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.

Tough Guy - Myrtle Avenue

One walking back
From buying a Newport loosie
On Myrtle across from the park
Smoking slow
Walking slower
A bald black man muscular
His fit dog dropped to his belly__ "I know how you feel."
I say to dog
His man
"Shut the fuck up, honky."
"I ain't the type to shut up,
Plus I wasn't talking to you.
Have a good day, dog."
Dog don't pay me no mind.
Don't get up
I know how he feels
I too ike a good sitdown___
Master says
"I should break your head "
"Damn, someone steal your Barbie doll."
"Cracker motherfucker."
"I ain't no Dixie son of a bitch. My people marched South from Maine to free the slaves . A honky yes. A cracker, hell, no. I hope you find your Barbie doll. See you dog "
Bald man throws a traffic cone
Ten feet into the avenue
I'm fifteen feet away
I pick up the cone and chuck it
Sixteen feet
Not at him
Onto the sidewalk___
He is just angry
I know angry
We all do these days___
"Damn, guess I won the traffic cone throwing contest. You and dog have a good day."
Dog got up and walked West___
Man followed, shouting over his shoulder.
"Have a nice day, honky."
It was a good goodbye___

A Crescent Moon O'er Myrtle

A crescent moon in a clear sky
Low over Saba Deli on Myrtle Avenue
The tilt of the Earth
15%
Two weeks after the vernal equinox
The Autumn sun setting due West___
All estimates mostly guesses,
Save one certainty
The bankrupt DeKalb Tower
Empty tonight.
The epitome of the unbeauty of luxury condos___

ps I had a better shot of this but I deleted it. Opps.

Wintah Cometh

A sunny January afternoon On Myrtle Avenue Clinton Avenue Listening to Italian Pop In front of Larina. The sun on my face.

Speaking to refugees From Senegal Men From Ecuador Families From Venezuela Families Friends Fleeing Fear Fleeing home Walking across the Darien Gap No roads Muddy paths through swamps Danger every step Not as dangerous as home. Not with America's Endless Wars Everywhere But America Not Texas Not Florida Nor Brooklyn.

You here You here.

Refugees wanting food Men wanting work Mothers wanting good Para los ninos.

We give what we can Food

And smiles We know the hard life We give what we can Hoping the Endless War Ends

And people can go home everywhere.

Gaza, Syria, Burma, Bangla Desh, Mexico, Everywhere. Peace No War Imagine Imagine Imagine

Now to the now to come

Peace in this world

We are us

Hunting Pine Trees 1958

Fir trees lined the sidewalk
On Vanderbilt Avenue
Clinton Hill
Brooklyn.

Spruce pines
Chopped
Up north from New England forests.
My homeland.
Trees
For families and friends
To celebrate Christmas

Breathing the fragrance of evergreens,
As
The tree elves
Elysaah, Ruth, and Bobby
Hock trees and wreaths
Working hard
Whilst I laze
On
My yuletide throne
Surrounded by
The trees
Eyes closed
Dreaming
Of 1958
My father walking
With ax in hand.
Into the woods outside Gorham Maine.
Snow on the ground. My brother and me
The two of us
In tow
In search of the perfect tree.
My mothers and the younger other us
Back in the Ford Station Wagon
Heat running
Full blast
Windows closed
On a cold afternoon.

Our breaths hang on the air
Paralysed by the chill.
Us wearing red hats
Red mittens too.
It is deer hunting season
With my father hunting for a tree

The land belongs to someone.
Not us.
My father is very honest
Except for tree hunting season.
He was born in Maine
As was his father
And his father before him.
They know the rules.
One tree a family.

I remember
My older brother
Before
A tree taller than my father.
Our tree.
Spit in his hands
We stand back.
Thwock
Thwock
Thwock.
The tree falls down
To the snowy ground.
Sap bleeding from the stump.
Leaking the scent of pine
Into the near winter air.

Same as today on Vanderbilt Avenue.
Hundreds of miles away from the Maine woods
Decades distant from my youth.
Clouds overhead
Colder by the minute.
My breath on the air.
The scent of a hundred pine trees
The same
As The Maine Woods
1958
An Evergreen memory
From long
Ago

Now
Winter
Coming
Soon.
As always
Wintah
On Clinton Hill
And up in Maine.
Especially Fort Kent.
Merry Yulemas.
One and all.

Myrtle Avenue Autumn Evening

The sunset autumn early
Peach orange
Topped by a soft lavender
Then gray clouds
Losing the light.

Inside Duncan's Fish
Two grown men
The counterman
A faithful customer
Argue as friends
Like we do on Myrtle Avenue
A shared laugh
A see you soon.

Young Chef ambushes me with a middle finger.
A friendly salute
And a grin.
He got me first
The way us is
On Myrtle Avenue
At sunset.

Doppelganger 2021

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.