Sunday afternoon the snow fell lightly. walking down Vanderbilt Avenue I spotted a black office chair. In relatively good condition. I brushed off the snow and sat down, thinking, "This might do."
A new writing chair.
The snowfall was less than an inch. I rolled it to my building on Myrtle Avenue. I hefted it. Not light. Heavy. I sat again. Not the right height. I live on the fourth floor. I wished the chair luck.
The blizzard hit Brooklyn. Traffic was closed to all, but emergency vehicles and plows.
In the morning I ventured out to buy butter for pancakes and red raspberries at Coco. The plows had cleared the avenue. The sidewalks were treacherously slippery. The gales harvested the snow into gathering drifts. The chair was gone. To someplace other than this frozen corner. I wish the new owner and the chair good luck.
ps only pour maple syrup on pancakes. Never corn syrup. Even fruit flies won’t ear that poison I bought. Quebecois. Syrup. No maple syrup from Maine at Coco. Next trip Downeast I'll find some. There are plenty of maple trees in the Pine Tree State.
I nary a word to the old faithful about the abandoned office chair. Some things are better left unsaid.
In the summer of 2021 I fell deathly ill. Without a liver transplant the hospital doctors said it didn’t look good. I weathered the equinox, but my health deteriorated throughout the autumn. I had no energy and rarely left the Clinton Hill apartment on Myrtle Avenue. Three flights of stairs took everything out of me. I asked visitors if I looked yellow, they replied, "A little, but you're not Post-It yellow."
My friends were lying and I believed them, until I looked in the mirror.
I had lost over forty pounds and looked like I played with the Rolling Stones in the 70s.
An English friend had commented about my thinness, "That's like losing a Labrador dog."
A year ago I had been edging towards obesity. 205. Now a gaunt 162, my high school weight, but strangely not my ideal BMI weight for 5-10. 155. If nothing happened by Yulemas, I planned on traveling across the world to be with my family in Thailand. All four generations.
In November my friend Ro traveled by train and bus to Clinton Hill once a week to sketch the transition of my illness. These sessions broke up the hours of isolation. To most people I was already dead. The artist and I had been lover since 1976. Now we were just friends. Good friends now I was sober. Back when we first met at David's Potbelly on Christopher Street, she had whispered in my ear, "You're an angel under candlelight."
We had both been in our twenties. We had made love often. She had broken my heart. Not the first time by her or so many others.
Now at seventy I had the strength to be a fallen angel without wings. Lying on my bed I read poetry and excerpts from my journals, as she sketched my image of me on paper. They were only the truth.
"Why you never get anything published?"
"I never thought I was good enough."
"You're like Emily Dickerson. Trapped on a New England farm. Far from her Boston wife."
"Now in Brooklyn with you my lover.”
“Ex-lover.”
I hadn't thought of myself as the hermit poetess, but all poets hare trapped in solitary worlds by their words and the fears of hearing those words spoken by others. She kept drawing lines and I continued to read from my 70s journals, wishing I had recorded what I had been saying back then, so I could force my young downstairs neighbors to listen to the times before their birth. Jack, only 28, was a true fan of tims long gone. So long ago that they can't comprehend our lingering lust for freedom.
After a simple dinner of fluke, yams, and spinach Ro prepared to leave. The bus stop was a block away. I got up to accompany her.
“You don’t have to. I’m fine. Remember I live on the Bowery."
The Bowery had changed from the Boulevard of Broken Dreams of our youth. The 1970s. Gone the drunks, the SRO hotels, and the dive bars. The last years hadn't been kind to Myrtle Avenue. White people walked the blocks, but it remained the 'hood.
Evening had run into the night. Rain pounded against the living room windows. I couldn't see the street from the fourth-floor. Crime was down in the city, but mad men lurked in the shadows unlit by the street lamps. They owned the city from Coney Island to Pelham Bay in the Bronx. Not dangerous to anyone, but themselves for the most part.
“I was brought up to be a gentleman, plus I haven't been out of this apartment in days." I handed her an umbrella. Two years ago I had climbed Africa's highest mountain for the Kili Initiative twice before Covid and had collected good rainwear. I preferred an Irish tweed cap and jacket to an umbrella. I like the smell of wet wool, reminding me that the last sense to go was smell. I leaned over to Ro and sniffed her neck. Vanilla and rose.
She opened the door and asked concerned for my fragile health, "Are you sure?"
"I can make it."
I was weary of people questioning my strength, having sported the nickname 'the Brick' at the West 4th Street basketball courts for decades. I was ready for the descent. Not the deluge outside. Wicked gusts swept curtains of rain across the avenue. No one was on the sidewalk, until we reached the bodega before the bus stop. A young crazy man harangued someone inside the store.
"You are all nobodies."
Ro stopped in her tracks. Scared.
"Don't make eye contact. He won't bother us."
She didn't seem so sure. The wind lifted the awning and water cascaded on the young unfortunate. Ro laughed. I didn't think it was funny and neither did the young man. He shook off the wet and confronted us.
"What you think? You somebody? You nothing."
He closed to an arm's length from us. I had recently been attacked in the subway by a crazed man aggressing a young girl. His punches hadn't hurt. I had been hit harder, although having recently lost my mind due to ammonia seeping from my guts to my brain, I had understood his madness. Not 100%, but enough to understand when you are fucked you are fucked all the way. Not able to decipher the words in your head. Not able to hear the words of others. Madness. The young man's fists tensed into rocks. I pushed Ro behind me.
"I am nobody . Who are you?."
His head cocked to the side and he smiled with a young man’s teeth. All of them.
"Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!”
We saw each other and recited together as one voice.
“How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!"
At the end of the last verse
we two saw each other. There was someone else. Emily Emily. By the window of her home the Evergreens. We all smiled and the mirage faded with the rainy wind.
The young man and I bowed to each other and he walked away into the raging gloom. I had seen him and he had seen me through Emily Dickerson's most famous poem
"What did you say?" asked Ro. She had heard none of our exchange. There was no explaining the meaning of madness to the sane. The B54 bus pulled up to the stop.
"We shared a few kind words.”
He and me. No one else.
Ro kissed my cheek. She smelled of the wet and vanilla and roses.
"You are still my angel under candlelight."
She hopped onto the bus and waved from her seat. The madman had disappeared into the monsoon night. I hoped he got dry. I hoped the same for me. The tweed was soaked. Wet wool smelled of rain. I had gotten what I wanted and I struggled up the four flights to the apartment, gratified that even in madness we are not alone, if we share the madness of nobodies together.
Everything doesn't happen for a reason and everything does happen for no reason None of it our fault, unless it was by mistake.- James Steele
I read poetry everywhere
To the wind if necessary
And I was granted madness after my long illness.
My life is completely meaningless
I'm listening to THREE DOG NIGHT
And enjoying the shit out of it
Outside my open window
Beyond my toes
Beyond my bed
An alley tree
Leaves on every bough
Last winter a single weather-shredded plastic bag wavered
On a bsre branch
In the wind
Now not there
A miracle and I can't see the BQE
Although in the early AM
Motorcyclists top-speed down the Navy Yard straightaway
Vroom
I've yet to hear a crash___
This morning
34
On Myrtle Avenue
Me
A bowl of oatmeal, rasberrries, and maple syrup
From Quebec
The Far North
Old Sol
93 million miles away
Outside
Solar waves on my face
Cold, but real wintah on its way
11 Fahrenheit tonight
Snow Sunday
I might not be ready
For the North Pole
But I'm ready
For Wintah
on Clinton Hill___
Thursday morning I leave 387 @ 11:21 bound for the Village. It was a sunny and unseasonably warm autumn day. I encountered no one on the street. The B54 was five stops away and I set off afoot towards Jay Street - Metro Tech, kicking fallen leaves covering in the gutter. At North Portland a crew of city workers were constructing new corners in the aftermath of a fatal accident last month. I commented classically, "Great work, but I wouldn't have doe it that way."
I had heard that criticism from many workers surveying my labors.
The concrete trimmer looked up with a smile and replied, "Neither would I."
Two of his group were loading debris onto a canvas cover and I said, "Don't one man that, unless you're looking to go on disability."
The trimmer raised his head and prayed, "Oh, for such luck. Then I can move to a red state away from all these liberals."
"And eat shitty pizza."
"Anything to live away from here."
Sie gesund in limbo." I had lived in Juneau for two summer months in 2016. No pizza and only meth bars to drink in, but great salmon. The 54 came by and said hello to the bus driver. A woman passenger loudly played some harsh to my ears and I politely asked if she would lower the noise. She did so with a sneer. Getting off at Jay Street I thanked her for the courtesy and we walked to the subway talking about poetry. She as a poet too. I gave her a copy of DRIFTERS. I recited her a poem about life and motorcycles. We embraced and I descended onto the platform. The A train rolled into the station and I rode it to West 4th Street.
Several players were in the Cage; George the Beard, Tom and James. George challenged me to a game to three. I gave the Beard the ball and immediately stunned him by stealing it from him and sinking a lay-up. I was also surprised. I stopped him two more times.
"Now I see why they called you the Brick."
I missed two more shot after D-ing him tight.
"That's the other reason I was called Brick."
George dropped three in a row. A victory. I thanked everyone and walked down West 4th Street to Professor Bertell Ollman's 9th floor NYU faculty apartment. The ancient Marxist greeted me with the smile. His son with a hug. I was good to live in the womb of humanity.
Wars
Endless Wars
Fires burning the sky
Fields failing without rain
Poisoned by farmers
Hunger
Disease
Millions flee horrors
From the South
North
East to West
From all directions of the compass
Seeking safety
Hoping for something better__
The news only blurbs of the chaos
Talking heads of the media spread
Rumors
Lies
Untruths
Thirty seconds of blather not enough
For a lost nation
With fifteen second attention span
Talking heads show paths to nowhere
This is not a world
For young or old or in-between
I know
I have been many places
Many places called home
Far from New England
My first home on Falmouth Foreside, Maine
Across from Portland
So long ago__
Woody Allen said he can deal with the despair
It's the hope I can't take__
An old friend called the other day.
Hope bled out from his life
Fearful of the predicted doom spin
Scared of the what's next
The future__
And like everyone in this world
I is alone
Sometimes
Like now___
I have nothing
No wealth
I'm not driving a GTO
I'm not rich
I live far from my family
My children and grandchildren In Thailand
On the other side of the world
An odyssey away__
Here
Family too
My old friends are old
We don't converse
Not even a text
Then again
I died three years ago
They are hermits
As am I
Sometimes
But always
Lazarus II
Has the future
I see what's next
I reach out
I take care of what
I can
I help who I can
An old hippie
I believe in joy
A child's smile
An autumn rose
Afore an Adelphi Street brownstone
Sniff
A fragance from long ago in Paris
The Parch de Bagatelle
At dawn
Forty years ago__
Yesterday
The scent of the sea
Through the open window
Of Francis' Saab
On the BQE
Heading to the Rockaways
For a swim
Maybe the last for the year__
This evening
Sitting on a chair on the sidewalk on Myrtle Avenue
Sipping a cappucino from Larina
Jets overhead
Soon to land at La Guardia
Cars east and west
The neighborhood
Afoot
Friends hello one another
Clinton Hill
A community
Of People
Of life
Hope for the better
Poor
No rich here
Not really rich
We got what we got
Enough?
Never enough
Only what we got__
I am where I am
We are where we are
Clinton Hill
With the sunset to the West
Bouncing gold off the clouds
Onto the yellow leaves
To the East
The sky running dark as cobalt
A single star gleams
Through the New York City light dome
Venus
The eternal Evening Star__
I phone friends on my cell
No one answers my call
I leave a message
Voice mail
Three words
We are us
Then sit back and sigh_
Whatever is coming is coming
And we will live
Every second
Of every minute
Of every hour
No matter what is coming
Or what has gone
Every second
Of every minute
Of every hour
Of every day__
Unlike Woody Allen
We still have more hope
Than despair for tomorrow
Hope for whatever comes our way
The good the bad and the in-between
Get your motors running
Live for today and the tomorrows
Every day and every night
Time is on our side__
ps We are coming for your children___
Neil and I have been friends since 1970. We met at European History pre-1500 History while attending Boston College. Both of us were hippies. Our lives were dedicated to the greater good of humanity and over the years we have often discussed whether we do good to do good or do good in order to feel good.
We never resolved this issue.
This weekend I was beset by a number of daunting issues. My soul suffered in isolation. I felt alone and very alone. It was Labor Day Weekend. No one phoned me. Not friends, not family, not even the Chinese automated voice. I have no idea what they are trying to sell. I left my apartment for the Farmers Market at Fort Greene Park.
The sidewalks were empty. Only a few pedestrians. I wallowed in depression, then I spotted Flacco a Clinton Hill homeless person. His real name is Jose Garcia. He's in his late-60s. A native of Puerto Rico. He speaks very little English and his health is very challenged by the decades of alcoholism. Still he always has a smile, but this day I noticed him slouch into the wall. He struggled to stand. I approached him and asked, "Are you okay?"
He explained in Spanish that he was dizzy and couldn't really walk.
"Do you want to go to the hospital?"
Normally he refuses any help.
"Si, I want to go hospital."
I called 911. They sent an EMS.
They took him to Brooklyn Hospital.
I could have walked past Flacco. Most people do every day. HIs brother died several years ago. He is basically alone. I know alone and felt good to helping him and my anxiety dissipated by the time I was ordering fish. I had done Flacco a favor without thinking. I was feeling good for having helped him. That was my reward. Feeling good was good.
Throughout the last two years Sharif and I had worked together on various projects for Ole Yellah. The German restaranteur has her ways. She expect things to be done perfectly even if no one has done them before. Even she.
Sharif and I do our best. Our best is not perfection. Ole Yellah likes to raise her voice. We can deal with it in short doses.
Sharif and I live on Clinton Hill a block apart.
Outside of work we run into each other often and he introduces his friends from the 'hood.
None of them remember my name, because all white people look the same.
Randy is a bum on Myrtle Avenue. He and his wife had once owned a brownstone apartment in Fort Greene. She regularly threw him out for his alcoholic abusive treatment, but always welcome her drunk husband back.
Several years ago the wife told Randy that she had an offer for the apartment.
$1 million.
His share was half and he said sell it.
$500,000 should have lasted 10-20 years.
Randy blew his money on drugs, drink, and stupidity in less than two years.
Randy now camps on the sidewalk in front of an Italian restaurant.
It had been home for almost a month.
"He's lived everywhere in the 'hood. Under the BQE, in shelters or the park. Anywhere close to crack. That old white man will sleep anywhere, if you can call a drug coma sleep." Sharif was no stranger to sleeping in strange places, but the ex-gunman has had an apartment on Flushing Avenue for over ten years. "Randy's fucked up, but this neighborhood ain't no stranger to fucked-up."
A week ago a rasta friend ran into Sharif and said, "I can't believe it, but I seen your boy. That old white man was sleepin' on the sidewalk."
"No way. He got a crib for free for a long time."
"Well, I seen him. Swear it."
Sharif thought it over and said, "Shit, that ain't my boy, That's Randy. He's a crackhead. My man only a drinker."
The old coke fiend hadn't touched anything since he was released from Rahway and called me.
We had a good laugh about his friend thinking I was randy.
Ole Yellah laughed even harder. She had known Randy and his wife before he lost everything.
I couldn't see the similarity, but Ole Yellah's husband said, "There is something."
Risteard had a point. Not much of one, however we call still joke about Randy II and I've never said a word about sleeping on the Manhattan Bridge stumbling home from the 169 bar. My refuge was a work space with a wall of steel I-beams. I was wearing a tan tropical suit. The night wasn't cold and I wrapped myself in a plastic sheet. No one bothered me and I woke near the dawn and walked the rest of the way to Clinton Hill.
A man of the street.
Anyone can be one, but there was only one Randy adn I wasn't him.
