The Wind
From the breath of an autumn wind, groundless leaves rustled along a dark street. They raced past my feet and settled briefly along shallow gutters before being transported by a quick gust. The sound of movement was musical-- like the crash of waves along a rocky shore or the snapping of thick ice atop an empty lake.  I tried to sing along, but the same wind that moved the leaves filled my voice and silenced me. I tried to walk, but the same wind held me back. I tried to think anew, to believe again, but I was frozen in time.

I waited and waited, alone under the moonless sky, with nothing but abandoned homes along the emptied street. In weeks the old tar would be covered in a snow settled for the season-- melted only by a spring sun.

Sometimes, during the depth of a frozen night I would trundle through the street’s snowy drifts and ask for the appearance of a warming sun. But my feet would get cold and my skin would sting and I would take to an abandoned home and make a fire to become warm.

Those days were in the months to come. On this night I felt as groundless as the leaves, as powerful as an autumn wind. And for the first time I felt content that old tar would be my eternal home.

The Return

I

Zigman Zibanski rented a single room occupancy above the One Lucky. It was 2am when he heard the barkeep Beer Mugs Moran yell Last Call!

Zigman couldn’t afford to drink at the bar, even at its bucket of blood prices. So as he did most nights he drank cheap booze out of a small bottle as he sat at the edge of his bed. He let the half full bottle slip from his tipsy hand onto a stained floor of old piss and dried whiskey.

He drew on his cigarette as he watched late night TV. He blew a circle of smoke like a diamond ring. A young, British starlet laughed at the talk show host’s Hollywood jokes. His old Polish voice said: “You marry me, no!”

But the commercial came on, and she was gone into his lost forever world of sadness and make believe. The aging Pole cried. He wept through the flickering light of the television. Through the smoke of acrid cigarettes. Through the last of sounds of the bar beneath him as he heard Beer Mugs lock the front door and sweep around the disorder of old chairs.

Zigman dropped his cigarette onto a puddle of booze where it fizzled and extinguished in the old carpet. He wiped his tears and lay back in his bed. He hoped to hear her voice. But it did not return. A blanket of darkness swept over him as he slipped into the blackness of a drunken, dreamless sleep. The commercial was over.

The Hollywood host had made a last joke about lonely old men in single rooms who dream of English girls. But Zigman did not hear.

II

I am not the man who sleeps dreamless and alone, losing to the blackness of his dying mind. I am not the light of the sun that brings back life. I am not the refection of light under a midnight moon that brings wonder. I am not the afterglow that draws a dead soul to his heaven.  I am only that crack of light who illuminates the dark edges of death.  And together with the last breath of a dying man, I too will shine no more.

III

Zigman Zibanski's eyes fought against the first light that streaked through the window of his single room occupancy. Last night he was too drunk to close the curtains. This morning his narrowed pupils saw white spots and his head hurt more than usual. He was relieved. He was alive, and he knew that someday his drinking, his smoking, his deluded thoughts of a young lover would kill his old heart.

He could hear Beer Mugs Moran open the One Lucky. Soon the drinkers would arrive and the smoke from their cigarettes would waft into his room. He imagined no one could blow smoke circles like diamond rings as he could, but he couldn’t be sure.

The old Pole lifted himself from his bed and turned off the television that stayed on through the night. It was 10:00a.m. and the morning talk shows were over. The small refrigerator was as empty as his belly. And they were both as empty as the whiskey bottle that he had accidentally poured onto his stained floor.

The soup kitchen would open for lunch at noon. So Zigman stood hungry at his window and strained his eyes as he peered into the long light. He wondered if in his death the light dies too. He lay back in his bed and waited for another sleep’s darkness. And for noon, when his belly would be full.

Open Window
It was early summer. The year of 1974. School was out, and I was 17 and had no job. Maybe I had an offer to work at a car wash, or to clean out an old woman's backyard. I don't recall.

But I can still see the street when the lights turned on. I can still hear Springsteen through an open window:

Rosalita, (Come out Tonight)...

Oh, man. I had to call my friend Eddy. The music was in my veins. I dropped a nickel in a pay phone like a juke box.

"Hey, Eddy. I heard Springsteen playing through an open window. You got fake ID. We can buy some beer and smoke weed in the park. Maybe find Spanish girls named Rosalita?"

Me and Eddy met. We sat atop a picnic table. A couple of six packs between us, our teenage feet resting on the bench. The beer buzzed our heads, and the joints made us laugh.

Eddy says; "You know that chick Ruby? The hottest girl at school. I asked her out. Guess what, she said no."

I said to Eddy: "Guess what, I asked her out, too. She said no. Probably doesn't see much in a guy who works at a car wash."

We began to sing... Rosalita, come out tonight. We sang to a row of trees, and pretended  to see a pair of Rosaltias through an open window. They were barefoot in a senorita dance.

It was late, and we drank the last of the beer. We tossed burning joints and watched them like laughing fireflies in the brief night.

I said: "Time to go, Eddy. And remember, Ruby is mine." We both smirked, and staggered our own way.

In the morning, I might have gotten a job. I don't recall. Eddy. Maybe some day he found his Ruby. I don't remember. I'd ask him, but I haven't seen him in all these adult years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHGh6lmSbo

The Soil
I bit into a candy bar when my mind asked my ears:
What am I doing here, in this park at night? Have you heard anything?

Nothing in reply, which if I was smart I should have known:
Because, ears can only hear, they can't speak

I licked the chocolate along my lips and drew it onto my saliva tongue:
And asked the night above: Are you like these mortal ears: you can hear but you can't speak?

Have you no able tongue? Have you no insightful eyes to guide us?


The sign said:

NO LITTERING

$50 FINE

We must keep our parks clean, my mind said to my hand.
I collected the candy wrapper and discarded things that did not belong to me and put them in the litter basket.

No one would have seen me if I had left the wrapper on the grass.
But it wouldn't have been right.
Whether behind the night sky there are eyes and ears, and tongues that will not speak.
Whether  there is a fine to be issued.
No matter, it wouldn't have been right to litter this soil.

Did I hear myself or someone else speak?
That is what I must learn.

Jester
When I stand up to twilight
When the last of the light surrenders to darkness
I feel I should of lived in another life

Like a futile old man, who can't turn back the clock
I am hopelessly worn out from love

Oh, should have I given myself to what's above?
A blood red moon likes to taunt this dying man
Star's like white, guiding lights burn out in the night

All my life I could hardly see
My eyes are fine
But, all my life I could hardly see

My heart is wounded,
From the things I've done
From the life I should of lived

Turn back the clock, old man!
I hear the laughter in the joking wind

Oh, blood red moon, I've been a dying man
White light guiding me to its laughter

When the twilight surrenders to darkness
I hide from the sky above

But in my dreams, I see a jester's grin
In return, I laugh too, that's how I sleep at night

Fighter Once?
I walked down the marble stairwell of an old building and saw an old man mop a lonely hallway with twisted misshaped hands. It was late at night and it was just me and him. I was in my summer business suit and he was a night cleaner in dirty overalls. He worked his sinewy arms in a grimaced rhythm.

"I had my knuckles busted in both hands," he said to me as he held still his mop. I stopped and listened.

"My nose has been broke. My eye socket, too. I had a cracked cheek bone twice, and I dislocated my shoulder. I had ointment burn my eyes, and razor blades hid in gloves cut my skin so bad I thought I'd bleed to death."

"You were a fighter once?" I asked.

"Yeah, mostly just a nobody. I fought that time in Mexico where I got cut with the razor blades. Now I get the headaches bad. Sometimes, everything seems in slow motion, and I see sparks in my brain. I should a been a better fighter. I should a been a better fighter. You don't make no living washing floors."

I looked at him for a second, and said Good Night. That's it, Good Night.

When I got home, I noticed some dirty water from the mop stained the cuff of my pants. But I didn't care so much. I made a good salary, I could buy a new suit.

Lucky me. I didn't see everything in slow motion. I didn't see no sparks and my face had never been cut. But there have been days lately where life feels like a grimaced rhythm. Like somehow I busted up my knuckles, and hurt myself bad.

Good Night, I said to myself. Good Night is all I could say.

Glory
Soldiers walk as shallow graves
In a civilian dream I cannot be seen
But I see them as I move opposite their army tide
They retreat past me--
along me,
through me
Unaware of where I am
Their bandages-- shredded and bloodied--flail like tattered flags
The burst of cannons--the billows of smoke
I see death's wait in sunken eyes
Broken arms, broken knees--one wounded man holding up another
In deformed march they walk the bridge
The swelling river of blood beneath their dying feet
I float above
My dream wings lift me\\\
Across the bridge I see---the wounded march of men is eternal
The shallow graves of their youths,
pierced by arrows,
severed;
torn by mortar and guns
The glory is that crossing to salvation
Where once again they are young and not aged by war
Where life revives them
Where they rise up, the bloody bridge behind
I awake and gasp
War and the other side, all in a dream. All in a dream.
I hear the news, a bridge of fallen soldiers.
I awake and gasp once more...the glory and salvation, the glory and salvation!

Broken Waves
...one day looks just like another--
In a hall of mirrors I escape through the space of glass;
The magic Nature of time conjures me...
tricks me, fools me, disappears me...

To the Clouds! Let me disrobe you
Let me undress the tall trees and the leaves of grass

Na, Na...na...na...na...
Naked to your heart
Nature, I listen
I dance to the rhythm of the night
Feel the pulse of shining stars
I am at one with the roar of our rivers,
the turns of our shallow creeks
the stillness of our moonlit waters

I run with the wildness of our wolves
I uphold my arms along the wings of our great eagles
I make peace with our deltas, and travel in togetherness with this newness

I dream of our nature---
In sadness the day awakens me...one just like another
But in the hall of visions I see the great eagles swoop
I am led by the pulsing stars, and know the rhythm of the night
In spirit I run to the wildness of wolves

Oh nature, in sleep I wanted to undress you, but you repaired me with the song of  breaking waves...never do they come ashore the same...
Yes, you have awakened me with our wonder and our new visions...