The Grand Canyon is No Great Shakes

The Grand Canyon is no great shakes.
It's nothing but a wound,
a testament in fact, to
helplessness.

For five and a half million years,
Gaia lay there, stretched out--
defenseless
against that trickle that wormed its way
into her back,
carving out this millenial
"monument"
like a cancer.

Such is the nature
of helplessness;
again, I sit on this bedside chair, and I
watch you getting worse,
and the only thing I can do it seems
is complain about my
aching back.

7/06/10, E 8th St. @ Greene St.

101 degrees Fahrenheit
above, a dripping a.c. irrigates this concrete farm,
and in the heat, I swear
I can see it expand.

Revision

Again,
between these
institutional beige walls,
we wait on
molded plastic chairs.
Again,
that antiseptic smell,
x-rays, scans and labs
Again
the doctor's smile
we're never quite sure we can take
at face value.

9/15/10

Today, "The City"
is an ugly beast, with bad breath
and broken teeth.

Hospital

on steel railed bed
you lie,
like a benched engine
unresponsive, with
that complicated
tangle of tubes to
give you air
saline
and drugs
take away your
urine
excess lymph
and blood
and the thing I miss
so much right now
is the feeling that
inside this mess
of unfamilliar form
is something real
that's mine.

Hometown

There's intersections I've mindlessly crossed,
and the corners of grocery store produce sections over which my eye has passed,
a root broken square in the sidewalk travelled daily on the way home from the bus stop, and
that certain shade of 3 p.m. mid-November light that
you can't exactly name, but innately know all the same.
These details are the minutiae of a life, too trivial to romanticize in any poem,
(for honestly, who'd care?)
but the fact that you're smiling right now,
quietly to yourself as you read these lines
proves, that that is not the case.

Instructions: In Case of a Cold and Rainy Day

On some cold rainy day, don't be afraid to stay in bed.

Forego the distractions of

radio, TV and the like,

and listen--

how a dog’s bark rings across the

hard concrete yard, how

rain soaked tires

slish on puddled streets, and

how the steel construction plates

on Third Avenue

kurunk under their rolling weight.

If by some chance, you happen to find

yourself not alone in your bed, reach out.

Touch her back. Notice how her skin feels on

different parts of your fingertips.

Alternate between the pads,

and the part just before

the edge of your nail.

If her back is cool,

press yourself against her.

Pray the phone doesn’t ring.

Sleep

Woodstock

From Kerhonkson:

"You take 209 through Kingston, and go left after the roundabout onto 28 West. From there, you go about 7 or 8 miles toward the junction of 375 which will be on your right, and you follow that right on into Woodstock."

...

It's February the 13th, cold, (27 F, but it feels like 17), and slightly cloudy here in Woodstock. And it's quiet, bereft as it is of the usual throngs of tie-dye nirvana seeking tourists and New Yorkers up for the weekend. In fact, I'm alone enough on the sidewalk that the only other walker on my side of the street, a middle age woman who looks like she may be one of the aforementioned, visibly tightens up her posture when she hears my foot fall 12 or so feet behind.

I've parked in the municipal lot which- surprising for any touristy place, especially in New York State, is free. The first place I come to is a Tibetan/Nepali shop, which is more or less directly across the street. Though I've only left the temperate zone of my car moments before, I'm freezing, and the shop is blessedly warm, though not much different, stock wise, from similar shops in the city or anywhere else. They have the requisite "Free Tibet" stickers, the shelves of delicate looking brass Buddhas in repose, turquoise and silver jewelry and knitted fingerless gloves that become mittens when you flip the end over your fingertips. I'm tempted by the latter, until I see that they're seventeen dollars. Outlandish, I think.

"Thukchiechie" I say to the woman behind the counter (thank you, in Tibetan), and she answers me with a heavily New Jersey accented "have a nice day".

In subsequent shops (two more of which are also Tibetan/Nepali), I ask if there's a restroom I can use, but to no avail. Apparently, the only "public restroom" in town that's open in the winter, is the one inside the Town Hall, which, I'm told, is open 24 hours to boot. I'm expecting to walk through the front door and encounter a guard or at least a receptionist, but when I enter, no one is around, and the only open public restroom in Woodstock, New York, is not only unguarded, but unisex and clean.

Outside again, I cross the street, and head toward "The White Gryphon", a shop as "Woodstocky touristy" looking as most any other in the area, bedecked as it is in Art Nouveau, retro-psychedelica and tie-dye. Inside, I glance down to my right, and there on the counter is something I'm astounded by.

"Holy shit!" I say, louder than I'd intended, as I pick up the necklace: a simple leather thong with a pendant of feathers. In the corner, a very relaxed looking woman (later, she tells me her name is Fiona, and that she's a "pet psychic",) cradling a large dark gray rat (his name is "Bubo", after the bubonic plague) laughs.

"Sorry", I say, and I ask her how much for the necklace.

"I don't know... I was going to say twelve dollars maybe, but something tells me you're supposed to have it, so how about six?"

At this point, I tell her why I'm so blown away:

"See, we have this place out in Kerhonkson, it's a former bungalow colony, and the couple who lives in one of the cottages, well, she's half American Indian, and I was telling her how I'd lost the feather that was on this bag (*it's a leather, fringed bag I made, and the part that keeps it closed had a feather on it until it was snagged and lost somewhere on the streets of New York last summer), and she'd said 'well, I got some wild turkey feathers I can let you have', and they're beautiful, but they were too big for that.. Anyhow, to make a short story longer, I had this dream last night about the feathers... I was carrying them, and I met this older guy who was American Indian, and he goes, 'would you like a reading?' so I'm like 'sure', and he takes the feathers and looks at them and does a reading, and I'm like, 'how the hell do you do that? I mean, I just got those feathers, what do they have to do with me?' and he just smiles, and laughs, and says,'you may have just gotten them, but they've always been there for you.' So then, I tell him how I'd intended to use them for my bag, and maybe put one in my hat, but they're just too big for that, (*they're close to 14 inches long) and he takes one and cuts it into smaller feathers, even trimming the edges so that each section looks like a smaller but complete feather, and then he takes one and wraps a piece of twine around the base and makes a necklace of it and puts it around my neck, and says 'here, wear this'. I don't personally ascribe anything magical to the feathers or anything, but maybe my finding this necklace is the universe's way of telling me I need to listen more to my intuition. "

"See", says Fiona,"you were meant to have it". She goes on to explain that it was made by a friend of theirs who is in fact American Indian, and who, for various other reasons, sounds oddly similar to the man in my dream, and that it's the only one; he hasn't made anything else for them in a long time.

"Will you take a charge for so little?" I ask. She explains, that normally, she wouldn't, but that, because it's so apparent the universe means for me to have it, she "... wouldn't dare say no". I give her my debit card and pay her six of the remaining fourteen dollars in my account.

Somewhere around five o'clock, my gut reminds me I haven't really eaten today, so I head to the Garden Cafe on The Green; luckily, I have my wife's debit card in my wallet, and enjoy the best black bean burger over mescalin salad I've ever had.

It's dark now in Woodstock, and I'm slightly worried I might have a hard time finding my way back to Kerhonkson. I walk across to the municipal lot, which is so dark now, I can barely see where I'm going. There are no streetlights, nor is there any Moonshine. This is the kind of darkness that goes out of its way to swallow light.

I'm able to find my Saturn SL2 by remotely unlocking the doors thus triggering the cabin's overhead light.

Two wrong turns, and, "excuse me, sir? I'm trying to find 209."

His directions are a little sketchy and hard to follow, but I listen anyway, and tell myself not to worry; I'll figure out the rest; after all, I must learn, I tell myself, to follow my intuition.

2.25.10, 1st Ave., @76th St.

Today, at roughly 5:14 A.M.,
our sidewalks were invaded
by umbrellas! Jostling
past one another,
none even paused
to mourn at gutter graves, their
broken brethren's
skeletal remains,
or stopped to give comfort
to dying comrades, who
lay against corner trash cans,
wounded and forgotten, their
black satin battle skins,
flapping like desiccated
bats’ wings.

The Best Thing I've Been Able to Come Up With So Far To Tell People When They Ask Me What I Do For A Living:

I produce small pebbles of insight to toss into the cosmic pond so I can watch the rings expand.

Whatever Happened To...

Greeny Baxter, who was a literalist, had seen a bumper sticker on the back of an old blue Toyota pick-up that said, "Sky Dive New Jersey", and so, one clear day he stood beneath a cloudless New Jersey sky in the middle of a golden field, and squinting into the sun, he lifted his arms up over his head.

Ode to a Learning Disability

dreams come and go as dreams are wont to do

and thoughts? they've got feet,

and run away

I pass my time with dirty dishes, 

empty mugs and 

half finished books

strewn 'cross the table like a 

c  o  n  s  t  e  l  l  a  t  i  o  n 

  (is it "The Ostrich"?)

this couch has got legs, but they're about as useful 

 as my own-

 directionless, and anyway, totally incapable 

of taking me anywhere,

and so I escape:

another dirty dish in the sink

another stained cup on the table

and another book I'll probably never finish.

imagination

in magic nations

imagine gyrations

(and)

image stagnation

in machinations

of magistration

42nd and 6th

 The rhythm of the world,
isn’t so obscured here as to be imperceptible:
Although I long to be upstate again
(‘midst the trees, peaks, the ancient cemeteries,)
I steel myself for a moment here,
and hear:
an insistent beating, of is. is. is.


     

Sometimes, a Word

is an idea

is a poem

is a story

is an explanation

is a movement

is a history

is a reason why

is a reason for

is a reason to

and sometimes that word

(like something dead,

or forgotten,

or just plain impotent)

falls short of its potential,

and says nothing at all.

Crumbs

Large crumbs fall from my plate all day long:
a trip downtown to bring her the potassium she forgot to take with breakfast,
four hours at my mother-in-law's, typing a letter,
a traffic jam on Central Park West
but when, at the end of my day, together we walk through the front door,
I find that what is left on my plate is yet sweet substance,
undiminished.

Minnewaska, Rte. 44/55, 11/15/2009

Driving down the mountain road, we exit the fog for a moment,

and the world looks like it's been polished with glass cleaner.

Below us, across the valley, the lower peaks protrude through a billowing sea of clouds --

islands of Avalon in

"The Gunks".

Moved as I am by this image, I want to paint it,

with

e p i c s t r o k e s

and

profound poetics;

then,

a still breath

and I see,

my intervention is unnecessary;

this perfect poem

has always been.

Washington Square, after 4:00 P.M., 7/8/09

City squirrels, like city people are rarely fazed by the unusual; he races amidst the parkgoers' feet, some oaken treasure in his sight, and only the dogs at the ends of leashes aren't cool.

A pigeon curls his toes over the edge of a concrete curb before lift off, and his wings sound more like excited claps, than flaps, while on benches sit the old, the jobless, the students and the lost, a repeating patchwork pattern, and the sidewalks, once cracked with roots and many seasons' abuse are smooth now-- history evicted.

Indian Gauze

New shirt: Indian gauze

--> sense memory:

Summers in Florida,

smell of Solarcaine on 

sun burnt skin, & mangos-

 a new fruit, 

make for sticky fingers & chin

My fingers walk her body; 

    this crease, 

    that scar, 

each a landmark 

on the map that leads me home.

Fans

Each fan has its own sound: a whir, and/or subtle pulse as its blades rotate against the air; the fan in our bedroom in the city is high pitched but the sound is still and constant.

The fan in our room in the country house, a huge wooden thing that wobbles threateningly above our bed makes almost no sound at all, but those ceramic knobs that hang at the ends of swirling brass ball chains clack together in its breeze.

The ceiling fan in the room where I grew up, is-- like the fan in our bedroom, white, metal, modern and efficient: meant to stir the sub tropical air so that it seems cooler than it is, and it makes a mighty roar that's hard to tune out.

In bed in the city, we lie parallel to one another, exhausted and chasing dutiful sleep; your foot seeks out mine to make sure I'm there to pull you out of bad dreams. Next to me, you breathe deeply, while I, awake, listen to the neighbors upstairs, the birds out front, and the fan's steady beat.

In the country, we curl around one another; the mattress' sag like a black hole pulls us together towards its center. Here, the mountain air is fresh and cooler at night; it almost feels like we can drink it, stirred and unstilled as it is by those wooden blades, and we sleep as if dead: deep and restful.

In the room of my youth, the thick sub-tropical air is heavy and wet; I stare at these familiar bookshelves, now all but emptied. A small white plastic TV is on in the corner, an unfamiliar channel just loud enough to be white noise to beat away the loneliness. I lie on this futon and reach out my own foot, but find only drywall where yours should be. The fan sings its incessant wail, reminding me of where I am.

Away

There you dance on the other side of an ocean,

a dance I can’t understand...

I gave you

these notes, (a choreography)

but your steps are all different now,

and with your back to me,

you spin away.

The Girl

The girl in the back of the bus had a secret dream: to stay in one place long enough to get bored.

Plum (for William Carlos Williams)

There’s a plum in the pocket of my black wool coat

and when my hand dives in for warmth

it tempts me with its promised sweetness.

I know that when I finally bite,

The juice will run red down my chin

and stain my t-shirt so I wait--

anticipate a little longer.

Friend

She's a friend, but not someone you feel passionate about, just someone you pass the time of day or kill time with, whatever, then one day without you realizing it, something changes and you can't wait to see her, and you buy her stupid little gifts like key chains from gum ball machines or bottles of hazel nut iced coffee because she likes it, or pins with funny sayings, you know, just to let her know you think of her sometimes, but nothing too dangerous or telling, but she notices, and suddenly she doesn't answer her phone when you call, and she doesn't ask if you want to get a beer after work, or go shopping with her on Saturday, and she begins to hang out with this guy she works with, no one special or anything, kind of a jerk you think, and it seems like every time you talk to her now she's telling you how the jerk told her this really funny joke, and it turns out to be something you used to tell people when you were in junior high, and it was funny back then, but you were in junior high and you think to yourself, what a jerk, and little by little you stop calling her because all she ever talks about now is this jerk, and you begin to realize how annoying she is and how predictable she's become and you realize how lucky you are that you decided never to tell her how you were beginning to feel.

Eulogy

Conceived by a father who was a dream, and a mother who was form, Story was alas, not to be; stillborn because Story’s mother was too cold to get out of bed where other lovers beckoned from beneath the sheets and behind the curtain, Story would never realize her dreams of Tibetan mountaintops or shy engineer suitors, nor would she parade herself garishly and proudly across snow white pages for all to admire. 

Story will be missed.  

Hair

You stand behind her as she sits at her desk, and in the overhead light, you see as if for the first time, her head, once all brown, now a halo of white, and you don’t feel revulsion that she’s gotten old, nor do you feel sadness at sensing yourself suddenly at the tipped end of the see-saw; you feel gratitude, that someone like she has shared this time, bestowed upon you this history, and those strands of white hair, (more than any ring) will tie you to her forever.

Grace

It’s the sweetest part of the night:

you squint through crusted eyes

at the red LED on the cable box

as you return from the bathroom;

it's 3:11.

Quietly, you slip back into bed, so you don't wake her,

but as you settle

with your back to her,

she turns and presses her warm naked body into you

and you smile,

thankful for four more hours.

Carrie

I’ve tatooed you,

I’ve tatooed you on my soul

in a palette bright and garish,

(blue, red, aqua, purple and gold)

and when I close my eyes

it’s always you I see

and I know for a fact, that 

from us, I'd never flee.

I’ve tatooed you, you see,

I’ve tatooed you on my soul

and when with age, I fade

and my days grow short and cold

in me you’ll yet remain

warm and constant, glowing and bold.

Pickpocket

admittedly,

I’m a verbal pickpocket

pilfering words from the mouths of babes

amongst whom apparently,

it is the currency

that anything for cool is the trade

so much spent

on this precarious commodity

that in those tender years,

even one's own mortality 

is nothing at all, but modest absurdity.

Waiting For You At 80th and 1st

rain dust on the windshield glows

green glows

gold retires

red but like the Moon without the Sun's light 

it’s really nothing on its own

shapeshifting people pass by with their dogs,  traffic 

sweeps up first 

diamond yellow silver spikes stab

the night, an illuminated ballet

anticipation grows

DCPS

“Kid,” they said, “you’ve got the gift of words”, but when no one could figure out who'd given it to me, they reached their hands down my throat to grab it away.

NEW MANIFESTO FOR CREATIVE EXPRESSIONISTS

We the creators, pledge to adopt and adapt the following:

-To imagine new outlets of expression

-To break former boundaries created both by ourselves and others; in other
words, to treat our past works as "straw dogs".

-To reset parameters so that other less brave or less creative individuals can express themselves within them, while they’re learning themselves and growing their own brave senses of self-expression

-Not to be ruled by preconceived notions of ourselves, our world, or our art-forms

-Not to be confined to only one venue of expression when we might find another medium or style to be more fitting at any given time

-Never to be confined by any external genre, culture, subculture, religion or platform

To add to this list as necessary or desired, and to copy and distribute it as widely as possible.

Together, we will create a non-centrist progressive movement in creative expression. We will recognize that only by being true to ourselves, can we be truly artistically free.

The Writer

On the page he pours his blood, his soul, and his cum, while in bed, his lover waits, patience ebbing.

Cord

I’m vacuuming over by the kitchen, and suddenly surprised by the length of the cord,  (I’d thought it was only 9 feet,) I look behind myself to see my wife holding the plug in her hand, and she shouts to me over the whir of the motor, “something strange happened to me today”.  

Gitty and Esther

“Mommy what does self-righjus mean?” 

Gitty took one last drag off her cigarette before stabbing it out in the styrofoam cup that held the sludge from Esther’s hot chocolate.  “It’s like your father, not letting us see each other more than twice a month, and not letting you live with me because I refuse to wear a wig and skirt, and keep Shabbes”, she wanted to say, but instead: “it’s self-righteous, and it means, you think your way is the only right way to do something.”

She watched as her daughter tried to select a color for Yogi’s picnic basket from the crayon fragments scattered around her on the floor, before settling on purple.  “So what do you think you’ll want for dinner mameleh?  I bet we can have pizza delivered to our room, you want pizza?”

As she passed the bay window on the way to the phone, she surreptitiously parted the vinyl curtains and scanned the motel's parking lot for the familiar white vans. 

While the two waited for their dinner to arrive, Gitty lit another cigarette, and studied the gas-station map,  while Esther continued to color Yogi.  

Advice

“What the hell do I need with advice from a goddamned tea bag” I thought.  I got that fortune cookie on Tuesday night, and it says to me  “Good clothes open many doors. Go shopping.” I figured I needed some new interview clothes, so I did.  I bought a new tie, a new shirt to go with it, and just for the hell of it, a new suit so I could make the best impression.

Now, my rents due, and I’ve got three dollars and seventy eight cents in my bank account until next month, so I go to the bank to see if I can get an overdraft, and while the bank managers in the back office, I see there’s this bowl of candy on his desk for anyone to take from, so I take one, and I take the little red square Dove chocolate, even though it’s the last one, and there on the inside of the red foil wrapper, it says “Success comes to those who have no fear; simply leap and the net will appear”, so before the manager even comes back, I get up and leave.  Just like that.  I go next door with my last three bucks, and I buy a cup of tea, the evening paper, and a lotto ticket.  I open the tea bag, and there, printed on the back of the little tag, it says “Don’t believe everything you read”.  

$5.00

Each story begins with a choice, one made either by or for its main character. Consider Yaya. Yaya is a 40 something year old man who works in a garage; though he isn't supposed to accept tips personally, (there's a lucite communal tip box for the benefit of the entire staff,) from one customer to whom he's been exceptionally helpful, he accepts the neatly folded five that's pressed into his hand. Later that night, he'll use it to buy himself one extra drink, which will effectively keep him at the bar an extra 17 minutes; during that extra time, he will meet his next girlfriend, or get in a fight. On the other hand, he may use the extra cash in his pocket to buy himself two lotto tickets, a cup of coffee, and a bag of Doritos.

If he chooses to save the bill, and use it that night at the bar, and he meets his next girlfriend, perhaps she'll become his wife and give him two children, one of whom will attend Princeton one day and earn a doctorate in physics, specializing in magnetics, the other of whom will die of leukemia two days before her 11th birthday, or maybe the woman will give him herpes.

If he gets into a fight, maybe he will accidentally kill the man who started with him, or before the first punch, perhaps the two will reconcile and become fast friends, and discover they are from the same obscure part of Kenya.

Maybe one of the lotto tickets will win 2.00, or 34,000,000.00.

If it wins 2.00, maybe he will count himself lucky, bless God, and buy himself a muffin to eat later for desert, or maybe he will buy himself two scratch-offs, win nothing more, and curse himself for having wasted 2.00 when he could have had a muffin. Or maybe he will win a million dollars a year for life.

Maybe guilt, or honor will get the better of Yaya, and before moving onto his next customer, he'll quietly slip the bill into the lucite box himself.

Each story begins with a choice, and with each choice there are a million stories.

Click

You're drunk, and the cold feels like something else, as you stagger out of her basement apartment, barefooted and bloodied. "Damn it", you think, "she should have listened when I told her to keep her mouth shut."

The book in your hand is already falling apart, but you do your best to keep the pages from scattering in the wind. "Just once more", you tell yourself for the seventh time now, when behind you, just a bit to your left you hear the click.

HELP WANTED

Applicants must be at ease accepting criticism, take being misinterpreted and misunderstood with aplomb, have a high threshold for stress, and be comfortable making life or death decisions.  Extensive knowledge of world history, politics, philosophy and religions required.  Executive experience preferred. Must be multi-lingual, able to multi-task, and have advanced problem solving capabilities. Work schedule is for 6 days a week.

Interested applicants may leave their curriculum vitae at any synagogue, mosque, church, temple, ashram or ancient grove. 

Shorty

I had a dog named Shorty once. I got him from the pound, because they said they were five minutes away from killing him. Shorty
had one eye, a coat of about 7 different colors, and his back legs were
just a little longer than his front ones, making him look like he was
always in the mood to play. My friend Meiron said he looked like Frankenstein’s dog. When
I went to pet Shorty for the first time, he took a bite out of my left
hand, but he must not have liked the way I tasted, because he never bit
me again. When
we took him to the park on Saturday afternoons to play Frisbee, he
would always chase other people’s soccer balls instead and pop them,
and when a lady soldier was bending down to get something out of her
backpack, Shorty bit her on the ass. He
must have liked the way she tasted, because he didn’t let go for a
really long time, even though she was screaming, and it took her
boyfriend, Meiron and me together to pull him off. Meiron said we were probably the first people in the history of Independence Park, to be kicked out and told never to come back.

When I met Neta at “The Moon” one Friday night, it was love at first sight. Three days later she moved in, with a footlocker full of her CDs, Books and clothes. When
I picked her up from work on Tuesday night, we came home to find her
locker pried open, her CDs scattered and scratched, her books torn to
shreds and her clothes piled in the four corners of the apartment: one
pile had been shit on, one pissed on, one vomitted on, and on the last
pile was a very tired dog, sound asleep on his back.

“It’s him or me,” said Neta.

When we took him back to the pound, the lady smiled at me, took the leash without a word and led Shorty into the back. As we walked out into the bright afternoon sun, we heard her say “Poor thing, we were starting to wonder how long you'd be away this time”.

Impossible

Never one to give up easily, you slowly ease your left, then right foot into your own mouth and swallow.  Now, if you can just manage to get your legs down, you think, the rest will be a breeze, you’ll show them all, and you slurp at your knees, but you can’t seem to make any headway. Your back is on fire, and your jaw, throat and stomach feel like they’re going to burst.  Tommorrow, you tell yourself,  tomorrow you’ll show them what happens when they tell you  "impossible”.