Added Jul 8, 2005
A Moment After 2
It is probably 2 PM in the afternoon:
my watch stopped an hour earlier.
‘Who let the dogs out?’ escapes flatly
from daVincky’s open Chinese laptop
impersonating a drive-in cinema
on top of the concierge’s red painted window sill.
The roaring Metro-Goldwyn lion is replaced by
a Polish domestic scene grinning down on me
sitting on the first step up towards B Floor.
Between cold coffee and blurred photos
black latex looking plastic bags accumulate
in the seemingly adult world lit lobby,
the sparse sparkle of rotating disco ball
bouncing off the linen bags’ black sheen.
Cobalt blue skull in whimsical confines
within an ingeniously crafted aquariovision
anchors the news sprawled on all tabloids
of the greatest deceit discovered up third Avenue
in the not too far from here located lipstick tower.
A relative fortune tumbles through my fingers
counted in quarters and a single dime.
Essential baked aromas packaged in molecules
seep up through timeless fissures from below.
Yet the bottom line of the sum in my hand
doesn’t allow the pursuit of freshly baked pizza.
Focusing my craving’s entirety through one gap
in the stairwell’s chunky wooden balustrade,
I see clearly although blurred along the edges
a Polish persistence rooted deeply within Teutonic strength
delicately glazing a giant sparrow’s resting wing
escaped in its singularity from Diza’s golden cage
and the urban expressionistically graffitied C Floor.
The dogs have gone up the Bronx tagging territories
and the momentarily left behind silence is broken
by Robert Cray’s warning, ‘Baby, I am just a looser!’
***
A moment of belonging
There are emotions bottled deep within one’s heart,
essences of a million tears and too little precious laughter,
which make me begin this poem with trepidation
encouraged by a glass of Seven Deadly Zins
in a space filled with childhood yearnings.
To many of you it mightn’t be much and might be banal,
but for this little boy in an old man’s coat that room full to the hilt
with other people’s memories and artificial but colorful anecdotes
is and was just simply heaven; my usual intolerance to tourist’s kitsch
is replaced with a laissez fair friendship and profound love.
Aware of the one sidedness of my emotions,
the cynical bloke in me doesn’t care too much about equilibrium,
but simply rejoices in every moment with the folk of the place
who have given him for the first time in his long lonesome life
a simple nickname that wasn’t negative in its connotation.
I was and still am Mr. Dot of 14D, … also known as de Angelo
and those two names hang proudly from my old man’s shoulders
like the cape of Superman, which hangs above me just to my left side
in the Insane Asylum’s bridge of command that has been
eclectically constructed from the dust of a thousand adventurers.
The bouquet of the Seven Deadly Zins is profound and
quakes my body into a pleasant shudder while my palate harvests with gusto
each of the seven different Zinfardels, … from one grape to the next,
such variety mimicked on a dull wooden board, keys of all color and sizes
hanging in alphabetical and mathematical order from 2A to 15D.
There is a shrine behind me worshipping the Impossible but so too
a commercial Christ, a screaming red lipped Billie Holliday and a plastic sphinx
worn and rubbed smooth, with an iconic Madonna on beeswax behind its tail,
while two cartons of extra crusty pizzas have their lid open,
impersonating giant clams with surreal accuracy.
I turn towards the voice that seeps through thick Plexiglas
separating the Asylum from the Sane, and momentarily my face reflects
in the badly scratched plastic window and gets layered with the face
on the other side that looks in, enquiring with Nordic tone,
if she could have a room and if she could choose one to her liking.
‘I am just a guest’, I hear myself say and shrug my shoulders,
‘He just went down to get another bottle, just around the corner,
… he won’t be long,’ my voice squeezed through the window’s speaker holes,
and I gesture with my free hand to come in into the hotel’s inner sanctum,
known to all of us as ‘Insanity!’
***
American Dream
America is a dream born into
the slavery of hope,
its essence rooted in fundamentally fertile soil
fenced in by the power of ‘Have’,
without regard to those who ‘Have Not!’
***
(01/23-03/20/2009)
How does one begin a love poem
when the object of admiration is a Hobohemian flophouse
in the slow gentrified Bowery of New York,
tucked away between architectural modernism
which tries to kill passing pedestrians during snowstorms,
and Mikes due Pizza, run by a cantankerous but loveable Sicilian
who sells his grandmother’s secret recipes for small change
to fortune-seeking students.
Do I dare to start this little ode with rolls of hand woven Costa Rican tissue paper,
or do I flaunt names like Jarmush or, God forbid, Frederico around?
And if that wouldn’t be enough I too could wake anybody’s interest by mentioning Kerouac and a famous novel.…..
but although there is a little bit of Waits and Tennessee within its walls, I have decided that I will simply start with Charlie the cat.
Charlie isn’t beautiful, nor is he young or charming, he is just a cat,
finding contentment within five floors, fifty-four rooms and a bistro setting on A floor overlooking third Avenue.
He accepts his un-voluntary mascot status reluctantly, barely tolerating Norwegian chain smokers, Austrian storytellers and Finnish ‘Absolut’ drinkers, who frequently hibernate in arty-farty rooms for weeks on end,
only to appear dressed confusingly in Scot’s kilts to march with Celtic pride and matching harmonies down 5th Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day.
His feline Realm reigns unopposed from Transsexual renditions of romanticism to Hugo’s Tangolesque masculinity in 2A, ending in regular intervals on a damascene armchair in 1A, which bears witness to the claws’ sharpness within the shredded threads of suffering silk.
Those of you who aren’t fluent in Latin, the coat of arms indicates with Anglo-Saxon pompousness that there aren’t any chocolates on pillows, and those things in similar color found on occasions around the place are just feline mementos.
Why does one like something? What makes one fall in love?
It certainly wasn’t comfort nor sanity, as I had nightmares featuring virtual armies of bloodsucking bedbugs and copious pissing patrons leaning against walls, shouting from below Fitzgerald’s, and across the avenue out of The Hairy Monk’s open windows; Gothamesque frivolities which broke every urban frequency law were no match for the complementary Air Tahiti Nui ear plugs, which failed miserably.
Yes, I have to mention that my love affair isn’t without self-interest,
as I am one of those who have stamped their design onto the crumbling walls, mosaic of plaster-soaked unwashed secondhand towels lovingly smoothed into place by a lanky mysterious Italian Red Wine drinking Pom, exuding his air of cool, together with a Gibson abusing You-Tube addicted Brummie, whose electrical skills are slightly do-it-yourself, and guests are advised to learn the in and outs of the New York electricity grid.
It’s the whole that makes for such an unforgettable place;
The people, the zoological menagerie, the insane asylum, the weekly mess, PGTips-Tea and Alphonse’s slightly weird fixations;
John’s constant internet search and Chino’s sincere Puerto Rican
generosity, daVincky’s pure unpolluted Polish Charlatanism and Diego’s love for Uruguayan chanson and soccer, Ron’s unbelievable sleeping habits and Mozzarella addiction and who could ever forget a conversation with Masuda, the man, who invented the dictionary of miscommunication.
To put all those things into a single sentence I need to write an epic without full stop or a jingoistic jingle, and I have decided to do neither and just say simply with all my heart: ‘I love you, Artbreakhotel !’
***
Friendship
Overlooking the weekly bustling market on Union Square
a clock busily subtracts heartbeats from eternity soon reaching 5 PM
and Virgin’s enormous fluorescent Red brightens with the falling dusk
luring naiveté towards its storey-high ready armed fashion trap
were Cesaria laments in Portuguese about the vastness of oceans
and Gouldian sighs in Jarrett’s virtuoso reminisce a long forgotten Köln.
Across franchised capitalism private enterprises in stalls and vans
sell with intensity the day’s leftovers from harvests across states
and the caramel nutty smell of fresh baked bread has evaporated into winter air,
while I wait to cross Park in front of North bound city slickers in yellow cabs
to meet people dear to my heart, selling across from me Art in little boxes
containing angst and frustration whimsically powerful within their banal spaces.
Laden with D’Agostino’s cosmopolitan culinary ingredients,
two bottles of full bodied Tempranillo and still crusty baguettes tucked under arm
I arrive in time to see the last box being stored into a translucent plastic crate
which then gets fastened onto a giant sized toddler’s trailer
and dream sellers’ cheeks reddened by icy Winter’s breath
are ready to go home and leave the hustle-bustle behind warm private doors.
I met Miriam and Tony two years before at the same exact spot,
when I bought photographic nudity in silver pendant to hang around my neck,
and a friendship got struck into the invisible metal of inexplicable human affinity;
sharing on most Saturdays now their table and with it, their love for me,
expressed with laughter, tears and generosity beyond well cooked French meals
or silly existential thoughts in the pitfalls of Pat’s wine selection.
With Miriam and Tony comes Pat, a gentle giant from Washington,
harboring in his Sequoianesque Heart a cinematographic dream of stage and film,
debuting in ‘The Warm Light Of The Sun’, a Twilight Production, that had been
condemned from the first click of the clapboard never to see the light of day,
a setback he savored in long humoresque soliloquies in between surreal choices
of too young Chilean Malbecs or too old Tuscan Chiantis.
Seen from someone else’s perspective, maybe sitting on a cast iron railing
or retaining wall watching exhibitionists’ expressions of young and old
in a space encircled by stalls, vans and other people enjoying simply life,
our procession must look like the mythical march of the Wilder Beasts
crossing the Serengeti, as we cross from the East to the West of Union Square:
Tony in front - pulling the cart, I in the middle, cool and collected,
while Miriam keeps up with us mimicking in Zen the waddle of Eskimos.
Our destination is 15th Street across 5th Avenue on the corner of 6th,
an ugly apartment block called appropriately for Tony’s French Parisian roots ‘Left Bank’,
and each time I push the swinging glass doors open I think of Sartre and Camus,
while images of Croissants, bowls of coffee and ‘Liberation’ attach themselves
in my imagination like octopuses onto my mood, and once I step out of the lift
I am ready for Tony’s Michelin creations, and ready to receive their precious gift.
***
Guest from 15B
Just once I looked into her steel blue eyes
and saw the simple wish to belong,
… somewhere, anywhere, …
where ever that might be,
simply to be able to stay within the walls of cool
held up by ghosts of saints and gallons of paint.
Where was the love or warmth of family,
when she came that mid-February night,
swept up the stairs by wind like dry tumbleweed,
the icy breath of winter flushing her cheeks
as she reached with hope for the set of keys
from a concierge’s mozzarella smelling hand.
Fifteen B was home for now, a courtyard view
two floors above card-board squat,
the brief joy of belonging somewhere daily
interrupted by the certainty in man’s laws
guaranteeing expulsion within twenty eight days
of grasping that set of keys.
What was her name? Who knew her story?
We all guiltily saw her plight simply as Life in the Apple,
knowing her only as the guest from fifteen B,
in need of two daily quarters to push into a communication slot,
and yes, I too ‘mea culpa’,
was one of those who found her somewhat odd
and kept perceptively under lock and key my so called humanity.
***
Many Dreamings Ago
How often that laughter embraced so our hearts
and distances were butterflies drifting with the wind
across the sun burnt land.
We drank the love of our fathers and mothers,
as if it were the cool sap of the Boab tree,
and enjoyed the sweetness of childhood
many Dreamings ago.
***
M . . . . r
When Scorpio metamorphosed into Sagittarius
and hoar frost sat elf like on Autumn roses,
my first scream welcomed life with trepidation
as I burst forth from an open mother’s womb.
Steam rose from wrinkled skin
while hands of little love
bundled yearnings in tightly wrapped cloth
and hunger placed onto full rounded breasts
drew from swollen teats more blood than wholesome milk.
With every drop of pain through bitter sweet food
my mother wilted with each ordeal
pushing me into childhood bare of love
that I longed for so incessantly,
as dry soil longs for breaking rain.
While many rivers gushed since then their lengths into oceans
and the trickle of emotions turned into floods much later,
my longings dried up with time into simple dust and
loneliness just turned my heart into stone.
***
Madison Square Garden
Sitting on an uncomfortable city bench in a park
wedged in squarely by Fifth and Madison Avenue,
I smell fragrant Cuban smoke drifting across crisscrossing paths
and watch squirrels busily collecting paper scraps for later comfort as
Hobohemian chess players duel for silvery change lubricated minds.
Trolley-mounted an upright piano with downpour-soaked veneer
gets pushed by a dude in front of a dry fountain,
a big yellow bucket is placed into view by assistant hands
to catch nickels and dimes, quarters and spare greenbacks,
for free rendered rags, rhapsodies and jazz, … rarely requested.
A queue of Pythonesque length meanders twice daily through the park,
its snaking belly holding city slickers who wait their turn for hip overpriced snacks,
while those already served search in rows of occupied benches
for privacy to eat, text and chat via mobile phone to friends and family and
those already digesting fold neatly their refuse into simple plastic origami.
Dogs of all kinds lead all kinds of owners from invisible landmarks to the next to Morse their presence in urine yellow or read with canine intensity
the odor laden headlines splashed across anything remarkable,
posts, trunks, chopsticks, wind-swept takeaway coffee cups, or by chance
rolled up posters advertising the upcoming premiere of Sex in the City.
The guy with the fragrant Cuban cigar places his Haitian frame next to mine,
telling me out of the blue an Epic that spanned from total misery around the hills of Port-au-Prince to the cinematographic cliché of ‘The American Dream’, earned through hard labor and a healthy dose of resilient self-preservation.
The lengthening shadow of the wedge-shaped Flatiron steals my sun,
flocks of office suits rush in punctuated waves towards 23rd Street station,
the Haitian throws the inhaled Cuban towards the dry fountain,
landing just short, missing by that much the big yellow bucket,
while Gershwin dances rag on well worn ivory, … a bit loose and slight off key.
***
My Soles of Comfort
My soles of comfort
feel the flood of tears
soaked into the road
of no return.
My feet stride full of hope
towards the calling in my chest,
that fell silent an eternity ago,
but woke when you glanced
towards my soul, lost.
The clock ticks in past tense,
never can I overtake life as it is
laid out in front of me,
along an incessant path
that begins with a scream and ends in uncertainty.
***
The Big Apple
At first glance the Apple, although big,
looks more like a well-chewed, spit-out core
lying in the gutter of decay.
Cinematographic perspectives on plasma screens
reveal themselves as Hollywood inspired dreamscapes
far from pothole pitted sewer reeking vistas.
Icons once climbed by apes and movie stars
are much less impressive viewed live
than in popcorn flavored imaginations.
The leading edge of importance got blunted
long before lunatics flew sanity into symbolism,
its echo still reverberating from Penn to Central Station.
Striding through Central Park one can’t escape the cliché
forced upon us by its wealth centered neighbors,
beginning and ending with refined Jewish parody.
Once disappointment subsides from expectations
and streets are walked with eyes blind of superficiality,
the new Gotham grows on occasions into the mythical State.
Disagreeable smells disappear into the ethnic cacophonies
of stampeding yellow cabs and anarchic pedestrians
making the rush within its geometric grid an Odyssey.
The flash of a flasher or the onion rich smell of gyros on corners
of South North running Avenues and East West crossing Streets
feel like Mission Impossible within the rigging of quotidian scenes.
Conversations drifting on whirling currents in between canyons
are laden by neo American naiveté or deep existentialism born
on pragmatic leather couches and whimsical do-it-yourself self-analysis.
Mute isn’t a setting in Manhattan’s reach in-between two rivers,
nor can one escape within its boundary the rude aloofness
that typifies each tourists encounter with the native New Yorker.
New Y