Dark Thoughts

A friend has been in distress. overwhelmed by the darkness. i understand the darkness and earlier this month I had told my therapist that Ihad experienced dark thoughts Do you want to see a psychiatrist? Psychiatrist are doctors. They prescribed drugs to deal with mental illness. I hadnt seen one since admission to the hospital for cancer four years ago. I was troubled by the recurring dark thoughts of hopelessness and agreed to meet one. A Zoom call, if I recall correctly. We spoke for an hour. we coveredall the bases. Thoughts of hurting myself. Thought if hurting othersI understand. I have weathered the storms of the last years. Recreating this me from the ashes of the previous mes knowing I'm not not and never will be a me to satisfy the others. That's okay. The Mes and me know how to deal with that now.

Alone In My Bed

I wake on this gray morning Alone in my bed The sky outside A light gray Not cold No need to get of bed Pulling up the blanket Not for warmth But comfort I feel the urge To look at the news To see the horror of this world Not first hand Distant Far from my bed And it's warmth__ At one point I will break out this cocoon of comfort Knowing what to expect America joining the genocide No longer just arming Zion But dropping bombs Everywhere Iran killing its leaders and people Tens and thousands to appease Zion's blood lust To divert any need to answer Questions about pedophilia To protect a corrupt president Who never served his country__ I would rather lie in bed Hoping it all went away But not today and not tomorrow But one the sun will shine again And 'they' will be gone Dead in prison or in exile Good riddance Time to rise The revolution does sleep It does so awake Dreaming the dream__

Unnative Son

Barack Obama was attacked by birthers claiming the President had been born in Africa or Indonesia. Even after he provided his birth documents from the state of Hawaii, the GOP accused Obama of forging his papers. This campaign of defamation never ceased with President-elect Trump leading the charge, however recent reports from the Sub-continent have spread rumors of Trump's birth to Nazi exiles in Pakistan and his adoption by a KKK sympathizer from New York.

The likeness of the young boy is uncanny.

Another alien at the helm.

A third generation Nazi at the helm of America.

Hitler's greatest triumph.

May 24, 1978 - Kiev Diner - Journal

Alice woke up screaming. She had been dreaming a horrifying remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Awake she shuddered in my arms. Poor darling.

THE KIEV DINER

A Ukrainian diner
Sitting with Clover
A blonde runaway
Only sixteen
A little more than a friend.
4:28 AM
The after-hours crowd from CBGBs
Mindless
No one caring about the mindlessness
Rejects from destiny
Cups of coffee In their pale hands
Not wanting to be junkie zombies
But Vampires
To live forever
All victims exiled to the suburbs.
Rock and roll, sex, drugs.
Trapped by the will be
That never will be.
And living in the dreams of 1978.
Free stoned and punks.
Especially Clover
Sixteen
Free
From nothing and everything.

Jamais Seule Avec Angus

Sur l'Ile Saint-Louis
Sous la gris pluie
Seule,
Mais pas 100%

J'ai mon chien
Angus
Avec moi__
Sur le Rue des Deux-Ponts
Sans toi,
Notre menage a trois
Deux__
Il y a une semaine
Tu a me dire
« Adieu »
Non à bientôt
Simplement adieu __
Aujourd'hui, avec Angus
Sous la gris pluie
La Seine gris
Paris gris
Et Angus noir
Comme mon couer__
Il y a une semaine
Angus et moi te suivre
Sans espoir
A le Pont Louis-Phillipe
Toi a volte a face
Cinq mots tes tout derniers mots :
"Tu peux garder le chien."__
Mantenant
Sur le Pont Louis-Phillipe
Paris et le Seine si gris
Nous sommes deux
Angus et moi
"Angus, viens, on va prendre un verre.
"A le Louis 9."
Comme moi, Angue n'est pas seule__

In English although somehow I wrote the French version first thanks to my French lovers or 'les dictionaires couchant'. Thanks to those and alos the subtitles in the French cinemas. If it weren't for them I would have never leasrned 'quelgues-choses' meant something.

NEVER ALONE en Snglais

Beneath the gray rain
Alone,
But not entirely—
I have my dog,
Angus,
With me__
On the Rue des Deux-Ponts
Without you,
Our 'ménage à trois'
Now just a menage a two___
A week ago,
You said to me,
"Goodbye."
Not "See you soon,"
Simply, "Goodbye"—
Today, with Angus,
Beneath the gray rain—
The Seine gray,
Paris so gray,
And Angus is black—
Like my heart—
A week ago,
Angus and I followed you—
Hopelessly—
To the Pont Louis-Philippe.
You turned to face us—
Five words—your very last words:
"You can keep the dog."—
Now,
On the Pont Louis-Philippe,
With Paris and the Seine so gray,
There are just two of us—
Angus and me.
"Angus, come on, let's go get a drink."
"At the Louis IX."
Like me, Angus isn't alone—

ps this poem was recorded for a scene in Jack Haven's WAITING FOR BROOKIE in which I have a role. Mina Walker engineered the track for background music for a early scene with Alex McVickers in Paris. Only my voice as James Steele, French Pop Star

I'll add the song at a later date

Angus et moi - Rue de Basfroi chez Alan Vaughan - Paris 1984

Sonny by The Rubber Bandits - 2017

The Rubber Bandits came to my attention with "Horse Outside" in 2011. They have been a constant comfort to the revolution for the Irish and all of us.

Sonny attacks the staggering stagnation due to the criminalization of the mentally ill and addicted.

According to Wikiepedia Blindboy Boatclub has criticised the art establishment in Ireland, saying that: "[Galleries and museums] preach only to the converted. They remind us of churches, pure solemn and inhabited by very silent people who don't open their mouths, for fear that someone else might find out that they don't fully understand the art that's on display. Art galleries in Ireland are like big vegan churches, and the curator always wears black, like a priest, and the visitors are there for the free wine. Most people who attend Irish galleries are other artists, and they all whisper to each other about commissioning opportunities inside imaginary confessional boxes."

Hell yeah.

DIRTY OLD TOWN by the Pogues 2009

Today several hundred bands will parade up 5th Avenue in New York in honor of St. Padraic. Not one of them will play DIRTY OLD TOWN. I love the Pogues and what about Spider's teeth. real stumps they are.

So for a good lift give this a listen

And if you don't like it, Go hifreann leat!

QUEEN OF THE PLAZA by Peter Nolan Smith

St. Patrick’s Day promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour I had given directions to the toilet over a hundred times.

Most of the visitors said ‘thank you’.

“Why don’t you just print out directions?”

My co-worker pulled off her glasses. Janet's eyes were out of focus like someone waiting to be informed by a doctor that they were blind. Most people with reading glasses had that look.

“Firstly, because Americans can’t read maps and secondly we might get lucky.” I was wearing a leprechaun tie and a forest-green Donegal Tweed suit jacket.

“Lucky how?” Janet refocused her eyes on the parade-goers.

“Someone might buy something.” My mother’s Irish mother  came to America at the age of fourteen. Nana said that she was lucky and I bet on the survival of the luckiest over the fittest every day of the year.

Today was no exception.

“Buy what?” Janet put down her People magazine. She would take most of the week to read it. “We have no crosses, no NYC charms, no Claddad rings. That’s all these people buy besides beer and something green.”

“Nothing wrong with drinking beer.” My grandmother had brewed beer in her Jamaica Plains cellar during the Prohibition. I celebrated Beermas at least once a week and Guinness was good for pregnant moms.

“My father said whiskey was invented to keep the Irish from ruling the world.” Her prejudice against Spirits was distorted by her tribe’s love of God. Jews weren't known for aspiring to shitzkahdom.

“We ruled the world long before your Yahweh wrote the Ten Commandments of Don’t.” Moses’ tablets had created a land of No and I lived in more of a yes world. 

“Stop being so negative, Janet.”

“Not so negative? Our store is in a basement. Only three things function in a basement; bar, a brothel or a boiler.” Janet’s morning Valium was wearing off faster than mascara on a crying whore. Her hands shook with desperation and she pointed a long fingernail to the bathroom for the benefit of an older lady in distress. “Plus our merchandise is dreck. Who staying at the Plaza would buy this crap?”

“A blind man might.” My friend Richie Boy had partnered up with two losers. One was a thief and the other was broke. Janet and I hadn’t made a sale this month and only two in February, but I had a shot at selling a million-dollar ruby to a Detroit schmatta businessman. The commish would pay off my debts and buy a plane ticket to Thailand, so I could see my kids. 

“We might get lucky.”

“2009 is not a year for luck.” Janet's hair had been blown-dried so many times that her coif resembled a thatched peasant hut. One session at the upstairs beauty salon to repair the damage was out of her price range.

Last year she grossed $200,000. 

This year she’d be lucky to hit 50K. 

2009 was not 2005.

“It could be worse.” Rain was the norm for most St. Patrick’s Day. The Neponset River in Boston had flooded its bank on Evacuation Day 1968. In Lower Mills Station only the tops of the trolley cars had been visible. Today's forecast was blue skies and fleecy clouds. It was a good day to be Irish.

“That’s what’s scaring me.” Janet plucked a Valium from within her purse. A doctor friend had put her on the suicide watch. I made sure she only ate one.

Within ten minutes she achieved her desired level of apathy and stared at People Magazine’s photos, as if the young girls in pretty clothes mirrored her present.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I left the store and signaled the security guard to keep an eye on Janet, because while there might not be customers, however the previous week two thieves had clipped three store with bad credit cards.

I had a coffee at the Austrian pastry shop and then made the rounds of the Retail Collection.

Every salesperson had the same story. Not a single one of the day’s walk-ins had purchased a gift from the luxury stores.

No musk-ox sweater, no Sea Island cotton shirts, no imported alpaca blankets.

St. Patrick’s day was shaping up to be another goose egg and I returned to our store infected by Janet’s pessimism,

“It’s your friend, Richard.” Janet handed over the phone and buried her face in the magazine.

“How’s it going?” Richie Boy was in his store on 47th Street.

“Lots of green going for a pee. It's as if someone was handing out flyers on 5th Avenue advertising PEE IN THE PLAZA."

“Any sign of Arabs?” St. Patrick’s Day on 47th Street was as dead as the Plaza.

“None.”

Several hundred Saudis were encamped at the Plaza.

Yesterday one came down to the Retail Collection and looked at an emerald ring belonging to Richie Boy’s partner. The asking price was way off base for a stone filled with resin. Hopping for a second shot I had memoed two exquisite emeralds from an Afghani color stone dealer. Both were gems and locked in our safe.

"Maybe they'll show in the afternoon."

"I'll be waiting." Be-backs’ were rare at the Plaza.

“Is anything ever going to happen there?” Richie Boy was losing sleep over this store.

“I’d like to say yes.” It had taken four-hundred years for Ireland to free most of the island from the British, but the prospects for Retail Collection were worst.

"It is the Plaza."

The Plaza had been a destination for over a hundred years, however the new Israeli new owners had trashed the legendary hotel to sell condos and they had invested nothing in advertising for the Retail Collection, plus the sound system was stuck on same nine insipid world songs. Sometimes I felt like working here was like being subjected to monotony torture at Guantanamo Bay Lite and I said to Richie Boy, “This place is a lost cause.”

“I’m going to give it another couple of weeks and then pull the plug.” Richie Boy’s father had been against the deal from the start. Closing would prove him right and the old man never liked being in the wrong.

“Just keep my partners from ripping me off.”

“You got it.” I hung up the phone.

Janet’s eyes were stuck on the same page. Many bosses would have fired someone in her condition.

Victor McLaughlin’s stunning performance of betrayal in THE INFORMER had forever prejudiced me against snitches.

Her mental condition was our secret.

The five hours to closing threatened to stretch their length beyond three-hundred minutes, until an elegant woman in her early 40s descended on the escalator.

Cherry-red hair framed a face as white as an equinox moon. Her slender body had never borne an extra ounce of weight and her sophistication was derived from life and not designer clothing. The woman stepped off the escalator and the salespeople snapped to attention, as her stiletto heels clicked on the tiled floor.

Janet put down her magazine, took off her reading glasses, and rose from her chair. Years of experience had honed her radar for a potential customer. Her eager smile was a masterpiece of Park Avenue dentistry and I hated telling her, “Janet, she’s coming to see me.”

“You?” Disappointment tremored on her face.

“Dove’s an old friend.”

I left the store to embrace the redhead. Her taut body was a testament to good living and her face retained the youngfulness of a thirty year-old, except for the world-weary grey eyes. The injections of her Swiss rejuvenation clinics bordered on magic.

I released Dove and introduced her to Janet.

“You two are friends?” Janet couldn’t believe that someone so ‘fabulous’ was my friend.

“We've known each other since CBGBs.” Dove and I had met at the bar during a Ramones concert. She had been a rail-thin blonde desperate to become the second coming of Nico. Several punk groups promoted her as tomorrow’s darling.

Back then Dove lived too much for today to be anyone’s tomorrow and opted for a career as a Senator’s mistress. She had been a woman so long that most people had forgotten her life had begun as Dave.

“Over thirty years ago. I once saved his life.”

Dove’s husky voice recounted her revenge on a thug from New Jersey who had beaten me with a baseball bat outside of a Paloma Picasso party. He had acquired a permanent squint after she stuck a cigarette in his eye. Janet watched intently, as Dove surveyed the jewelry under glass.

“If you see anything you like, I’ll be happy to show it to you.” Janet had a tendency to step other salespeople’s toes. This practice was considered bad form and I admired her lack of shame. I wasn’t much better at starving my fellow workers.

“When your friend Richie Boy told me that he had opened a store in the Plaza, I had expected South Sea pearls, Burma rubies, and pink diamonds.” Dove wrinkled the delicate cartilage of her nose. Her taste ran toward Madison Avenue and Place Vendome.

“We have some pretty crappy stuff.” Richie Boy’s busted partner had loaded the cases with second-hand merchandise from Iowa pawn shops and out-of-style closeouts from bankrupt jewelers. Subsequently our inventory was an unavoidable embarrassment, but I had two aces in the hole.

“I have something in the safe that might interest you. Emerald green for St. Patrick’s Day.”

One emerald cost about $200,000, but the other was in her price range and I held up a 5-carat Sea-Green Emerald surrounded by a micro-pavee of diamonds in an 18K gold and platinum ring.

"Very nice." I slipped it onto her finger. She was a size 6 same as the ring.

"The color reminds me of the Connemara Hills after an afternoon rain." I had spent the wet autumn of 1997 within sight of the Seven Pins.

“Nothing greener than Ireland where it’s either raining, stopped raining, or about to rain. Wetter than a bucket of beer.”

Hearing Dove laugh made me realize how much I missed her, although not enough to give her the ring for free.

We haggled on the price like two old nuns over the baptismal name of an abandoned baby.

“$32,000 and not a dollar more.” I whispered into her ear. This was my sale.

"I love it when you play tough." Dove dipped into her pocketbook and withdrew a clutch of c-notes. “Green good?”

“Even better on St. Patricks’ Day.” I eyed Janet. This was 100% my sale. I wasn't giving the loser a dime. It was bad luck.

I called the emerald's owner and beat him down an extra $1000, insuring Richie Boy got his cut. His partners got nothing and at the end of the day I had have almost enough to get out of town.

I counted out the money. It was about an inch thick and stuck $4000 in my pocket.

“So now that’s out of the way.” Dove glanced at her delicate Audemar-Picat watch. I had seen an identical model on 47th street for $120,000. “I think it’s time for a drink.”

“Drink?”

"You haven't stopped?"

"I'm no quitter." I liked drinking in the afternoon. The bars were empty then.

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. You’re Irish. I’m Irish.” Dove turned to Janet. “You don’t mind if I steal your partner for a few minutes. We have a little catching up to do. How’s the Oak Bar these days?”

“It isn’t what it used to be.” Janet had stuck her head in the famed bar once.

$16 glasses of wine were beyond her means.

Mine too, but $9 Stellas were affordable and we went upstairs. The Oak Room was packed with businessmen at table. We sat at two stools at the bar. The bartender remembered Dove from long ago. She ordered two Jamesons from Orlando.

“A little heavy for the early afternoon.”

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. It’s never too early.” Dove clinked my glass.

She held her drink like a woman, but drank like a man. Some masculine traits were harder to lose than others.

“Never too late either.” We hadn’t seen each other in eight years. Holding her hand bridged that chasm of time. Her model's life revolved around the fashion seasons in Paris. I amused her with my tales of Thailand, my two wives, four children, an arrest for copyright infringement, coming back to take care of a crazed dog in Palm Beach and finally opening the store in the Plaza.

“I thought the Plaza would generate big sales. I’d work four years and retire again. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’ll be lucky to last out the month.”

“These are tough times bound to get tougher." Dove eyed a table of politicians in the corner. One nodded to her with respect. Her US senator had been dead for more than twenty years, but his power remained on her skin. “You could go back in Ballyconeeley. Your mother wanted you to find someone like your aunts and sisters to marry, so you rent a house from Sir Robert Guinness. Not cheap either for off-season and you end up in a haunted cottage.”

“It used to be a schoolhouse.” The cold house was situated on edge of the Ice Age bogs. The winds off that primitive plain wrapped the walls with dying voices. "There was something there."

“The ghosts of the beaten boys.” Dove signaled Orlando for two more Jamesons. “And the only women you found out there were knocked-up teenagers and lesbians.”

“I’m glad you find it so humorous.”

“No one really laughs at their successes. Failures alone are funny.”

The veneer of elegance slid off her skin after the third whiskey and she laughed with the haughtiness of a whore regaining the best corner at the Holland Tunnel.

“Are you staying at the Plaza?”

“Not a chance.” She admired the emerald in the early afternoon light filtering through the Oak Bar’s wide windows. “I’m strictly a St. Regis girl.”

“I like the King Cole Bar.” I hadn’t had anything to eat today and the whiskey was rotting my belly. I slid off the stool. “Dove, I have to get back to work.”

“Not before we see the parade.” Dove hooked her arm over my elbow. She had always been stronger than me. “You worried that that girl working with you is going to steal the store?”

“No, more like she’ll have a nervous breakdown. Janet lost her money with Bernie Madoff." The sixty year-old Jerseyite had no idea how to pay for her next Botox payment, but Janet was no thief.

"She's not the only one."

"You?"

"I don't travel in that circle. Now don't worry about Janet. She’ll survive without you for another thirty minutes.” Dove had just bought an expensive ring and the customer was always right. “You’re seeing the parade whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like the parade.”

“Everyone loves a parade.” Dove led us down the marbled hallway to the foyer.

Muted drums muttered louder with every step. A high school band performed Michael Jackson’s BEAT IT. The playlist had expanded during my absence from America, but I had other reasons for shunning the parade than music.

“I’m from Boston. This parade has nothing to do with me.” The march through Southie had been a riot waiting to catch fire at the end of Broadway. Marchers had congregated at the dozen bars in that odd intersection. By mid-afternoon the orderly procession had devolved into a milling donnybrook. Fisticuffs had been the rule and a plastic shillelagh filled with sand had finished most fights. Broken noses and black eyes had marked a man's honor for days, but that pugilistic mirth had soured after the Bussing Riots of 1975 and I had left my hometown for New York in 1976.

“Are you talking about gay people not being allowed to march?” Dove checked our reflection in the mirror.

Other eyes were on us.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about?"

The security man at the hotel entrance sensed something amiss with my partner, but Dove passed for a woman, because she had been just that gender for most of her life.

"Hard changing the way the Church tells people to think." Dove ignored the guard’s scrutiny. There was nothing left of the boy from Queens. She was 100% upper-class and a lady to boot.

“Don't I know it.” I pushed my way through the revolving door. A high school band was stalled in front of the Sherry-Netherlands. 5th Avenue was packed twenty deep. The sky was blue to heaven and the temperature was a balmy 50 for March.

“Are you coming out of the closet?”

Standing on the steps, Dove's mouth softened to a smile. Twenty years in Europe would never change her being a New Yorker.

"I’m a sexuak adventurer. Straight sort of, but I don’t like exclusion in the Land of the Free.” Gays and Lesbians have fought for the right to express their Gaelic spirit without success.

“Land of the Freaked is more like it and especially with our brethren."

"Yes, Sex is a taboo subject. No one talks about knocked-up teenage girls or predatory priests."

“Because we’re all Irish.”

"I'm half."

"You love touting that thin Yankee bloodline, but you're as green as a four-leaf clover."

"Doesn't mean I have to support the ban on gays or lesbians marching in the parade." My younger brother's radio show in Boston had crusaded for acceptance by the straight world. He died of AIDS without the battle won and I carried on his struggle in my own way.

I don’t understand why anyone gay would want to associate themselves with this crowd?”

"Because you're straight so you say."

“Most gays think everyone is gay.” The crowd applauded a troupe of prancing Irish dancers. We walked off the steps. The senior doorman greeted Dove. She had been a guest at the Plaza many times with the Senator.

“They’re not 100% wrong. You're a little twisted in your own way."

"Not really." I wasn’t gay. I wasn’t bi. Outlaws had no sexual designation.

"Never?"

“Except with you.”

Dove had attempted to seduce me many times and she had succeeded the night she stuck the cigarette in my attacker’s eye.

“I wanted you so much. Still do.”

“I’m an old man now.” I was flattered by her desire, but I was faithful to my Thai wife. “And I'm set in my ways.”

“The parade is over a hundred years old. It’s set in its way too.”

No woman liked ‘no’ for an answer and she strode into the crowd.

“It’s the only parade to march up 5th Avenue. The others head downtown.” I held Dove’s hand. Her fingers and palm were teenage soft. I regretted my stubborn ways. I hadn’t been with a woman for months.

“And that too will never change.” Her words rang hard. She was a mean drunk.

“And neither will I or how I feel toward you.” I pulled her closer.

We made a good couple by the admiring looks from the crowd. They actually envied us. I peered over their heads at the marchers. The mayor waved to his constituents. A few drunks cursed him for tearing down Yankee Stadium. Coming from Boston I had been glad to see the House that Ruth Built in ruins, but the mayor was not a man of the people. His soul belong to those like himself. Billionaires.

The older man next to him swung his eyes in our direction, then narrowed, as if he recognized Dove. He waved to her, as the parade halted for another his photo-op on 5th Avenue.

”You want me to ask the mayor about including gays in the parade?”

“He’s looking for a third term not political suicide.” He was a mayor of the rich. Not the “There’ll never be a gay contingent in this parade. The Ancient Order of Hibernians are scared, if they let in the gays and lesbians that there’ll be a float dedicated to Ireland’s most famous homosexual, Oscar Wilde.”

“Or banners honoring Roger Casement.” The revolutionary had been martyred for his politics by the British not his homosexuality.

“Or bands playing songs of Sinead O’Connor.”

“That might be too much to ask.” The singer had told the Pope to fuck off on TV and her statement had branded her as dangerous to the Church, but they were a greater threat to the young than a shaved-head pop star, who had suffered from the abuse of the vicious nuns at an infamous laundry school of Dublin. “Although I wouldn’t mind hearing JUMP AROUND by House of Pain.”

The video had featured New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Bands, politicians, majorettes, the crowds.

Cops, drunks, and fights.

The latter was another reason to avoid the parade. The brawls turned very ugly fast and the cops rarely intervened before someone got bloodied.

“It could be arranged. After all I know people.”

Female parade-goers gazed at her forest green Armani suit cut two inches over her knees with envy.

The outfit cost more than most of them earned in a year. I could live off the price of her high heels for a month. Several pedestrians whispered to each other, thinking that she was famous without realizing the source of that fame.

“I think they want your autograph.” In my clothes I looked like her driver.

“I’m not famous.” 

Dove posed for her admirers, as if she were a French actress or a retired ballerina. Her poise had been perfected after years of practice.

“You were always famous for me.”

“More infamous than famous.”

“Less of either than you could imagine. Paris is such a small town for the wicked; same faces, same stories. All the time thinking of New York.”

“You could have stayed here.” Her senator died in her arms during sex. His family hadn’t contested the will to avoid a scandal. The deal had been for Dove to stay out of the limelight. The dead man had had to raise money for build a memorial library in the Deep South.

“Things would have been bad for me here. Too much money and too many bad friends.” She basked in the detoured memory of that path. “It would have been glorious.”

She pulled me forward to the police barricade. Two officers turned to stop her forward progress. Dove whispered to one. The young cop glanced over his shoulder to the distinguished-looking man in his 70s. The man motioned the policeman to open the barrier for Dove.

“You want to come?” This was her show, but it was nice of her to ask.

“No, I’m going back to work.” I pointed to her ring finger. The stack of hundreds filled my jacket pocket. Some of it would go to my wife. “Thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.” She held up her hand. The emerald shone in the afternoon sun like a pagan god’s eye. It was that good.

“Call me at the St. Regis tomorrow. We’ll have drinks.”

“Consider it a date.”

She blew a kiss and approached the older man, who greeted Dove with a kiss on the cheek and linked his arm with hers. He was her yes-man for the day. They made a nice couple too.

I returned to the Plaza, planning to close the shop, send Janet home, pay the dealer for the emerald ring, pass by 47th Street to drop off Richie Boy’s share, and then go to drink in the East Village with friends at a small Irish bar. I’d buy a few rounds and we’d tell stories about haunted schoolhouses and kissing Catholic girls. Most of them would be true.

I stopped at the top of the steps of the Plaza.

The parade had resumed its uptown progress and Dove had disappeared from sight.

I smiled to myself thinking that there were gays in the parade. Not just Dove, but men and women from all walks of life. We were all Irish or wanting to be, because on St. Patrick’s Day everyone loved the Irish.

My Loved Nana

My Nana came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14.

She broke her heel coming down the gangway.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow.

The native of the West refused to pinpoint the date.

We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are__

Anne Walsh Nolan 1954

My Nana left County Mayo and came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14. Boston. She broke the heel of her right shoe coming down the gangway. Her only pair. Her Uncle Father Mike was waiting to take her into servitude for a rich family in Salem. She spoke no English.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow. The native of Western Ireland refused to pinpoint the date. We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology. A friend from Florida thought she might have native Crow in her blood. To this day we know nothing.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are and will be as are was and will be all our generation.

Slainte

ps my older brother Frank on her left. I'm on her right. Foto taken in the backyard of our house in Falmouth Foresides, Maine

pps Her marriage license from 1919 to Peter Nolan, my namesake, in Boston notes her age as 26. He was a trainman and she was a housewife. Twenty-six years from 1919 pushes her date of birth into the 19th Century. 1883 in County Mayo if family legend is correct.

AI Overview

Based on the search results, there is no direct reference to a specific event named "Year of the Crow" in Ireland in 1883

ERIN GO BALI 1990

My first trip to Bali was in 1990. Kuta Beach was the island's most popular tourist destination for sea, sun, and fun. Being a pseudo-intellectual I opted for Ubud, an idyllic village reknown for Legong dancers, ornate temples, and non-disco evenings in bamboo cafes playing Balinese trance music.

I rented a small house off the Monkey Forest Road surrounded by verdant rice paddies. My bedroom overlooked a ravine whose fragile stream served the village's bathing needs. Ketut the house boy served breakfast and instant coffee in the morning. I wrote on a Brother Electric Typewriter. At night croaking frogs accompanied the gamelan music from the Pura Dalem temple. There was no international phone service other than at the post office. Traveler’s checks and cash were the sole forms of monetary transactions.

At night I listened to the BBC World News on a Sony World Radio and read tattered used books. Dragonflies buzzed through the room and the stars tolerated no earthly rival. I loved Ubud and stayed in the town for months.

Nearing March 17th I suggested to several westerners or ‘mistahs’ that we should staged a St. Patrick’s Day parade. None of them had Hibernian roots. My Balinese friends were enthused at the idea of celebrating Ireland's patron saint by drinking beer.

"And we wear green."

My house servant Ketut shook his head.

“Can not wear green. This unlucky color.”

“Unlucky.” He had used the Bahasa word ‘blog’. I had never heard it before.

"Yes, my uncle he have green car have many accidents.”

"Green is good luck in Ireland and Ireland is the European Bali."

"Ireland tidak Bali. No green and you not wear green too." Tuut was adamant about this edict, but said, "We drink beer and make music."

"That is good luck?"

"Drink beer always good luck."

Especially if a 'mistah' paid for it. I didn't argue with tradition and adjusted St. Patrick's Day in accordance with local customs.

On March 17th Ketut, his friend, and I drank Bintang beer at the Cafe Bali. They brought drums. I sang Irish ballads of British oppression and at sunset we marched down Monkey Forest Road with me singing BY THE RISING OF THE MOON. I adlibed the words.

Ketut said it was a sweet song.

“By the rising of the moon, by the rising of the moon, the pikes must be together at the rising of the moon."

Other Balinese joined the march. No one wore green. We trooped back to the Cafe Bali and switched from beer to 'arak', a strong palm wine. It wasn't as strong as Jamison's Whiskey, but it was a good drink for the first St. Patrick's Day in Ubud and I told Tuut, "Maybe one day you will wear green."

"Maybe a long time away from today."

"But not as far as never. Semoga Beruntung."

I thought that meant good luck and replied, "Go n-éirí an bóthar leat!"

At least I thought I said that.

Everyone clinked beer glasses.

I hadn't worn green either. It was bad luck in Bali and Indonesia in general since the color signified exorcism and infidelity. Satan was not in my soul and I was faithful to the world. The Wearing of the Green had to wait to someplace else.

It's a color close to my heart. Erin go bagh.

ps this was originally written in 2013

Roger Casement Martyr

Once a Knight of the British Empire Roger Casement was led to his death before a firing squad.

His crime was treason.

He had plotted to have weapons delivered to the IRA to fight against the English during WWI.

The Germans had failed to supply the arms.

A lover sold him out to the Brits.

His friends rejected the revolutionary after the English published his Black Diaries professing his homosexuality.

He was hung dead and thrown naked into a grave to be covered with limestone.

A traitor and a queer.

In 1965 his remains were returned to Free Ireland and according to Wikipedia after a state funeral the corpse was buried with full military honors in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. An estimated half a million people filed past his coffin. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, defied the advice of his doctors and attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 Irish citizens.

Casement's last wish, to be buried at Murlough Bay on the North Antrim coast has yet to be fulfilled as Harold Wilson's government released the remains only on condition that they not be brought into Northern Ireland.

The BBC reported on his death. They tried to debunk his struggles against oppression in Brazil, the Congo, and Ireland. One thing remains true.

Free the world.

Roger Casement would have waned it that way.

Traitor, but only to end injustice.

A MOTHER'S LAST WISH by Peter Nolan Smith

After Christmas 1997 my mother entered the final stages of her battle with cancer. These last rounds were not a pretty site, but her beauty remained intact to the end. Several days after the New Year my mother held my hand and said, "I'm so happy I made Christmas."

"Me too." I thought about John Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS and forced back my tears.

"You've been everywhere in the world. You've never been to Ireland. I'm leaving you a little money. I want you to go to Ireland and find a girl like your aunts or sisters to marry. Will you do that for me?" Her grip tightened to crack my knuckles. She knew her own strength to the measure. Her grandmother had fled the Aran Isles as a girl of twelve. Nana never went back home. The one boat trip was enough for her.

"Yes, I will." There was no refusing here, despite the incestuous nature of her last wish for her second son.

"You're a good boy." She released my hand with a sigh. "Help me with the medicine."

By medicine my mother meant her morphine drip. I hit her up good. Her tender eyes rolled into heaven and I kissed her forehead. Three weeks later she passed from this life. No one in my family contested her will and in August I received enough money to survive four months in Ireland. I had a new computer and the germ of an idea I wanted to nurture into a gem of a book. The west coast of Ireland

My good friend Camp arranged a rental in the far west of Galway beneath the Seven Pins of the Connemarra.

"That would be great." My Nana came from that part of the West. "What kind of house?"

"It belongs to a very aristocratic family."

"So it has to be grand?"

"How grand couldn't it be?" Camp was English. He lived north of New York in a valley dedicated to the pleasures of the wealthy. I trusted his taste, even if the Brit had never been to Ballyconeeley. Camp was an interior designer. Straight, but still an interior designer. They had style. "Are you in or are you out?"

"Count me in." I had read about the nearest town. Clifden had fifteen pubs. The guide books mentioned nothing about women.

"One more thing. Buy yourself some Wellingtons."

"Wellingtons?" I knew that the Irish-born Duke had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. "Are they cookies?"

"Nope, rubber boots. You'll be needing them."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Good luck with your writing and with your finding a bride."

"Thanks." I'd be happy with one out of two.

At summer's end I sublet my apartment and my boss at the diamond exchange wished me luck with my wife hunt.

"May you make your mother happy." Manny was a mother's boy. We all are in the end.

"I'm doing this for her. I doubt there will be any women." Most Irish women like women everywhere else left their hicktowns for big cities and the guide book had indicated that a small village could get more hickster than Ballyconeeley, which was renown for its cows and windy moors.

"Better you than me." The seventy year-old jeweler was in the first stages of divorcing his second wife. "I'm done with women. But you're still a young man."

"43." My father had six kids at this age. I had none.

"43. I would cut off your right ball to be 43 again." Manny slipped me a c-note. "Save it until you find a girl to take out to dinner. A yard has to go a long way with a girl from the sticks."

"Thanks." I stuck the hundred dollars deep in my wallet. It had to be good luck.

The next days's flight to Dublin took six hours. Customs and immigration went quickly and I caught a taxi from the airport into the city. The sky was crowded with low clouds trailing veils of rain. There was little threat of sun.

"Ah, so this is your first time to Ireland?"

"Yes."

"Well, get used to the weather. It's either raining, just rained, or about to rain. You got a good pair of shoes?"

"Yes." Heavy boots and also green Wellingtons."The driver recommended a cheap bed and breakfast on the other side of the Penny Bridge. The room was clean with a window overlooking an alley of brick walls. I didn't bother to unpack my bag and went to the front desk to I phoned my new landlord.

"So you made the flight over here okay."

"Yes, sir." I was respectful to my betters and elders.

"Why don't you come out here to pick up the keys for the house in the West. The taxi driver will know the way."

"I'll leave now."

I pulled on my cap and buttoned I caught a taxi outside on the street. The drive on the motorway was a short one. Upon arrival at the landlord's address the red-headed driver whistled in appreciation. The gravel driveway led through a quiet park to a large Georgian mansion with a nearby Victorian shed housing a steam museum. The only word for the estate was grand.

"What's this man do?" He impressed by my destination.

"I think he sells beer."

"A lot of beers from the looks of it. Me and mine must have helped pay for this with all the Arthurs I bought."

"Arthurs?" My ear was adjusting to the accent.

"Pints. The founder of brewery name was Arthur."

"So you know the family?" I had never met them.

"There's only the one, but I only know them from the glass in my hand. Good beer. Good people."

"Right." I stored this tidbit of local lore for use at a later time and tipped the driver.

He drove off and I walked up to the front door." Selling beer was a good business and I thought to myself, "If the cottage is a hundredth of this barrack, then I will be living in the lap of luxury."

The door opened before I had a chance to ring the bell.

"Welcome." A silver-haired gentleman greeted me with a handshake and ushered me inside the house. "See you had no trouble find the place."

"None at all, sir." It was a palace complete with medieval tapestries and 16th Century paintings. I tried not to stare. This much wealth was usually reserved for museums.

"Call me Robert." He was tall and slender. His clothing suggested a life of grace.

"Yes, sir." Shaking off my place in the world was not easy, despite Robert's bonhomie.

The two of us sat in the kitchen and conducted the business of exchanging money and keys. The big room was colder than the outside. We drank a glass of an excellent St. Emillion to seal our verbal agreement.

"You'll find the house easy enough. It's the first one on the right before Ballyconneely. There's peat for the fireplace, but I suggest getting a hot water bottle for bed. Houses out that way are not centrally heated like back in the States."

"Thanks for the advice." A light rain pattered against the lead window. I was glad to have my cap.

"One more thing. The phone is on, but only for incoming calls. You want to use it for calls?"

"No." I knew no one in Ireland and international calls were expensive.

"Okay, smart thing. You're writing a book, so I hear?"

"Yes." It was about a black pimp in Hamburg. The subject matter seemed out of place in this house and I closed the subject by saying, "A quiet place without any interference from the modern world should be great for writing."

"The old schoolhouse is quiet."

"Glad to hear it." I also wasn't telling him about my mother's last wish.

"Let me drive you back to Dublin. We can go for a drink at the Shelbourne. It's the best bar in town."

"I'd like that."

Robert's ride was a gray Ferrari from the 60s. The 250 GTE hit 120 mph on the rainy motorway. The windshield wipers worked over-time. A mansion and an Italian sports car were good omen for the cottage in the West.

"I love this car, but I'm getting too old to drive it." Nearing Dublin he slowed down to 60.

"I know what you mean." Getting in was easy. Getting out required a man-servant.

We stopped at the hotel on Stephen's Green for drinks. In the bar my landlord was greeted by several of the men. He ordered the finest whiskey at the bar. My rent money paid for both rounds. It was an early night for both of us. He dropped me at my bed and breakfast and I bid him fare-well.

"Enjoy yourself. My friends have spend many summers in that house."

"You don't stay there?"

"Oh no, we stay at the family house."

Oh." I entered the B and B thinking how bad could the guest house be. The man had a Ferrari.

The next morning I rode the train to Galway. A bus brought me to Clifden. The town was small, but five bars crowded the main square. The rain fell with ease. A taxi was at the curb. A beer could wait.I got in the back.

"Where you going?" The fortyish woman's accent was thick than a slab of breakfast toast. Her face was worn from hard work. Gold glinted on her left hand. Her married status eliminated the driver from my list of eligible.

"The old school house in Ballyconeely."

"Right, it is." She stepped on the gas and we traveled down a two-laner too narrow for the passage of two cars. The sea was to the right on occasion and small farms rolled over the small inland hills. To the north mountains fought for my attention. Their summits were blunted by clouds. Not a single person was working the fields. They belonged to the cows.

"Here we are." We were passing the ruins of a church.

"There?" My great expectations diminished to utter disappointment. I had been scammed by his Lordship.

"No, that's the old Protestant church. It burned down unexpectedly in 1920. Stayed burned too. The schoolhouse is that one."

"Oh." A squat white house lay across a gully from the ghostly church.

"Ah, yes, it's a fine building." The turn indicator presaged our entering a dirt track. The uneven surface would have broken the axel of the 250 GTE. "This is it."

"I guess it is." I got out of the car and shivered in my light jacket.

The lawn was overrun by thistles and the tufts of grass wavering in a wet wind. The whitewashed house was devoid of any modern design or ancient practicality. The tall walls stood facing the west. The Atlantic lay beyond the field. The color blue matched the shreds of sky visible through the tattered clouds.

"You'll be wanting to wear a few more sweaters in the house. It's cold inside." She joined my shiver. "I went to school here. The teacher lived in the upstairs. Some people say the house is haunted. What do they know. You have a good day now?"

"Thanks."

"You need a ride, call me. The name's Peg."

"I will." I watched, as she drove away in the direction of Clifden, then turned to examine my home for the next three months.

The old schoolhouse was not a mansion. Part of the roof was in need of repair. A neglected graveyard lay in the bog separating the schoolhouse and the burnt church. The wan sun slipped into a cloud bank and the rain beat on the hard dirt. I ran inside the house. Peg had been right, It was colder within the old schoolhouse than outside.

The simple decor of sitting room reflected its use as a summer house and the well-used furniture have been rummaged from the local dump. I lifted the phone. There was a connection. I blew in my hands and bent over to pile peat in the small fireplace. The prehistoric carbon lit fast and generated a soft heat, although smoke was curling into the room. Something was wrong with the flue. The old schoolhouse was no mansion. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey was on the desk.

The view out the window was bleak. The wet grass gave way to savage gorse. The sky was descending to the earth. No houses were in sight. Finding a woman here was going to be a challenge.

I poured two measures of Paddy into a fruit glass grimy with fingerprints. I downed the fiery antithesis of Jamison's Malted Whiskey in one go. My body shook with displeasure.

"Cheap whiskey."

I had a second glass and sat by the fire. The glow within matching the glow from the peat.

All and all the old schoolhouse wasn't bad, because this was where my mother wanted me to be and wherever she was in the afterlife, she knew that I had obeyed the first part of her wish.

Getting to Ireland was easy.

Meeting a girl like my sisters or aunt was the hard part.

There was only one way to make it easy and I finished off the bottle. It went down a little smoother than before and I wouldn't have expected anything different from the old schoolhouse.

The Far West Of Ireland

My grandmother came from County Mayo. Her last name was Walsh. Nana sailed to Boston at the age of fourteen. That ocean voyage was so traumatic that she never returned to Ireland, even though my mother and her sisters often offered to fly Nana to Shannon.

"I don't want to travel on that sea again."

"Planes don't float on the sea. They fly in the sky," explained my mother.

"I know that, but once across the ocean is fine enough for me."

She had a way with words and thanks to her blood that I was granted Irish citizenship under the 'born abroad' program. My cousin Oil Can also has his passport. Members of my family have traveled to the Republic. In 1997 I stayed in Ballyconneeley for over four months. It was the coldest autumn of my life.

Most recently I served as unofficial writer in residence at a diplomatic posting smack in the center of Europe. Madame l'Ambassador introduced me to the visiting dignitaries as her Irish artist. I called her the most beautiful woman in Luxembourg. It was the truht. One British minister was suspicious of my origins and asked, "In what part of Ireland do they speak with that accent?"

"The Far West." My Irish passport in my pocket was proof of my claim.

"Which is?" He wanted the name of the town.

"Boston."

"That's in America."

"Only for those that aren't Irish. For the rest of us there it's the Fada An tIarthar and we celebrate St. Patrick's on the same day as the redcoats evacuated the city for good. It's the best of days."

The British minister said nothing, but Madame l"Ambassador stood up for me. "He's only Half-Irish, but his accent in 100% Far West." We are longtime friends. She had been to Boston with me. It's a lovely town on the water.

Twins of Ireland

Last year my older brother was my # 2 friend. My best friend was my father. The native of Maine was 89. His address was an Alzheimer hospice south of Boston. Once a month I took the Fung Wah bus to South Station and then the commuter train to Norwood. It was a ten-minute walk to his rest home. Throughout the summer his condition deteriorated to the point where he couldn't remember where he was or what he was doing there. My brothers and sisters warned that he didn't recognize him and last September I approached the re-designed doctor's house with a heavy heart. He greeted me by name. My sisters saw him 2-4 times a week. My father has no idea who they were and I asked him, "Why can't you recognizes them?"

"Because they don't look like they used to?"

"And I do?" At 58 I had my teeth and hair, but the reflection in the mirror was not me.

"No, you look like a stranger too, but something about you reminds me about your mother, so I think of Angie and then you." He shuddered at the connection. We were never friends until my mother's passage from this world in 1996. I talked a lot. She spoke more. In some ways we were the same person for him.

"You remember your son Frank?" His memory was dim as a winter candle.

"My # 1 son. You two were Irish twins." My mother had dressed her two oldest sons alike since I stopped wearing baby clothes. Frank and I fought over everything, but she also loved that people thought we were twins.

"We weren't really Irish twins." The term pertained to children born within a year. My older brother and I were separated by 13 months. Actually 59 days. He was born on April 1. I arrived the morning of May 29.

"60 days were a week back then." He was talking about the 1950s. TV was black and white. Eisenhower was the president. America was the top world power. My father pointed to the clock on his desk. Time meant nothing to most to Alzheimer patients. "You were never on time." On time for him meant to the second.

"I was never really late." My punctuality ran 15-30 minutes behind the clock, although I had achieved perfect attendance throughout five grades in grammar school. My mother had saved those awards. I have the one from 5th Grade.

"Only once and once was more than enough." "That's an old story." My father was talking about the time that I had stayed over my girlfriend's house well past midnight. Her mother was not on the premise. We were alone. The radio had been playing THE VELVET UNDERGROUND. We came close to losing our souls to ROCK AND ROLL. "If it was so old I would have forgotten it." "Forty years is a long time." Janet had been wearing her cheerleader outfit. It was football season. "Forty-five years to be exact." My father had been an electrical engineer. He had studied at MIT. Numbers and math were his expertise. "To be exact you're right on the money." The year was 1967. I was 15.

Janet's mother came home at 1:30. I had left through the backdoor with my clothes in hand. I dressed in the backyard and watched the lights go out in Janet's house. There was no yelling. I waited for a minute to see if Janet came to her bedroom window, but she was a cheerleader and not Juliet and the only breaking light was a harvest moon. My neighborhood in the Blue Hills was a good four-mile walk. Bus stopped running at 9. The houses were dark. Everyone was asleep. I heard a car coming from the opposite direction. It was my Uncle Dave. The Olds stopped at the curb. "You want a ride home?" He had been coming from the VFW bar. Uncle Dave had served in the Pacific. Three years on a destroyer. "No, I'll walk it." I was in no rush to get home. "Your mother and father know where you are?" Uncle Dave was a good man. He made no judgment of other people's kids, even if they were family. "Sort of?" It was a teenage answer. "I was a teenager once. Your dad's going to be pissed at you, if you haven't called. You sure, you don't want me to drive you home?" "I'm good." I thought about sleeping in the woods. It wasn't that cold, but that would make it even worse. "Thanks for the offer." The Olds drove off in the direction of Quincy. Uncle Dave would be home in five minutes. I figured that I had another hour to go. I was wrong. My father pulled up to me at the crossroads before the parish church. He flung open the door of the Delta 88. It hit me in the thigh. "Where have you been?" He demanded with a voice that I had never heard from him. "At a girl's house." I hadn't told my parents about Janet. My mother wanted me to be a priest. "At a girl's house." My father knew what that meant. He had six kids. "You have any idea about what your mother thought happened to you?"

"None." I hadn't been worrying about my mother or father or school, while lying next to Janet's hot flesh.

His right hand left the steering wheel in the blink of an eye. I never felt his wrist smack my face. "I didn't want to do that." Tears were wetting his eyes. "I thought something bad happened to you." "Nothing bad happened, Dad." I rubbed my face. He had never hit me before. I tasted metal in my teeth. All of them were intact. "Next time call and let us know where you are." "Yes, sir." "Let's go home. I'll handle your mother." He sighed with regret. The next morning my eyes were shadowed with black and blue. My mother was horrified as was my father. Janet cried upon seeing my face. She said that she loved me. In some ways I felt like she had become Juliet, although I was no Romeo. My father and I maintained a cautious distance throughout the remainder of my teenage years. Hitting me had scared him and at the nursing home I held his hand. I had kids now and said, "I understand why you did what you did that night." "What night?" The memory had sunk back into the fog. "Drove me home in the dark. You were always a good father." I kissed his bald head, as my older brother walked into the room. My father looked at him with doubting eyes. "It's Frank, your oldest son." "That's not Frank. He didn't look like that." My brother was wearing a suit and I thought maybe that threw off my father. I stood next to Frank. "See the resemblance." "We're were Irish twins," My brother took off his glasses. "You two were never Irish twins, except for your mother." "It was good enough for her, Dad." She had loved her children with all her heart. My father too. "Then it's good enough for me, whoever you are." He offered a hand to us both. We spoke about Irish twins three times in succession without his retaining a single word. His mind had been swept clean of the good and the bad and I was lucky enough to possess a memory of both good and bad for him. My mother wouldn't have it any other way. I was her Irish twin and that was good enough for my father too.

Erin Go Gay - 1993

Aristotle wrote in his histories that the Celtic warriors preferred homosexuality to heterosexual joining. The practice of man with man abounded amongst the Gauls and men were deeply upset by the refusal of Romans to join them in gay orgies or one-one-ones. They hated the Latin straights. The Holy Roman Church quelled this freedom in favor of establishing their pedophiliac dominion over the souls of the Hibernian Isles.

Homosexuals and lesbians were put to the torch, whipped, exiled, imprisoned, and forcibly converted to heterosexuality by the wicked priests and lay brothers and nuns, however this weekend of 1993 the Free State of Ireland overwhelmingly voted to legalize the union between men and men and women and women. The Church vowed to fight the law, but the new Pope doesn't have a dog in this fight.

Pope Francis sought a new rock on which to form the new church and that foundation not devoted to sexual prejudice or the criminalization of a woman's right to govern her own body.

Despite having received an outstanding education from the Sisters or St. Jospeh, the Xaverian Brothers, and the Jesuits, my devotion to atheism prays for the eventual destruction of the Holy Roman Church and an end to its two-thousand year old reign of terror.

In the meanwhile Sunday was a good day to be Irish.

Free to be who we want to be forever.

Saoirse go bragh.

The Irish Are Coming 2011

After a month visiting my family in Thailand I returned to New York in 2011. On March 17 I extended invitations to a drinking Craic around the East Village for St. Patrick's Day.

"I’m back. Happy St. Patrick’s Day," I announced at the 169 Bar. To most od my friends, however my good friend Jocko Weyland, skateboarder/urbanologist, had begged off joining us with the following words.

"Thanks for the invitation. I’m honored, but I want to hibernate a bit and stay away from the sauce. Too much sauce in Tucson!"

My response was swift, because hibernating during the high holy holiday of hibernian inebreations was a heresy and I told Jocko, "Go dtachta na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"May the worms choke your worthless butt. But no worries. Tuesday evening I had a practice run in the East Village and I woke in a coma yesterday."

"Too much sauce."

"Too much everything."

Tonight is St. Padraic Eve. I'm beer-hungry.

Drinking with two comrades-in-arms.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to ye all.

The Shadow of Le Cafe de Flore

An October evening
Myrtle Avenue
Clinton Hill
Brooklyn
A week after the equinox
Sunset
6:21
The western sky golden__
A chill in the air
The neighborhood
Afoot on the sidewalk
Car traffic dying down
The world passing by
People in a hurry to get
Out of the wind
Not me__
I sit
In the peace of the evening.
A busy street
Not quiet
Just quieter than the bright of the day__
I sit in a collapsible chair
On the sidewalk
Holding hadns with coffee creme
A terrace of my own making
Happy dreaming of Paris
Le Boulevard St. Germain
Et le Cafe de Flore__
1984
Sitting outside en hivre
On a sunny winter's day
In the city
Grim Parisiennes chilled
By the prism of gray on grays
The exhaust
Of the Buses
Of the car
Of the taxis
Peitons bemused by dreams
Of the summer wind from Africa__
Smiles
People
Men hurry to ‘evening designations’
With mistresses
In the small hotels
Bordering the Parc de Luxembourg__
Here
On the terrace
Well-dressed and heeled women
Smoke
Check gold watches
A late lover
They smoke cigarettes
None waiting for me
A man sits with an elegant blonde
She smiles
Kiss on the lips
I smile__
I am sitting alone
And then
Time stands still on the Boulevard
And I drift__
Women
I remember women
Women of my life here
In Paris
Karine
Bernadette
Corrine
Mira
Gabby
Julie
Bridget
Et toutes les femmes
Polaroids in my memories
Other faces without names
Forever in love with the impossibility
Of me with them__
I am alone
But I smile
The waiter serves
Welsh Rarebit
A glass of Bourgogne
I take off my gloves
Hold hands with my wine
Warm in my cashmere
Sitting on the terrace
Watching the Sixth Arrondisement
Head to the cinemas
Les Deux-Magots
Le Drugstore
To evening assignations__
Friends arrive
By accident
Par hazard
We sit together
Not alone
We order a bottle of Bourgogne
Parus home__
Never thinking of the home
Left across the Atlantic
Then
My mother’s Welsh Rarebit
Not like that served by the Cafe le Flore
But I remembered hers and her
The first woman in my life
Some people never forgotten
Some things never forgotten__
Not the Cafe le Flore Paris
The last time there
2015
Mid-morning
St. Padraic’s Day
With
Julie
Candida
Christine
Gabby
And their Beaus
My plane leaving in four hours
Plenty of time
Stories
Not hiding a thing
No secrets laughter and then au revoir
Paris amour le Cafe le Flore
Toujours et forever
Even here on Myrtle Avenue
Not Paris
But 100% here__
Below photo Olivier Brial RIP et moi 1985.

ps with my eyes open I see us all at that table on Rue St. Benoit. No traffic on the Boulevard. Paris' air pollution so bad that the prefecture had closed the city to cars, trucks, and even buses. A quiet had seized the becalm. Occasionally to be disrupted by the Metro's rumble underneath the boulevard. Friends, wine, the Cafe Flore.

Back in the 80s I loved climbing the stairs with a phone jeton in hand to drop the token and dial America. The call lasted about fifteen seconds. Hello good-bye.

I am stronger now. I keep thinking of travel. I feel like Richard Burton, who in the 19th Century sought the source of the Nile with John Spekes. I have been all over the world, but now like Burton trapped as the British Consulate in Trieste at the end of his diplomatic career. Standing on the quai with ships setting sail south on the Adriatic. Wanting nothing more to be asea. Thankfully I have been trapped in New York and Montauk and not Kansas, knowing I will wander again.

Sheelah Day

The Hill of Tara has been a Celtic religious burial site since before the Pyramids of Giza.

The two Neolithic circular mounds within the Raith Na Riogh enclosure are adorned the image of Sheela Na Gig, a naked woman holding open a giant vagina.

A Long Lost Letter of The Wall

In the Autumn of 1997 Ty Spaulding and I resided in a roughly renovated schoolhouse west of Galway. The Atlantic Ocean was a five-minute walk away. The waves pounded the shore. Summer was gone for good.

 

 We were surrounded by rain-swept bogs, fog-wreathed mountains, and the damp beneath our feet. Fall was the season of rain in the Connemarra, but sometimes there was a glorious sun. The house phone only accepted in-coming calls. We wrote letters to our friends. 

Here is one to Jocko Weyland.

EPISTLE FROM BALLYCONEELEY

Yeah, This town has been a little strange, a view shared with Todd aka TY SPAULDING. September was fine. October grew grim. November the rains struck with sodden ferocity.   

The first day in town (Ballyconeeley) I went to the village pub expecting pipe whistles and sitting around a peat brick fire. Instead the brooding huddle of EU-subsidized cow farming bachelors greeted my entrance with a squinty stare. I offered a round and settled back to listening to the brogue, thinking, "This is the language of my people."

A shove interrupted my reverie and a gnome with a tam covering a Brillo-pad sweep-over demanded, "Whacha lookin' at?"  

I answered honestly, "The wall."  

We both gazed at the wall. It was blank. Nothing special, but the dwarf shouted, "Well, I'll be troubling yer not to look at that bit of wall. It's mine."    

"That wall?"      

It was no different than any other wall in the pub. The barkeep told 'Mikie' to shut his hole   

After that night the locals shunned me.  

Didn't matter, I walked around the bogs with my Wellingtons. Todd had a bad back. He spent most of the day on the telephone with his future wife. Laurie was a dream he told me all the time. I agree, because Ty's wife swam with me in the East River on my fiftieth Birthday Day. The blonde beauty wore a sarong from a restaurant tablecloth.     

Ty and Laurie are still happily married.

Of course the reason for going to Ireland was my mother's deathbed wish.

"Meet someone like your aunts or sisters."

This sounded very incestuous to me, but the only women in Ballyconeeley fourteen year-old girls six-months pregnant, matrons waiting for their hard-working husbands to retire from slavery in the UK, and two lesbians in Cliften.  

One night I was drinking with Mikie at the pub. An attractive plus-18 brunette was tending the Guinness stick. Mikie called her over and asked, "Does my American friend stand a chance with you?"    

"Noe at all."

Mikie was quick with his advice.  

"Go back to your beer and keep your eyes off my wall."

        

55 REMSEN

Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” ― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister

In the fall of 1975 I worked as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School. I taught Math and English to the few black and white students so bored with skipping school that thet preferred the gulag of the high school. Some days there were more Staties ie state troopers than pupils. The fragile racial truce in city's school system had been torn by busing riots. Poor white kids attended schools in poor black neighborhoods and vice versa. None of them were bussed to the suburbs or the Italian Noth End

The only times the classes were full for the arrival of national TV crews to interview a white politicians preaching segregation, then the white boys egged on by ptheir parents fought the Boston City riot squad. It was a bad scene, but I was getting $85/day to insure no one firebombed the empty classrooms. Most school days only 3-5 students came to class. They reead books for forty-five minutes. I kept my head down and wrote poetry.

Some of it wasn’t bad.

In October I moved into a cheap Brookline basement apartment. Upstairs was a two-family holistic commune. The two parents believed in free love. This was their second marriage. Joe and Kate had eight kids berween them I had dated the mother's second daughter. Hilde had told me that she was 18. We had lasted less than three weeks. Her parents said that the young blonde was too young for me.

"How young?"

"16."

"You're right." I was twenty-three. Too old, but their daughter's next boyfriend was a thirty year-old car thief. Dennis.

My best friend had come over to visit me and met Hilde’s older sister. Terri was almost twenty and was very sexy as to be expected of a Combat Zone stripper. Two weeks later AK deserted his college girlfriend and joined the commune's to live attic with Terri. We were one big happy family.

AK also taught school during the day. At night he played keyboards for a popular funk band. The New Yorker was Jump Street's token white boy. He dealt with the white promoters and club owners. Many of them Jewish or Mafia. Neither cared for schwartzers or blacks, but Jump Street was onof tge best dance bands in Boston.

When Jump Street was hired for a weekend gig at a club in NYC's West Village. AK invited me to accomany him. Hilde's sister was staying behind for a family gathering and AK confided in my basement bedrom, "I have this old college girlfriend in New York. Rose is an artist. She looks like an East European refugee. Maybe I'll get lucky. I was once before.”

I painted my own portrait from his scanty description.

Dark-hair, slim, feminine.

That Friday night Jump Street drove down to New York in the van. AK drove his Firebird. He wanted to impressed Rose. I was the passenger and rolled joints. AK liked his weed.

"It's not a GTO."

"But it is fast."

We crashed at a black friend's place in Harlem. Duke Booty. AK invited several friends to the show. I knew no one in the city. Rose entered ten minutes befowre the show, I was on my second beer A intrioduced us She stared into my eyes, as if we were meant fr each other She was just like I imagine, wearing a cotton shift complimenting her Slavic gracefulness. Her hair was cut short like she might have been a dyke in college. Her accent was Appalachian. She laughed at AkK's stories. They knew each other from college. Their friends were all gay. Several hit on me. I let them buy drinks. AK had his arm around Rose's shoulders, when his girlfriend entered the bar. Terri had smelled a rat. Ex-strippers are hyper-sensitive that way.

“Pretend you're with Rose.” AK whispered in her ear, plotting to meet her later.

His girlfriend was too smart to fall for such a simple subterfuge and after the gig she dragged him away to Harlem. I grabbed my bag out of the trunk. I had to find someplace to stay, but first I accompanied Rose to a late dinner at David’s Pot Belly Restaurant on Christopher Street. It was open 24 hours a day. She worked as a waitress to support her painting. We had omelettes and spoke about art. Mostly I listened about her plans to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

“Bette Davis’ character wanted to do the same in PETRIFIED FOREST. Lesley Howard has the outlaw shoot him, so she can collect his insurance. I thought it was very noble.”

“Anyone ever tell you that____”

“Tell me what?”

“That you look like an angel____” she struggled for several seconds with the next words. “______under candlelight.”

"No one has ever said anything like that to me." Certainly not Hilde.

"It's true_____."

She apologized for not finishing sentences.

"Don't worry, I have several speech defect. S_s-s-stuttering just for one."

She smiled at our failings and she invited me to spent the night at her apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I was expecting anything more than to sleep on a couch or even the floor.

55 Remsen Street.

"I have a roommate."

Her apartment was four flights up one floor above a Chinese whorehouse. A dragon lady in sheer silk stood at the door. I guessed her to be about forty. In red light over the doorway she passed for twenty.

“You want good time?”

“No." I had never paid for sex.

“Maybe sometime you not lucky. Come see me.” She hissed the invitation like a snake slithering through dry grass.

“I hate that____.”

“Woman.” Rose didn’t have to finish off that sentence.

Straight women hated those that aren’t straight. Rose opened the door to her apartment. She shared the two bedroom with a lanky West Virginian. They knew each other from college. He held a pad of paper in front of him on which he scribbled numbers. Rose introduced him as Bix.

He lifted sallow eyes from the scratching pencil point. He didn’t say a word. Rose led me into the bedroom. I tried to be quiet, but she called out my name with each thrust nearing orgasm. Women were echoing other men’s names from the sex den below.

Every time I exited from the bedroom, Bix was at the kitchen table.

An unlit cigarette in his hand.

An empty beer can to the left.

Several piles of paper were scattered about the table. Numbers filled them to the edges. I had been a math major in college. I tried to make sense of the progressions. The numbers were years abstracted out of sequence. None were zero or 1978.

"I met Rose in 1970. I reduced the years to prime numbers. When were you born?" 

"1952." 

"One year after Roses. I'm two years before." An expression of hurt paralyzed his face. Words were lost in his mouth. Finally on Sunday morning he asked, “How does it feel to fuck another man’s woman?”

"Rose said nothing about a relationship."

"No, she wouldn't, but what can you expect from someone who can't finish sentences?"

"I don't know. I have a stutter."

"So I asked you before." Bix put down the pencil and picked up a knife. He probably used it for sharpening the pencil points. He pointed it at me. "How is it fucking someone else's girlfriend?"

“Wait a few minutes and I’ll tell you.” T

The door behind me shut and said to Rose, “Your roommate said____”

“I know what he said. Don’t___” Her hands drew me back into bed to complete her sentence. Her first kiss swallowed my soul. “I love your lips.”

We made love twice more that day and on Sunday Rose escorted me to Penn Station to catch the train to Boston. I had no idea where AK and his girlfriend were. I kissed Rose on the platform and said, “I’ll see you next week.” “I work on the weekends.” “I’ll wait until you get out.” “It will be late.” Hesitation rimmed her reply. “I can wait.” The train conductor called ‘all aboard’. “After all this is the city that never sleeps.” Back in Boston AK grilled me about Rose. "Did you?" "Did I what?" "You know." "The answer is no." "You're lying?" "No, nothing happened with us. Besides she has a boyfriend."

"Bix?"

"Yes."

"Bix has been following her around for years. He's a hillbilly from Carolina. Kind of tragic. I don't know why she lets him do that."

"Me neither."

Thoughts of Rose killed Boston. Its streets were empty after dark. The bars seemed provincial. None of the women possessed the Rose's beauty. The next weekend I trained south to Penn Station and took the subway to the West Village. I stood before David's Pot Belly. Rose waved from inside the restaurant.

The cook Michael served me a Gruyere and mushroom omelette.

Afterward I killed time at the Riviera Bar with a silver-haired jazz impresario. I recited a poem about hitchhiking. James said that I was almost a genius.

“How do you know?”

“I manage Cecil Taylor and Merce Cunningham. They are real geniuses. Not fakes.” He smoked a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich. The Riviera was loaded with gays, bi, straight. It was a middle meeting ground for all types. James was 100% playing for the other team and proud of his sexuality.

“I once made it with James Dean.”

“The movie star? I heard that he had been with Sal Mineo."

“He went with anyone. You care for a drink?”

"Yeah, why not?"

James and I drank too much at the Riviera Cafe. Him whiskey and coke. Me Gin-tonic. I arrived at David’s Pot Belly at closing. Ro was waiting.

"I'm exhausted. Let's go back to my place."

There was no traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

I paid the taxi fare. We climbed the stairs. The dragon lady smiled at my passage.

“You lucky man.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

"This one never go home same man. You must be special."

"I'm an angel____"

Rose slapped my hand. She didn’t want me socializing with her downstairs neighbor. She opened her apartment door. The wall clock said 3:16. Bix sat at the table. Once more an unlit cigarette in his hand. The pages of numbers spread to the walls. None of them were equations. Only numbers and now not years, but five-digit prime numbers.

Rose and I retreated to her bedroom. She wasn’t in the mood for sex.

“I’ve had a long day______at work.” “What’s with Bix and the numbers?”

“He feels as if he can find the right number maybe he can reverse the hands of time and win back my heart.”

“And do you know the right number?” I had loved the poetry of math until LSD warped my perceptions of dimensions. Then words became my math.

“No, and neither will Bix. He’s crazy and that’s why I______stopped being with him,” she whispered from bed. We kissed under the sheets. She murmured with a cuddle, “I love your lips. Go to_____sleep.”

“All right.”

I fell asleep reading Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CAPRICORN. The profane author had spent his childhood in Williamsburg. Brooklyn Heights was more for successful artists such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Hart Crane, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, and Mary Tyler Moore. I woke to the screams of a Chinese woman fighting a man.

Not everyone was as happy as me in Brooklyn Heights.

The next day we brunched on Montague Street. Rose had to be a work at 4. We made love quickly on her bed. I liked her tongue more than her lips. She liked oral better than penetration. I let her have her way with me.

“That was better than good.”

I can only try to do my best."

Saturday night was a repeat of Friday night. Dinner at the Potbelly and drinking at the Riviera. Ro was off on Sunday. We went dancing at the Limelight on 7th Avenue. James Spicer came along with us. He bought drinks and we shared a taxi back to Brooklyn. His apartment was in Park Slope.

“You ever need a place to stay call me.” James blew me a kiss, as the taxi disappeared into Brooklyn.

“You know what______he wants?”

“Same thing as everyone. A little love.”

On the stairs I didn’t even notice the dragon lady. In the apartment I didn't see Bix or hear the cries of pleasure from the brothel. Ro and I were the only two people in the world. I wrote several poems. Ro had me read them to her. They may have made more sense than Bix’s numbers.

On Monday morning we ate in the city. I went to the train by myself, telling her that I would be back in two weeks.

She smiled and said, “I’d like______that.”

Throughout that fall and winter I commuted on weekends between Boston and New York. I’d phone during the week. Ro rarely answered the phone. She was either at art school or work. She told me that Bix never picked up the phone. He was even deeper into his numbers. His scrawlings infected the hallways.

Friday nights the dragon lady greeted me. Her name was Lee. Bix stuck his head out of the top floor apartment.

She asked Bix for numbers.

He handed her a sheet of paper.

“If I like number. I make bet. Win big money.” Lee followed the twisting cortex of numbers for a lottery winner. “Open restaurant. Sell food. No pussy.”

I plotted a strategy to quit teaching in June and collect unemployment through the summer. I informed Rose about this plan on several occasions.

"This apartment is small."

"Bix could leave."

"No, it's his place."

"We can get another apartment."

Obviously Rose was stalling, but I didn’t care, because I no longer wanted to live in Boston.

My parents were sad to hear about my departure. I didn't say why.

AK said I should thank him for introducing Ro. “You owe me.”

"I'm not sure how to pay you back."

"I'll think of a way."

Hilde's car thief boyfriend arranged a job driving a gas-guzzler to New York. The owner paid me $300 to ditch the Oldsmobile to collect the insurance, claiming the car stolen.

"It's easy," her boyfriend explained. "Once in New York park the car by the Hudson, throw the plates in the river, and leave the keys in the ignition. Joyriders stole the car within minutes.

That Friday morning I phoned Rose several times. No one answered the phone. After packing my bag in the Olds, Hilde's two-family commune stood at the door and waved good-bye. It was a little after noon.

“You be careful.” Hilde was a little teary-eyed.

"Don't break any laws," cautioned her boyfriend. Dennis was glad to see me go.

"I won''t." Our rule was only break one law at a time.

I drove down south on I-95 at 55. Everyone else was hitting 65 or better, but I didn't need a state trooper stopping me.

The trip from Brookline to the West Side Highway took four hours. It took five minutes to unscrew the license plates and toss them into the black water flowing upstream past the desolate docks. I walked to her restaurant. I had $300 plus my savings in my pocket. A new life awaited me and I entered the restaurant with a smile.

"Where's Rose.

"She quit yesterday," said Michael the cook.

“She say why?”

“No.” He knew, but wasn't saying.

Brooklyn Heights was a couple of subway stops away from Christopher Street. On the way I reflected on the unanswered phone and her quitting her job. That one and one didn’t add up to two, but a myriad of possibilities. Too many to count. Numbers and more numbers. Just like Bix.

I arrived at 55 Remsen at 5. A prime number. I rang the doorbell a number of times without success. I tried the buzzer for the whorehouse. The door clicked open. I climbed the stairway. The dragon lady waited under the red light.

“Today I lucky. Find good number.” She pointed to a scrawled number on the wall. “Tomorrow no work. You come back. Have good time. Okay.”

"I'm here to see Rose."

"Oh, yes, you." All Gwai-lo looked the same to Lee. "She not home."

"Not home. You ask Bix. He know."

The door to the apartment was open.

Bix sat at the table.

A burning cigarette in his hand.

Not a number anywhere other than the walls. All years boiled through addition to their prime. My birth year added up to 17. 

“You know that Hitler was anti-smoking. So was Rose. When Hitler killed himself in the bunker, the first thing the Nazis did was light up a cigarette,” Bix inhaled deeply and then said, “Rose’s gone. She left this afternoon.”

“To where?"

“Off to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.”

“I thought it was just talk."

“I know. I was surprised too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but you’ll have to go to France to find out what it’s like to see another guy fucking your girlfriend. Not me. I already know.”

It was a shitty thing to say and I probably should have hit him, but I had said the same thing several months earlier, so I figured us even.

“You know she never kissed me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How was it?”

“Good.” I had no reason to lie.

“I thought so.” Bix took out a pencil and paper. The numbers were his friends. I walked out of the apartment with my bag. On the stairs the dragon lady said me, “Look you not lucky no more.”

“No, not lucky.” Fucked was a better word, except that word had only one meaning in Lee’s bordello.

I wandered onto Remsen Street. A plane flew east overhead and I imagined Rose looking down from an Air France 747. From that height people were not visible. Certainly not me. Somehow I had ceased to exist for her. I couldn’t say why.

At the corner phone I called James Spicer. The jazz impressario answered on the first ring. I told him that I needed a place to stay.

“I thought you’d call me one day.” He sounded drunk.

“Why?” I wanted drunk too.

“Because that girl had heartbreak written on her face. More hers than yours. Get in a taxi and I’ll tell you more.”

“Okay.” I glanced back over my shoulder at 55 Remsen. A taxi came down Montague. I waved it down. Like Rose I was gone and I wasn’t coming back either.

I ran into Bix two months later. He was living on the street. I got him a job as a carpenter. He stayed about two weeks. That winter the police found him dead below Brooklyn Heights. Starved to death. A burnt cigarette in his hand according to the police report. His ragged clothing was stuffed with paper. All of them blank according to the police report.

He had buried that demon in the peace of his death, as I had tempted to excommunicate my pain by writing the same poem to Rose about a hundred times. Each ended as a crumpled paper. James Spicer called the pile of rejects 'the hill of THE END'. I didn't laugh at his joke. After that I stopped writing poetry. The words were simply letters, not magic.

Rose and I met each other years later. We had another affair.

Very brief. She was working at a fish restaurant. Her paintings were of fish. They were very good.

I mentioned Bix. She said that she had heard about his death.

"There was no helping him."

“None?"

“None____.”

I waited for her to say more.

Rose was a woman of few words and I couldn’t bring myself to ask why she had left me or why she never kissed Bix, but then I had always known the answer.

It was in the movie PETRIFIED FOREST.

Art was more powerful than poetry and numbers. Only life was stronger, although sadly not for everyone and Bix knew that better than most.

I’m only glad not to discover the same yet. Maybe one day, but not now.

ps I am still friends with Rose. She paints me on occasion. I like her work, especially the nudes.