Four years ago
None
Me
Alone
Today
Out for a walk
Alone
Same
As four years ago.

We survived that crisis
And others
Fifteen thousand years ago
The Ice Age
A wall of ice
A mile high
Over Clinton Hill
10,000 of us left.
Homo erectus

We will survive
We have been here before.
World population
2050
500 million
I will be one of us
97 years old
In Thailand
With my children
Grandchildren
Great-grandchildren
My wives
Rice paddies
Green
Running west to Burma
And the setting sun.
No planes in the sky
Only the stars.

420 - 2009

My introduction to marijuana came on a drive from Nantasket Beach in the summer of 1969. Frank E Smith (not my brother), Thommie Jordan, and John Gilmour were friends from the Surf, a dance club on the beach. We had just seen the Rockin' Ramrods, the South Shore's #1. They wanted to smoke marijuana on the way home. I was the hold-out.

"I don't want to get a contact high." My drug of choice was beer, wine, and any other form of alcohol. I turned the radio in my VW Beetle to WMEX. They played hippie music this late at night.

"Smoke it." John lit up a reefer. He attended Catholic Memorial. It was my school's archrival. "You'll feel good."

"Smoke it." Thommie Jordan played hockey for Archbishop Williams. He had long hair. His sister was cute. "It won't hurt you."

"Smoke it." Frank E Smith was heading into the Marines. He wanted to see the world. "Girls like it, especially that hippie girl from Weymouth you like. Susan Finn."

"She does?" I had spent the entire night trying to get her out to the beach.

"Yes, she does." A match flared before John's face. He inhaled off the joint and then passed it to the front. I took it from him and inhaled, ending my days as a straight person. Two minutes later we were stopped at a green light in Hingham. Time had reversed direction. I was ruined for society and glad of it.

FTW

And especially on 4/20, National Smoke Day.

420 wasn't the original choice for this holiday, however 4:20 was the mythical time that these pothead from San Rafael High School in California would meet at Louis Pasteur Statue to get high.

Hence 420.

Not much else to say other than I'm going out to break the law.

ps I haven't smoke in over two years. Health reason, but I condoned breaking this federal law.

Defund the DEA.

It's time to free the weed.

if you got it, smoke it.

The Goodness Of Ganga

Ganga is legal in eight states and twenty states have allowed its use for medical purposes. Last year more money was spent on reefer than liquor in Aspen, Colorado. According to the Aspen Times legal distributors of cannabis in Aspen earned $11.3 million in revenue in 2017 compared with $10.5 million for liquor stores. Crime is down as are drunk driving arrests. The herb is a good thing, although that does keep buzzkills from judging our happiness as an rt.com commenter wrote, "We are a intoxicant obsessed species. If your life is so bad that you have to intoxicate yourself on some type of substance to enjoy it. you are pathetic."

This losers can accept defeat and even worse the US AG wants to pursue a hardline against the Weed, calling for stricter enforcement against the happier people. Of course his edict has nothing to do with the fact that Jeffery Sessions has invested millions in for-profit prisons.

Less arrests.

Less profit.

This 4/20 lets show them our numbers.

Free the Weed. Disband the DEA and free the POWs.

Victory is at hand.

Good and Bad 4/20

4/20 is considered a good day by millions of free marijuana smokers around the world, but not every April 20th has been perfect. On the morning of 4/20/2022 I phoned Dakota Pollock for his birthday and he explained, "Hitler was born on April 20th, the Columbine High School Massacre happened on this day, and the DEEPWATER HORIZON exploded in the Gulf of Mexico."

"Some good things must had happened on that date," I countered, hoping for the best.

"Name one."

"I woke up today and it's your birthday."

I sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY as I had since I met Dakota over ten years ago.

"That's one thing I love about my birthday. Your singing that song."

"Count of my singing it next year."

"And for years to come."

"Word that."

I hung up and returned for another bout with sleep.

A good thing any day of the year.

ps Dakota is the one standing.

420 - 2010

2010

California's Secretary of State has certified the voting ballot for the legalization of marijuana. 420. The forces of ganga are asking reefer smokers around the nation to support this measure with a donation of $4.20 in recognition of the legendary Point Reyes high school students who would met at the statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke reefer. Millions of potheads gather on 4/20 every year to promote a change in the United States' failed prohibition against the weed.

While other states have decriminalized possession or sanctioned medical use, California's initiative would permit growth, possession, sale, and ingestion of marijuana for casual smokers. Progressive legislators are seeking to free up billions of tax dollars wasted on the war against marijuana as well as the potential state revenues gained from the sales tax on marijuana. The police are divided on the issue, although a majority of Californians are in favor of the measure.

If the law passes through the voting process, California would be in conflict with the federal laws against the herb and also New York City's anti-marijuana jihad led by the ayatollah of uncool, Mayor Bloomberg. Arrests for weed in the 90s hovered around 1000. In 2008 the NYPD rounded up over 40,000 people per annum, mostly young males of color. Andy, the ex-cop at the diamond exchange, said of his years on the force, "You can tell when someone's high on pot. The stupid smile. An easy arrest and most of the time non-violent too."

"So you don't smoke weed?" I knew better.

"Don't ask, don't tell." Andy was a straight Vietnam vet, but was smart enough to recognize when to follow the Pentagon's policy on homosexuals in the military.

California would be wise if it copied the Netherlands' lead on marijuana.

1. To prevent drug use and to treat and rehabilitate drug users.

2. To reduce harm to users.

3. To diminish public nuisance by drug users (the disturbance of public order and safety in the neighborhood).

4. To combat the production and trafficking of drugs.

(from Wikpedia)

In other words no naked hot tub parties after midnight playing the Grateful Dead at 10 on the volume knob unless you invite the neighbors too.

420

Send in your contribution of $4.20 to NORML

It's time to end the madness.

END THE WAR ON DRUGS

DEFUND THE DEA.

FREE THE POWS

One more thing.

Fuck Bloomberg.

4:20 4/20 2021

WRITTEN 2008

Police and parents demonized Marijuana during my youth. Reefer smokers were condemned by the courts. John Sinclair, the MC5 radical, was sentenced to ten years of prison for the crime of ‘giving’ an undercover agent two joints. The severity of his punishment did not deter the millions of marijuana smokers of the 60s from becoming disciples after the Summer of Love.

I remained straight.

Drugs were for someone else.

I liked beer. It was almost legal, if the police ignored the drinking age. My friends drank beer too, but they were also converts to marijuana. We had met two years ago at the Surf Nantasket, a dance club on the beach. That evening we had just seen the Rockin’ Ramrods, the South Shore’s #1 band. My three friends wanted to smoke marijuana on the way home. I told them no.

“I don’t want to get a contact high.” My drugs of choice was beer, wine, and any other form of alcohol. Marijuana was against the laws of the state. No one in my family had ever gone to jail.

"Pot is better than alcohol and safer than cigarettes." John was a head. He smoked every day. His grade average at high school was a straight D.

"You smoke both." The radio in my VW Beetle was tuned to WMEX. The DJ was playing the Zombies SEASON OF THE WITCH. It was a groovy song.

"Girls like smoking weed." Frank E had been in the Marines for six months. A broken leg had earned him an honorable discharge. He brandished a joint between his fingers. "It makes them horny."

My girlfriend was straight. Kyla was a cheerleader with a divorced mom. We had come close more than a dozen times that summer.

“Smoke it.” John lit up a reefer. He attended Catholic Memorial. It was my school’s arch rival. “You’ll feel good.”

“Smoke it.” Thommie Gordon played hockey for Archbishop Williams. He had long hair. His sister was cute. “It won’t hurt you.”

I opened the sunroof of the VW. My window too.

“Smoke it.” Frank E sucked on the joint. “Girls like it, especially that hippie girl from Weymouth you like. Susan Finn.”

“She does?” I had spent the entire afternoon trying to get the petite brunette out to the beach. She had a reputation for being 'easy'. I was frustrated from Kyla's refusals. She wanted me to wait until after college. Four more years was an eternity for a teenage boy.

"Yes, she does.” A match flared before John’s face. He inhaled off the joint and then passed it to the front. I grabbed the joint from John. I inhaled like a cigarette. I had smoked one of those in 1964. I suspected the same result from the joint. Harsh fumes and coughing.

I was wrong.

I was a long-distance runner. My lungs sucked in a big hit of smoke. I didn’t exhale for 30 seconds. The plume exiting my mouth filled the VW with a cloud. At first I didn’t feel anything. The light turned green. I watched the color. It was so beautiful. I said the same to John. He agreed. Frank did too. The Misunderstood played CHILDREN OF THE SUN. We didn’t move for the entire song. A horn finally broke the trance. We were holding up traffic. I shifted into first and we drove to John’s house in Wollaston to smoke another joint. I was no longer straight. My life was different from before.

My friends laughed hysterically.

I joined them.

I was ruined for society and have remained FTW, especially on 4/20, National Smoke Day.

420 wasn’t the original choice for this holiday, however 4:20 was the mythical time that these pothead from San Rafael High School in California would meet at Louis Pasteur Statue to get high.

Hence 420.

Not much else to say other than I’m going out to break the law.

It’s time to free the weed.

If you got it, smoke it. I will.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS by Peter Nolan Smith

WRITTEN Sep 19, 2010

The political situation in Bangkok had gotten out of control. The red shirts controlled the city. The police did nothing. People called them daeng moh or watermelon. They were red on the inside. Thaksin was a fellow cop. The Army was in the hands of the old elite or phuu laak maak dee. Bloodshed was a daily occurrence. The government planned a nationwide curfew.

Shut down everything.

Even in Pattaya.

Sam Royalle called me from his house on the other side of Sukhumvit.

"You want to go out tonight. After tonight all the bars and go-gos will be shut." Sam was recovering from a nasty lung infection. His doctor had advised rest. There was only so much staying at home for Sam. "We haven't gone out in ages."

"I know." I had spent my holiday with Mam and our son Fenway. "Let me ask Mam."

Mam trusted me as far as she could see, however Sam had helped me on many occasions.

"It's holiday. Go out with friend. Don't come back until you mao kah."

Basically meaning get legless.

Mam knew that I like drinking. We made love before I left the house. My libido belonged to her. I was late to meet Sam.

By an hour.

Mam had made sure that I had no desire.

Sam and his friends waited at What's Up a Go-Go. The go-go was packed with farangs looking for a girl to barfine for the duration of the upcoming curfew. Sam ordered a round of tequilas. I winced after my shot.

"What wrong?" the manager asked tossing back her tequila.

"Tequila very good."

"Strong." Oi was a tomboy and she only hired girls who liked girls..

Few of the male customers noticed the dancers' sexual preference, because near-naked girls dancing to techno appeared straight to a drunken farang, however several girls glared at a bald-headed German with jealousy, as he barfined a pretty girl in her late teens.

At first I thought it was envy, but realized the vicious looks directed at the male was that of a lover and I recalled the Jefferson Airplane once singing, "Saddest thing in the whole wide world, see your baby with another girl."Same goes for a girl going with a man.

I asked Oi, the manager, if her girlfriend got it-sah or jealous.

"My girlfriend thinks I have sex with every girl here." She rolled her eyes mentioning the real Thai word for jealous. "But not true. I only love her."

"So you don't look at any other girls?"

"Looking not same as making love."

"So when you look, you don't think about making love with the girl."

"I not say that." Oi ordered a round of kamikazes to shut me up.

My eyes roamed the club. Sam's girlfriend cuddled with tall dancer from Isaan on the banquette and I sat with her. The dancer went to the ladies room and I asked her, "I know you like girls. Why you not go with your friend?"

"He has good heart." Dtum looked across the bar to where Sam was buying a dancer a drink. She raised a thumb to approve of his choice. They would share the performer for a menage-a-trois later. "But if I not have him, then I stay with lady. Better than man. Lady love you. Man only want to_____you know. You not think girl love girl bad?"

Bad?

North Hollywood sold several billion dollars worth of DVDs dedicated to lesbianism. I wrote a novel about it. NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Men fantasize about a love triangle incessantly, only this solipsical equation doesn't run true to the dream. Girls who like girls like boys only because they really like girls. At best you're a man-slave. At worst you're a spectator.

In 1975 I had been hitch-hiking in Big Sur. A hippie. It was getting dark in the forest on US 1. Cars were few. The trees were huge. Camping solo seemed my only option, until a pick-up truck stopped on the shoulder. Two men scurried from the flatbed and ran into the forest like they were wanted fugitives. Two women were in the front. Both cute in a Rubenesque fashion.

"Where you going?"

"LA."

"We're going to San Diego. What you think about getting some wine and camping with us tonight?" The cuter one asked from the passenger seat.

"Cool." And I jumped in the back.

1975. Over thirty years ago. Long hair. Hippie girls. Longer hair. Big Sur. We bought a jug of wine and drove off the road to a grove of redwoods stretching into a cobalt blue sky. Stars glowed above the treetops. We exchanged names. Theirs were Flower and Sammy. I gave mine as James.

"James Bond?" Flower was older and had long brown hair.

"James reefer Bond."

Both of them laughed and Flower tolled a joint. She wore overalls without a bra. Her breasts were big. Sammy's were small. We started a fire and ate fruit, smoked pot, and drank wine. Within 30 minutes we were naked on a scratchy blanket. They called my cock 007, even though it wasn't that long. We had sex throughout the night. Flower took everything I gave her, but the second I entered Sammy my pleasure reached a climax like a storm wave.

One in-and-out.

Flower didn't like this. I was supposed to be a tool. As the dawn broke over the redwoods they began a long sumo wrestling match into a 69 Death Grip excluding any male touch. Flower sneered at me, as if her groans were merely a subterfuge to entice Sammy into this embrace. They finally stopped the orgy. Sleep.

They had pulverized my libido and I understood why the other two men had fled the truck. I crawled from the redwood grove and caught a ride south, knowing that girls like girls and that was it.

Same in Pattaya.

My friends think these girls are experimenting. Most are 'tom-dee' or lesbians and like Gore Vidal said, "Once is experimentation. Twice is perversity."

I left my friends that night and returned home. My wife and daughter were asleep. I lay on the bed and read a little. Ezra Pound. Within a few minutes I was asleep, because these two girls are the only menage a trois in my world.

SOMEONE TO LOVE The Great Society

In 1965 Grace Slick and her husband formed the Great Society in San Francisco. They released 'SOMEONE TO LOVE' as a live single on Autumn Records with Sly Stone as the producer. Sadly Grace left the band to join the Jefferson Airplane, which scored a huge hit with their version of SOMEONE TO LOVE.

To hear the Great Society SOMEONE TO LOVE, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsS9NJ36tnQ

After Bathing At Baxter's - The Jefferson Airplane

The Milton town library added another angle to my education. The head librarian recognized my thirst for knowledge and allowed my taking out adult books at the age of ten. I read Nicholas Kakanzakis' THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHIRST, Balzac's A HARLOT HIGH AND LOW, Prescott's CONQUEST OF MEXICO, OM BURKE's TRAVEL AMONGST THE DERVISHES. If a book of interest had never previously been checked out, it perked my transgessional interest. My parents never questioned my choices. They had forced my attendance at a parochial hgih school. My grades were better than good, but not as good as my older brother, who always speedread my take-outs for pornography, although after never finding any titillation I went back to his comic books. Thankfully he never skimmed through HUbert Selby's LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN or LE HISTOIRE D'O.

Sadly the musical selection was devoted to Pat Boone and Perry Como, until the appearance of After Bathing At Baxter's by The Jefferson Airplane in 1968. I had purchased their monster hit album SURREALISTIC PILLOW the previous summer, which was more folk than rock except for the epic SOMEONE TO LOVE. The elderly desk librarian was surprised by the rock album.

"I didn't know this was here. I loved COMING BACK TO ME in their last album."

"Me too." I pushed the long hair over my ears. LIFE magazine had featured the Flower Revolution in the Spring and I was in. Ready to go up country or hitchhike across the country to San Francisco and drop ACID.

"Let me know how it is."

The old in my town were cooler than our parents and upon my return to our teaberry split-level ranch house in a suburban development lost in the Blue Hills, I went downstairs and cued up the "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" on side one. Jorma's searing opening touched my soul and I turned up the volume to 10. I wished the top was 100. Marty and Grace. Her voice launched a million trips. Marty says "Armadillo." and I was cool with it meaning nothing. Skip's drums. Jack Cassady's thunder bass. I listened to the LP three times in a row, until my father came down into the basement and shouted, "Turn down that noise."

Nothing said how great this LP was better than his rejection. I was no longer trapped in the suburbs.

ps I reached the Haight in 1971.

Long past the Summer of Love.

I dropped Orange Sunshine and traveled to the where forever there.

I'm still a hippie. Where's the LSD?

To listen to After Bathing at Baxter's please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INUHhW_w-ws

Woodstock Plus 55 Years

On the weekend of August 15-18 in 1969 I was 17 years-old. My hair was a little long.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young people were heading to the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. I had to work washing dishes.

There was nothing cool about that.

I dropped out for permanent that autumn.

In the end I'm an old hippie.

Here's the Jefferson Airplane LIVE AT WOODSTOCK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUxMxwaLqg0

Monterey Pop Festival 1967

Fifty years ago the Monterey Pop Festival was held south of San Francisco.

"Three days of understanding. Even the cops grooved with us," sang Eric Burdon of the Animals later.

Many regarded the gathering of 60,000 counter-culture music fans to be the opening act of the famed Summer of Love.

Check out the line-up.

Friday Night

The Association The Paupers Lou Rawls Beverley Johnny Rivers Eric Burdon and The Animals Simon & Garfunkel

Saturday

Canned Heat Big Brother and the Holding Company Country Joe and the Fish Al Kooper The Butterfield Blues Band The Electric Flag Quicksilver Messenger Service Steve Miller Band Moby Grape Hugh Masekela The Byrds Laura Nyro Jefferson Airplane Booker T. & the M.G.'s Otis Redding

Sunday

Ravi Shankar The Blues Project Big Brother and the Holding Company The Group With No Name Buffalo Springfield (played w/ David Crosby) The Who Grateful Dead The Jimi Hendrix Experience Scott McKenzie The Mamas & the Papas The Mar-Keys

Only Ravi Shankar played longer than the allotted forty-minute set.

I was 15.

I loved the Airplane.

I traveled in the summer of 1971 to the Haight.

Four years too late.

But a hippie to the core.

Then and now.

To view THE MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL pease go to the following URL on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXqbcrKeHs0

FLOP HOUSE Charles Bukowski

you haven't lived until you've been in a flophouse,
with nothing but one light bulb and 56 men
squeezed together on cots with everybody snoring at once

and some of those snores so deep and gross and unbelievable—
dark
snotty gross subhuman wheezings from hell itself.
your mind almost breaks under those death-like sounds
and the intermingling odors: hard unwashed socks pissed and shitted underwear
and over it all slowly circulating air
much like that emanating from uncovered garbage cans.
and those bodies in the dark
fat and thin and bent
some legless armless
some mindless
and worst of all:
the total absence of hope
it shrouds them
covers them totally.
it's not bearable.
you get up
go out
walk the streets
up and down sidewalks
past buildings
around the corner
and back up the same street
thinking:
those men were all children
once
what has happened to them?
and what has happened to me?
it's dark and cold
out here.

~ Charles Bukowski

RED TATE - BAD POETRY by Peter Nolan Smith

Red Tate lies on the pavement Helpless flat on his back If his mother saw this sight Tears would fill her eyes

Red Tate drinks Ripple. Sometimes Thunderbird Red wine dulls his nerves. A bum A tramp. His mother’s second son.

1978

The Bowery 1962

In April 1962 my father attended a business meeting in Manhattan for Ma Bell. While my father was at his appointment, my older brother and I accompanied my mother to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty and rode a taxi north through the Bowery heading to the Enpire State Building. As we passed along the Bowery, I asked my mother, if the men sprawled on the sidewalks were dead.

"No, they're drunk like Red Tate."

Red was our town drunk. He has served with the Marines in Korea. He drank wine at the gas station and slept in a concrete bunker in the abandoned army base in the Blue Hills.

"You don't want to end up here "

My mother took us the Empire State Building. From the top the metropolis stretched to the horizons and into the Atlantic.

My father met us at Tad's Steak House. We asked about the men on the Bowery.

My father told us that some soldiers came back from the war damaged and drink helped quiet demons.

"Like the devil?" Asked my brother.

"No, something much worse."

During WWII my father had tested radar-directed 20mm cannons on B-26s In Kentucky. Thousands of miles away from the front line the fatality rates were 15%. My father never said what was worse adn I have no idea either. foto by Meryl Meisler

Lost In Lille Again 2011

After the Chunnel
Night
Luxembourg bound
Porsche Boxer
The Ambassador behind the wheel
Moi
Un passenger
Through the North of France
Flat
Same as Belgium
Jacques Brel's
Le plat pays qui est a mienne.
Eyes shut
Still seeing the flatness
Safe on the Autoroute
The ambassador behind the wheel
Luxembourg three hours away
Sleep
Wake
Past midnight
On a bleak urban street
Not a soul in sight
Nothing says where we are
But I know.
Lille
I've been here before
With the ambassador
Behind the wheel
A wrong turn on the Autoroute.
Lost before
Lost now.
The ambassador says one word
"Lille."
I nod without a word.
We have been here before.
Luxembourg bound
Lost in Lille Again

Johnny Romero PR Parisian

In 1985 Johnny Romero owned les Nuages, a St. Germain nightclub frequented by James Baldwin and James Jones. I was living with his daughter, Candida. She was 17 and I was was 32. He said nothing about our age difference, but after hearing that I lived on the Lower East Side, Johnny asked, "Are there still Puerto Ricans in New York?"

"Plenty, but the Dominicans are taking over?"

"Everyone gets their time in the sun, even chocha Dominicans."

Johnny had a temper, but was tough.

He had survived a fall from an airplane.

His parachute had failed to open.

He hit the ground from 2500 feet.

One night he told me, "Landing felt like I got hit by King Kong."

Johnny had run a New York club on Minetta Lane catering to white women hanging out with colored men. He left the city because of the Mafia.

"They were tougher than a fall from an airplane."

Johnny was rough around the edges of cool, mais 'un vrai mec' and they don't make them like that anymore.

Or Candida