I Knew A Guy

Once I knew a guy with plastic veins he got as a result of plastic surgery. One day he stood too near an open flame and his insides melted like a burning straw. The doctor had warned him about heat and fires, but he decide to live life at both ends of the candle, ignoring all the risks.

My Street, Your Street

My Street, Your Street, what do I see? I see greying buildings, facades of crumbling civilization. I see weeping sorrows rise from heat and Godless fog. I see misty, pumped-up street punks on adrenaline and ice, plastic and gold bling bling, warring urban wolves, legends of city gaols. I see druggies, drunkards, slatterns, scalawags, sailors in white caps and blue pea coats in search of blacked-eye prostitutes. I see neon signs advertising Peep Shows, All Night Pool, 2 for 1 Booze. I see migrained magicians sapped of strength pulling soulless shoes from bellies of stuffed rabbits. Ah, the power of the poet's eyes, his arching words, verses dripping on tungsten lines of yellowing foolscap. To the lumbering lunatics, disposable in careless worlds of crazy minds of unglued rumblings. What of my street? I see acid face cops. Baton twirling. Broken heads. Social Workers on sedentary couches. I see unhinged accountants, undone and overdone roaring like lions at racing ambulances, drivers in front seat cabs reefing Jamaican Joints, driving the dead and dying to bloodless doctors and wily nurses slipping bennies into dry throats and rich plastic surgeon tum tums. Close your ears and stop the lions roar, the thieves and the pushers, pimps in pompadours, porno queens, drug addled flutists selling Bach out of a burlap bag of baroque tunes to fill tuneless lives.

But what of your street?

Tucked in the suburbs. The white picket fences. The manicured lawns of green grass and stone paths that lead to the rustic New England home. Hardwood floors. Stainless steel stove and refrigerator, marble counters of carbon steel knives, shrimp sauted in churned butter dipped in sour bread loaves. What of your street? Loveless teenagers, lonely embraces on a double size mattress on parent's springs, crying in the night. Bed wetters and Bed Sitters. Mothers comatose on the three seat couches...alcohol, prescription drugs, sixties memories, absent husbands in Cairo whore houses, rich salesmen of olive oil and farmed mendacity. Oblivious to the world of a Suburban street. Oblivious to the maelstrom of Mid East madness. Gun Ships. Rocket Launchers. Apache Helicopters. Silly Putty Bombers in strapped suicide belts of vinyl and aluminum grommets. Homicide. Suicide. Self-Defense. Self-Preservation. Self-Immolation. Endless Sorrows in sequels of time immemorial. What of the streets of rapping Rabbis. Hip-Hopping Imams. Crooning Calvinist. Dancing Taoist Monks in Mary Quant mini skirts throwing garlands of peace at bespoke madness in Saville Row suits. My Street, Your Street, Mad Streets, Streets everywhere rising up and lifting the mothers off besotted couches, colliding in a giant chamber of love and despair, happiness and sadness. Look into the sun. See the moonlight of our civilization. The streets awash in tears, paved in hope for a tomorrow, any tomorrow while it lasts into the twilight.

Recollection

I can't explain why, but lately my mind has been filled with recollections, some good and some bad and a few in the that silver-grey area of ambiguity. One memory I have goes back to my childhood. I recall an adult, a neighbourhood guy who was loved by all, both kids and grown-ups alike. He was the best parent on the block, Mr. Keane was. His kindness and generosity touched nearly everyone. To me and my buddies he patiently taught us how to play baseball or he took us ice skating, in short an all round great person. On top of that, he was always good to his son Patrick, who was also the best of us.

But Mr. Keane had a dark story from his past that he didn't keep secret. See, during the war he was an ensign in the U.S. Navy working out of a ship in the South Pacific. He and his buddies got drunk one night and missed their boat embarking from a harbor. It might be easy to see where the story goes, but the ship got hit in some major naval battle and every crew member died.

I don't know why, but Mr. Keane's life was never filled with bitterness nor guilt nor did he try to hide from his past. It seems as if he was a better man because of what happened, and now, after all these years, I think I know why. Maybe to make his own life livable he decided to be the best person he possibly could be, always treat others with kindness, generosity, and respect. Maybe this was his way of honouring the memory of those who perished, at the time young men just like himself. I guess all soldiers should just miss out on war. But if they did, there would be no war at all. Imagine that kind of world.

For Whom the Old Man Toils

A couple of gravediggers are working the long end of their shovels, digging deep into an early frost and hard black earth. It is predawn. At first light the young man asks the old man: "Is this when the cemetery gives up the dead? When the souls rise up to meet the living?"

The old man stops digging, steam leaving his mouth as he answers ruefully, "You wannabe writers think to much for your own good. When this job is done all I want is a belly full of hot coffee and some warm bread."

His words make the young writer think of Hemingway. But these thoughts give way to a feeling of emptiness in his belly, and he too craves hot coffee and a warm slice of bread.

Chances Are

I met a girl at a bar. She was attractive, so we flirted with suggestive words and lingering stares. She seemed ripe, like ready fruit for the picking. I asked for her name and number.

She said, "You can find me on page 917 in the phone book. First column, third name from the top."

Was this a wanting tease, or a clever brush-off? I'd been there for both in the past, but I was feeling vulnerable these last few weeks, not really sure if I could handle any type of rejection. I put off looking for her name in the white pages for a couple of days until curiosity got the better of me.

Best to use a pay phone, I thought. I opened the phone book, found the page and column, and counted down three names. With my lucky index finger I pushed the silver buttons.

After three rings I got: "Leonardo Pizza."

"I'd like a large Hawaiian, but go easy on the ham."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, you know an attractive blond with long legs, a nameless flirt who plays with a man's heart?"

"We got one of those. Is that delivery or pick-up?"

Response to the 'Dox

The 'Dox writes:

I had an English professor who never wore a watch and he said it was because "time is always now." Time is now and the past and future are just concepts we create in our mind. When we live in the "flow" of the present moment, it enables us to let go of things. It is too easy to get stuck in a moment and try to hang on to things that are no longer.

The bluesman John Lee Hooker once sung:
"Serves you right to suffer, serves you right to be alone, you can't go on livin' in the past, them days...is gone."

But what of the writer? To me memories are like dice I shake in the palm of my hand. I toss them off a wall and they land on a hard pavement. The numbers that come up are the stories I tell.

Doctor, Doctor

Recently I visited my doctor. I told him of a deep circle of pain that surrounded my heart and shot through my legs and arms whenever I moved. A professional, he proceeded with medical diligence: my blood pressure and pulse were checked, blood was withdrawn for the usual analysis. Then, with great worry on his face, he presented me with an X-ray.

"Tsk, tsk. See your X-ray. It's out-of-sorts, like a de Kooning painting. No real shape or form that the eye can easily discern. The colours are fine, but little else. In short, you have a defective heart of the formless modern man. As much spiritual as physical."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Ah, the spiritual part, that's for you to determine. Let me just say you are in some danger if corrective measures aren't taken. Just last week I had two patients. One had a heart that looked like the mad strokes of a Riopelle, the other like the furious drippings of a Pollock. Both died within days."

The physician presented me with another x-ray. "See this heart. Perfect, just like a Modigliani painting. There is much lively interpretation of the human form. The shapes are wonderful, the colours bright and healthy. The kind of cardio-vascular system you should develop."

The good doctor told me how I had to change my diet, exercise more, control stress, lose weight, and try to see beauty in a more usual way.

I always do what doctors say, even though sometimes it goes against my intuition of what's right. So I did try my best to follow his instructions; less fat to consume, more greens to eat, longer and brisker walks to take. And I must say I kind of dig this Modigliani cat and I wouldn't mind owning a heart like one of his paintings. But I did find an artist at a gallery whose work appears more suitable to my spirit. These are the paintings of Marc Chagall, the rich colourist with his recurring goat. I don't know much about him or what any of it means, but I think it would be kind of cool to have a goat running through my veins and arteries. I'll have to check the fat content of goat and see what the doctor says. Hope it's OK with him. Wouldn't want to end up dead like a Riopelle, overrated like an oversize Rorschach test.