Jazz

Slick sidewalk foot fall music
high heeled taps
or smooth sole slide
tap tap scuff slide tap scuff tap
there's jazz in these streets

On stepping outside
the first of today
a blast of cold snow
hits my face

I smile at the joke
and miss my hat.

Rucksack

Notebook
and pen
Chopsticks
and spoon
Water bottle
Prayer beads
Book of poems
Plum:

Sacred things

2/1/11: M102 Bus

Passing your stop
at 5:32, I was
disappointed to see
you didn't get on.

2/1/11: Bookstore

You sniff the air
for a hint of her
fifteen seconds
after she's passed—
a fresh stack of books
cradled in her arms.

1/28/11: After The Storm

Feet in scratchy
green wool socks
inside plastic
shopping bags
in old brown boots that
used to be water-proof

Leaping black
salt slush motes

Scrambling over
black peak'd banks
__________City stain'd
__________Yellow streak'd

Dodging falling ice chunks
& viscous clumps
of half melted snow

1/26/11

New snow
wet like dough
sticks to the faces of
street signs_____&
parked car windows
When it hits the hood of my jacket
it sounds like falling salt.

Buffalo Grove

In our sixth Summer
Michael Robinson and I
hid in grass fields
ate wild crab apples
beat flat tall reeds
played they were nests
broke open milkweed pods
scattered the seeds
looked for ancient arrow heads
shit in the weeds
(yelled for our moms
when we couldn't find leaves)
trapped quick brown garters
slept in the sun
and when daylight was done
we caught lightning bugs
and that was enough.

1/18/11: Guggenheim Pavilion, Mt.Sinai Hospital

Driving rain
on 5th Ave
lashes bare
January trees
I sit
in glass atrium
hog a table
to myself
watch steam clouds
dance on glass roof
drink hot cocoa
watch med students
read poetry
shiver a little
Upstairs
on a gurney you lie
while Dr. Karen Nipper
cuts into your eye.

1/10/11: Evening Rush

Winter's bleached faces
glow blue
above e-readers
and cell phones
on the 5:14
C train.

1/11/11: Mercer @B'way

Dirty snowbanks
line the sidewalk,
awaiting their renewal
Something the
pale sky promised.

1/04/11: 3rd Ave. @ 47th St: On My Way Home After Viewing the Hakuin Exhibit At The Japan Society

No thoughts at the bus stop
I listen instead
to tire music on pavement
the wind beating the high buildings
and the occasional percussion of
sharp taxi horn.

12/08/10: Kerhonkson: Bear

He comes from the woods
heavily
on all fours
brown back bristling
in the
cold morning sun

Up on hind legs
he sniffs at the wind
down once again
nuzzles a blueberry bush

I sit
tin cup coffee at window
He sniffs
sparse brown grass
noses a birdfeeder
scratches icy earth

Then
having found
that which he came for
he’s back to the woods
a frozen squirrel clenched
in
excited hungry mouth

12/30/10: Upon Waking to a Phone Call From My Mother, and Looking Outside

Snow no longer covers our walk way.
What's left on the ground is now mostly gray.
The trees once again bare their black branches,
The streets, their bald black asphalt.
Three people died in the storm.
Things come and things go
just as they do;
It is not fate,
It simply is.

12/27/10: 3rd Avenue, First Blizzard of Winter

We walk in sidewalk canyons single file,
heads down, hats pulled low,
eyes squinted against the snow.

The salt men
powder sidewalks.
The plows build
roadside mountains.
Bus tire chains
grind into the asphalt.

It's 22 degrees out,
they say it feels like 4.
By Saturday, they say,
it should be 'bout 51.

12/23/10: Union Square

Suddenly, white sky
opens snow on Union Square;
everyone looks up.

12/24/10: W. 4th Street Station, C train platform

On cold subway platform, I
watch the catharsis
of hot wheel on rail,
& the nature of sparks.

When things move to-
gether, something is
born.

12/20/10: Greenwich Village

Walking down Bleecker,
walking Cornelia
Warming cold hands in a
West Village laundromat
Man with black Shepherd says of
passing blue minivan--
"There's the F.B.I. again,
just keeping watch"
Young couples strolling in
soft entre nous
Men stacking ladders on
white plumber's truck
B.M.W. motorbike--
sidewalk obstruction
Black stacks of garbage bags
Christmas light fire escapes

Well lit apartment windows make
good T.V.s,
for the bored and the homeless.

12/24/10: E 88th St.

Three shining doves
punctuate the Winter sky
as if, an ellipsis...

12/24/10: 1st Ave. near 84th

Quiet Friday
I pause by a wall
to lean
to write
to witness the now.

12/09/10: Rte. 9W, Southbound

Windy way
9W
black ice slick
mountain pass
All the way,
silver moon
hooked in hanging
velvet sky.

12/17/10: 10:34 PM, Uptown C Train

Penn Station through the
Acid etched graffiti glass:
"A clean, well lit place".

12/17/10: Central Park West

Beyond night blacked trees
a golden lit building top;
It's the harvest moon!

A Ponderation

I wish that I knew
how much further away
from the Sun we really are
in December, than July,
so I could simply marvel
at how much difference is made, by
three inches, or twelve thousand miles
(which isn't really all that much,
when you think in cosmological scale)
in how it all feels to us,
standing here, on Third Avenue.

12/16/10: 3rd Ave. @ 86th St.

City sidewalks and bus seats
Diner booths and subway steps
Are strewn with lost scarves
Orphaned gloves
Forgotten hats
The ubiquitous detritus
Of winter.

12/7/10: Kerhonkson

I am the nature of deer
grazing on grass
of grass
eating earth
of earth
eating deer

Soon enough
despite my hard soled shoes
my words and thoughts
and treasured things
In spite of my pride
and forgetfullness of the fact
that I am also mud
the earth will have
me too.

12/06/10: Kerhonkson

Waronawanka Mountain home
I drink
water from icicle branches
Breathe
air from frozen creek
The gray snowflake sky
is my bed
Under pine feather blanket
I sleep.

12/06/10: Kerhonkson

Tell the snow dusted grass
the creek nymphs
the well
Tell the old black stove
the split logs
the axe
Tell the pitch
Tell the road where it bends
Tell the tall pines
I'm home again.

12/03/10: Friday Morning, First Of Home

Sharp white
cold steel
water bucket breath
Bald black branches
in the
blue gray light

Listen to the
sidewalk--
the stoops &
hoods of cars
These things know
Soon,
snow.

Airplane

From above, it looks
as though the ground is foaming
white-- like shaken beer.

11/18/10: Miami: Parents' Backyard

Something small moves in
fallen palm fronds: rustling
leaves demand I look.

11/27/10: Miami: Parent's Living Room

Reflection of lamp
in night blackened window casts
no halo at all

This Is How You

This is how you
plant a tree
make a garden
dig a ditch

This is how you
make a wall
prune a bush
polish a boot

This is how you
change a fanbelt
build a sandcastle
learn Japanese

This is how you
do many things
This is how you
write a poem.

11/30/10: Etzel Itzik

My mother said, when I spoke of you today
over limonana--
humos lunch
that I still light up when your name comes up,
and I smiled at the thought--
just two more nights apart.

11/30/10: Miami, my Parents' Backyard

Above, dark clouds tell
of rain; here on the ground, sun
white heat burns senses.

11/29/10: North Miami Beach, Walking to the Dollar Movies

Above N.M.B., there's just
too much sky,
fits tight 'round my head:
Sun-fire. Cowboy hat.

11/27/10: Miami: I-95 South

Palm trees explode
green brown fireworks line
the stuttering grey river.

11/23/10: Miami: a Memorial

Coming in through the gate of
my parents’ dark house
from a dinner of humus and Israeli pickles
I stepped on a sidewalk snail,
fat, and green.

I hadn’t seen it--
white shell in blue moonlight,
but felt its shell breaking.
It was heartbreaking.

11/21/10: Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach

Things you can buy:

Broken in jeans
whiskered and worn
with holes in the knees
and a pocket that’s torn,
a brown trucker hat
with a patch that says
“Pabst”,
and an old gray hoodie
that used to be black.
Instant nostalgia
can be yours for the taking!
So long as you can afford it,
who’ll care that you’re faking?

Musings on Colors

Will someone explain to me
please, if they could,
why red states are red,
and blue states are blue?
To me, red
is passion,
socialism,
and blood,
revolution,
brotherhood,
struggle,
and good.
Whereas blue
is for "blue blood",
and cold WASPy hands
grasping highballs of
Scotch
in oak paneled
rooms.
Red is for “VICTORY!”
but blue means “First Place”.
All these colors
confuse me,
I'll admit, it’s a
disgrace.
So I guess I’ll be purple,
(the color of change.)
Let's leave it at that
what more's there to say?

11/21/10: Miami

11/21/10: Miami
In Miami, it seems,
they’ve done away with garbage men;
just a driver
and a truck
with those big robotic arms
that come to collect
those big green plastic bins
you know, the ones they have on wheels,
you must’ve seen them
someplace.

9:03 a. m.
you hear the engines whirr
the lift, and then the thunk-
and then the truck moves on.
He doesn't even need
to leave the comfort of his cabin,
which I think would be just great,
in one of those freak
Miami snowstorms!
"It's progress", they say,
"no one needs to get dirty, and
no one needs to break his back!"

As a matter of fact,
no one's needed much
at all.

11/16/10: Construction

"No man ever steps into the
same river twice,
for it's not the same river,
and he's not
the same man"
-Heraclitus

Metal ladders clanking and screeching into place
_____and ringing as men climb them
Jackhammers busting up concrete sidewalks asphalt streets
_____ancient bricks
Bulldozers rumbling into usefulness, grinding piles of
_____broken bedrock
Sounds of things going up
Sounds of things coming down
The city is never complete
There is no such thing as forever.

11/16/10: E88th St. btwn. 2nd & 3rd

Yellow, wet, balding trees
yesterday, were green
overnight, Fall.

11/12/10: Central Park, 79th St. Transverse

Above the transverse,
black Autum branches cut sharp
through cold blue dusk sky.

11/12/10: York Av. @ 82nd St.

Night wind high leaves shake
shimmering silver green fish
dance in ocean sky.

Koicha

Bamboo brush in rough clay bowl
spread macha
____________whip water
music ._____a chant.


Koicha- (Japanese) thick tea
Macha- (Japanese) powdered green tea leaves without stems or veins.

Night Ride on the M103 Bus

Woman missing teeth chews green gum;
she’s wearing a red ski cap.

“65th St. next.”
Unintelligible message from mission control:
trains out of service,
shuttles in place.

"68th."

An ancient “have-not”, holds onto what he has:
worn brown paper bag, creased like the backs of
his hands.

“72nd St.”

Cellphone Hebrew, in the back,
couple Hindi in the middle.

“75th St. next.”

An Aussie hat and a
Back strapped guitar.
Cowboy boots.

“77th.”

Burberry trench coat, Gucci loafers:
an important frown hanging
over his Blackberry.

“79th.”

New boots
Old boots
Flip-flops
Ballet flats.

“82nd.”

smells of surreptitiously
swallowed dinners fill the bus:
French fries
Chinese
something with curry.


“86th St.”

Yellow cab cut off
Horn blow—
Brake slam
Garbage truck splash

“88th “
“back door please.”



Wankel’s windows already
covered in Christmas;
thick gray sweater tugged tight,
I hoist my backpack
grab my groceries
and take the
short cold walk home.

For Hala Alyan

I have read your lines
slowly—______tasting each word
like a confection.

Why I Have To Go Shopping

Paperweight
hockeypuck
formerly frozen,
toasted twice
(gluten free):
tough as the suede
on the side of a
1976 seven year old’s
water weathered
sun dried
sidewalk scuffed
rarely tied
orthopedic
saddle shoe.

Never the less,
breakfast.

Thanksgiving

The turkey sits
headless, an ironic celebration
of freedom.

10/27/10, 3rd Ave. @ 91st St.

A real-estate brochure box melted by fire:
a subtle statement.

The Leg

This left leg—
ankle, misshapen
from injury at 14,
and likewise its
length— almost
an inch shorter, with
blue veins to mark
time spent upright,
walks taken,
work done,
is not beautiful.
It doesn't
spring proudly
from Summer shorts-
tanned, muscular & long,
nor is it
fashionable,
tapering neatly in
tight black jeans to
shapely foot below,
but it’s a sincere leg,
does as it should
and only complains
occasionally.

10/22/10, Cornelia St.

On an Autumn city sidewalk,
I saw Don Quixote,
sweeping leaves.

Fiction

A great romance was born
as she boarded his bus;
a book by Douglas Adams
held her attention,
and she-- she held his.
She was 39.
He was a contractor.
She wanted 3 children.
He was from Maine.
She was a quarter Japanese.
He was a vegetarian.
She’d voted libertarian,
but together, they'd move
___past that.

A great romance was born
as she boarded his bus,
and died
as she left,
never really having noticed
he'd been sitting
there at all.

The Frustration of 2nd Ave

Stuttering streets reach out for something permanent
But city dogs and sweepers know there’s no such thing
And even sidewalk tree roots only grow eight inches deep.

10/20/10 E 88th St

behind the clouds,

the moon: a pearl half drowned

in nacreous whey.

10/20/10 3rd Ave @ E88th

On busy sidewalk,
an obstructive debate regarding
good manners.

10/20/10 M101

On rush hour bus
standing nanny sweeps hair
from seated girl’s eyes.

10/19/10, E88th St. btwn. 2nd and 1st

Churchyard pigeons peck at seeds of summer’s end
amidst the browning grass.

10/17/10

weekenders leave
shedding angry city skins
for a minute.

Brumberg

"Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal":
poli-sci-fi?

10/16/10, 1st Ave. @ 80th St. 10:47 P.M.

In winter coat on folding chair,
the fruit vender counts the day's harvest.

10/16/10, 1st Ave 10:54 P.M.

Smoke thirsty drinkers spill
out onto sidewalks;
teetering touseled
girls in stilettos in
from the suburbs, stinking
of schnapps, and
boys in status
conscious jeans
and experimental facial hair
boasting “beer expertise”,
and burgeoning bravados
all slaking other thirsts.

10/16/10 79th St. Diner

There are plants behind the
cashier's head; do they grow from
her subconcious?

10/16/10, 1st Ave @ 77th St.

the bodega cat and I greet
each other with mutual respect;
he does not rub up against my leg
and I, much as I want to,
do not bend to stroke
his silken back.

10/16/10 Walking 1st Ave., 88th St.-80th. St.

In Yorkville, the bars open early on Saturdays,
beckoning dark wombs in stasis call to
those who'd forget the life of day:
old men, and young-- mostly Irish,
in their workweek work clothes, still
dusty with the dust of the 2nd Avenue subway dig
(the "Sand Hogs", they call themselves),

and tonight, like every weekend night
the bars will shake off their dust
the staffs will rub Minwax into smooth worn wood
the girls will come in their leggings, & tube-
tops, and the frat boys in their button-
down untucked shirts will
play beer pong in the corner.

This Is Not A Dirty Poem

Cunt
is such
a lovely word,
as
is
cock;
direct,
unabashed,
unashamed
of what they are--
they simply are
as they are
and need
no explanation,
make no
embarrassed
apologies.
could it be,
that we—
consumed
as we are,
with
products
and
packaging,
incomes
and
addresses
-effemera
come as
integral
as
underwear-
are so
easily
shocked
because
such
simple
pure
honesty,
is so far
from
who
we’ve
created
ourselves
to
be?

Entropy

“Quick! Run! The beach!”
they call you from the shore;
instead, you deep kiss the waves.

10/15/10 Morning Coffee Walk, 88th @ 3rd

Chinese boy
yellow raincoat in cobblestone park
laughs at frantic dog

10/14/10, 2nd Ave. @ 12th St., Outside a Korean Nail Salon

3 skins scuff
down 2nd Ave.,
steel toed
boots sweep
broken window
strewn sidewalk.
One--
thumbs hooked
in red suspenders,
says
“this wouldn’t
happen if
you were
white”.

10/12/10 B'way @ W 78th

_____“SHALOM.
___HUNGRY JEW.”

read his cardboard sign. It
wasn’t Yom Kippur.

10/14/10

You realize as the door swings shut
behind you
you’ve left your pain.

Black Bread

black bread
cooling on the
rack
hard crust
yields slightly
under pressing
finger tips

placed in a brown
paper bag, I’ll
never know
the pleasure:
sliced thick,

hot from morning toaster &

awash in butter, or
dipped
into wintery soup
polishing even the last
from the sides of
the bowl.

10/13/10

across the yard
an apartment is gutted;
Shop-Vacs swallow a life.

Unseasonable Summer City Sonata

taxi meters chattering
excitedly at journey’s end
boasting


monotonous air conditioners wail
arias into the night


morning newspapers—
long discarded, dance
around subway entrances


by open window,
gray haired woman stares out at the street
waiting

A Short Poem About A Cello, Or You

sad woman
mooooooaaaan
melodious
and warm
heave your
brown body
before us
all--
we wait
patiently,
for your
song.

Palimpsest

Midtown Manhattan in mid December,
is the ugliest palimpsest ever. Ever.
Be-jewelled, be-furred and be-Barboured barbarians,
wreak hell for their spoils and leave little but carrion.
Amidst the herds of lingering tourists
grazing at the windows of Bergdorf's,
they seem to say,
"a bargain to be had, may be worth the trampled spine,
so long as it is yours-- dear friend, not mine!"

The Onion Plant

On dusty Summer
_____sunlit sill,
the onion plant
_____died
beautifully:
in vibrant greens,
browns, purples, and whites,
with an
_____Art-Nouveau
arrangement
to its
d r o o p i n g
ten-
___drilous
leaves, who'd
s__ p__ r__ a__ w__ l__ e__d
across
a row
of books
as if by their presence,
to claim them.

Inconvenience

Poetry always strikes
it seems, when
I don’t have a pen,
or when my pen is
out of ink, or
if I’ve run out of paper, or
my Blackberry’s on the fritz, or
when I have to run for the bus, or
when I’m driving a
two__ hundred__ mile__ trip.

It's an inconvenience, I think, this
passion, this pursuit. Then it
occurs to me: the Muse cares not
about mortal minutiae, or such
trivialities as
__________timing
or tools.
she comes,
when she comes,
light of foot
soft of voice,
and
woe to him,
who cares more
for the number of some
bouncy young thing,
or he who must run
for the bus with
soggy hot coffee cup
in the middle
of a downpour
when the Muse drops by for
she’ll probably
just
___ pass
_______by
unbothered
and shrugging her shoulders
_______as she goes.

Pulse

The pen feels my pulse
It's mine it's mine
The ink is my blood
It's mine it's mine
The page is my skin
It's mine it's mine
The poem is my mouth
It's mine it's mine
The words are my tongue
They're mine they're mine
My pulse is the pen
It’s mine it’s mine
My blood is the ink
It’s mine it’s mine
My skin is the page
It’s mine it’s mine
My mouth is the poem
It’s mine it’s mine
My toungue is the words
All mine all mine

No Mail

Three days now without mail and I’m peeved.
Not that there’s usually much of import,
but still, three days on, and I jealously watch
as my neighbors wrench bundles of paper from their boxes
and begin to feel cut-off from the world;
where are my catalogues, circulars, bills even?
In their absence, I can’t seem to help but wonder--
maybe I’ve finally ceased to be real?

A favorite few poems read and again,
Dvorak’s 9th to keep out the din,
ancient pajamas, threadworn and soft,
Capacious cup of coffee, sweatshirt, wool socks.
A chair by the window, deep, familiar and warm
in the Autum Sun’s rays, an inherited throw.
And finally when all good things are right
a nap to bring me home again.

9/23/10, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Rm. 317B

Through darkened window,
I fix my lens
try to capture the moon;
round, fat and im-
possibly yellow, her
day-glo bridal train streaks
the East River.

Soup

This, is a day for soup!
Thick, steaming, with
large chunks of kobucha, and
chickpeas! Some with their skins
still half-on
maybe in a miso base.

Curled into my ancient corner chair,
beside the dusty radiator
now thucking it’s way back to life
from Summer sleep,
beneath the cool glass of the

dirty window that sets the floorboards of my living room
alight like a stage,
and in the shower of sunlit dust that
sparkles like streetlight snow
in the early Autumn
morning light.

3D Talking on T.V.

3D talking on T.V.,
one's mind treens planets wide.
Not far from the travelling thrindy
we crossed that great divide.
The sea was full of segrence
that could not be displaced
for there, amongst the grundies, was
a different sort of place.

Our jewell coats shone like flowers
amidst the fields of Crote,
we laughed and talked for hours
'til we were sore of throat!
The prafties sent us skyying
to heights where we could see
we'd come now far beyond
that broken land of Inneskreen.

There was no turning back now
so heftily we turned north
into the light of Parkress
the brightest of the shores.
We'd given all we'd had, we felt
to those who'd least deserved it,
and now it was our time to reap
the treasures we had earned,

but when we got to Parkress,
we found the lights had dimmed
no longer was the city there
beloved of the Thrimme.
The shoreline had eroded, and
the shops had all been shut.
The Kreepers had taken over,
The city was all but dust.

And so our chattle we did heave
again and left this place of gray
forever wandering we will be
to find our way home-- this must be the way.

9/22/10

O, what a gift! Huzzah! Hurrah!
A free weekday concert at Avery Fisher Hall!
Wednesday morning, two seats to myself,
smuggled iced coffee,

Marsalis, Hindemith and Strauss.
O, blessed renewal, Hallelu Ja!
How long I’d been absent:
(beauty? Joy? Lost-)
but lo, The City, she succors me

again, and--
like an appeasing mother,

who'd been gone, too long

she pushes the hair back from my eyes,
and whispers, to me

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

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.