Yelp
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Eschatology
The Tight Night
Dear Father
Stale
Backporch Blues
I too have seen the best minds of my generation hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through Mormon streets looking for their own angry fix,
adults whine like angry children, terrified and blinded by the fear it has all been said, angered they have nothing new to say,
I have sat in smoke-filled rooms and listened to the ravings of these children of Reagan soaked through with alcohol, saddened, scared, they wonder when and where the world went bad, look for someone to blame,
children play senseless card games for hours, sit around tables in revolving groups of four, hold Bicycle card fanned out reverently, consult the Hoyle Bible,
children listen to the music of another time and place, long to understand the blue words of Howlin’ Wolf and Billie Holiday, crawl senselessly backward into the saxophone of Ornette Coleman,
children campaign and stump in the cold, blue light of a neon Budweiser sign, draw gray smoke from amber bongs into their lungs and minds forever,
children eat small rose colored squares of paper, hope this expands their minds, helps them see above the craggy peaks surrounding their not-so-happy valley,
children poison their souls with hatred for the great white temple standing like a dinosaur in the heart of the valley, want to destroy it, but know to kill it would be their undoing,
children hide in New York City, wander the unfamiliar streets, run from what they know, only to find dinosaurs also hide in Lincoln Center,
children live with rats and roaches in a fifth-floor walk-up in Hells Kitchen on the corner of 47th and 10th in two rooms no wider than a hallway,
children put up with the humiliating demands of the women they work for, raise the children of other people, wipe the noses of the kids they don’t love, kids they can hardly stand,
children stay out all night and drink heavily, go to the bars lining Bleecker Street, bribe the doorman of Limelight with crumpled ten dollar bills, sneak into The China Club and a forbidden world of loud music, alcohol, and cocaine in the bathroom,
children try to find someone to love, confuse the feral urge for sex with love, fuck anyone who will take them, love people who use them, cling to people who would destroy them,
children write poetry in the margins of books, want more, find they may have waited too long and can never be more than an angry child,
children sheath themselves in black, wear leather jackets and motorcycle boots, hope the darkness of weary souls can be purged by wearing black,
children slink along dark streets, find what they think they need in Alphabet City, trade a future for X-tasy,
children dance under the flashing lights, blue, green, red, yellow, colors change so fast they feel nauseated, move to the strong beat so loud they feel the music more than hear it, music directs their heartbeat,
children drown themselves in coffee and cigarettes, find they no longer think for themselves, caffeine and nicotine direct their actions,
children wake to prickly hangovers, move through the foggy days, count the hours until they immerse themselves in the red, white, and blue of Pabst Blue Ribbon again,
children fall prey to tequila, drink shot after shot of the amber truth serum, corner and taunt one another, drag ugly secrets out under the blameless summer skies,
children waste the precious commodity
of time, vacillate between love and hate for one another, want to grow,
need to make a difference, try to howl, but all they do is yelp.
Above the latest hand of Cribbage
and under the spoils of the evening,
my hands flit ceaselessly,
look for purchase among lime carcasses,
spilled salt shakers and shot glasses.
Wendy and I sit and talk about the
end of the world.
Perhaps it will all end with one
colossal party,
everyone invited to witness the
destruction.
Backlit with red and yellow Japanese
lanterns,
everyone drunk on Champagne and
Chambord,
not plunged in darkness, choking
on thirst.
Crab balls and cheese puffs will
be served,
no famine, no locusts.
The air will hang heavy with laughter
and perfume,
no the moon drip with blood.
And the dress will be strictly black
tie, everyone
in silk and chiffon,
no sackcloth, no hairshirts.
The Tight Night
We sit
around the table
strewn
with castoff and forgotten
leftovers from
dinner
and the party
grown
out of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans
stacked two or three high
settled between bowls and plates.
We talk,
as snow begins to fall,
of abstractions:
freedom, liberty, patriotism,
the United States.
We toast
with Cook’s fine American champagne
while Derrick performs
"The Declaration of Independence"
to his audience held captive
by falling snow.
We make
vague plans
for a trip to Seattle
as Dave drones
in baritone
"A Clean Well-lighted Place"
while our cars
turn into white hills
outside the back door.
Have You retired?
Like the trusted family doctor,
do You also play golf?
And wear Polo shirts?
Does Your age slowly rob You
of Your memory and abilities?
So, now who hears the pleas
for comfort from a five
year old child with a finger carelessly
crushed in a casement window?
Have You been replaced? Is that
someone
younger and quicker than You were?
Will he respond to pain?
Will he be able to find
that the ankle is broken
before it’s too late to set it?
Has he learned to love,
like You seemed to?
Or will he abandon the child alone
and scared in a hospital waiting
room
a bag of ice the only relief
for the pain of a broken arm?
Does he know life histories,
like You did?
Will he know the fear of staying
alone
overnight in the hospital
to have infected tonsils removed
on a sixth birthday?
Will he believe in me?
Will he be able to heal me?
The insistence of music and lights drives me back, cowering, trembling away from the bass line, assaulting my senses, sending them into overload.
The humidity off bodies throwing themselves into the donnybrook hangs redolent in the air, settles onto my skin, the unhealthy feel of a dying man.
Smoke from cigarettes and chemically created fog fill my lungs with swirling funk, strangles me efficiently, wheezing and gasping-- an asthmatic needing oxygen, unable to drag air into tightened lungs.
I feel trapped in the corner held tight by bars of noise and smoke, spotlighted by swirling lights, lasers make escape dangerous.
I stumble blindly to the window, breathe deeply fetid exhaust from passing cars, need to get out, throw myself into the free-for-all of flying body parts, escape out onto the patio.
The arctic blast plasters wet cotton of my shirt to my shoulders and back. I wear my clothes as wallpaper, gulp hungrily inverted air of a red-light day, let out bursts of toxic air.
I shiver and lean against the wall, even through bricks I feel the Gregorian chants of "Carmina Burana" backed by a disco track. I open the door, once again assaulted by noise and lights and humidity, my friend tells me I have ice in my hair, I reach up to feel smooth tracks of ice in my hair.
I risk the brawl on the dancefloor to get to the coat check, pull my coat on over my body slick with sweat, sneak out and walk the two and a half blocks to my apartment through the brisk mid-winter night.
I slowly expel stale air.
What I remember most from the Summer of 1992 are sensory snapshots.
The Smells of chicken and vegetables
cooking for a pasta dinner in Wendy’s kitchen,
of Patchouli oozing from the purple
painted walls of Stephen’s kitchen,
of Smartees cooking at the Sweets
Candy Company,
of much diluted smoke from cigarettes
and joints riding softly on warm breezes.
The feel of cool pavement under my
thighs and the solidity of brick walls through my t-shirt,
of the sweaty coldness of a can
of PBR in my left hand and the fragile firmness of a Camel chubby in my
right,
of summer rain as it falls on the
Scrabble board covered with nonsense and Mike asking what a COUCHLET and
an EXTOGA are and how does one PRETRAIN someone.
The sound of Thomas giggling while
he and I play pattycake or tickle him as I hold him close,
of Cleo as she puts on a concert
of Madonna songs, refusing to Vogue with the answer, "I am NOT a material
girl,"
of Cleo asking Mike to marry her,
only to spurn him upon the return of her one true love: Ruben,
of music rotating in groups of five
and set on random on the CD player,
of Derrick’s laughter as he dances
naked in the rain,
of Dave telling me it is better
to lie on the ground, so there wasn’t so far to fall, as we invite Ornette
Coleman’s Free Jazz into our moon-expanded minds.
The sight of the summer sky from
Wendy’s backporch, mostly blue and cloudless,
of Mike ambling down the driveway
to where Wendy and I play Cribbage,
of Thomas in his airplane-shaped
jumper, three jumps, then three bounces with legs tucked up,
of Cleo’s summer-length fashion
show as she changes from dress to dress,
of Dave’s bike decorated with bumper
stickers,
of Derrick’s car as the orange spots
of rust were painted white,
of "A little Anarchy goes a long
way" in white chalk on the red bricks of the garage,
of the green hose lying inert on
the driveway leading to a sprinkler we use as a swamp cooler and Cleo uses
as a swimming pool,
of the red marks and bumps and scabs
left on every leg by the mosquitoes.
The taste of sweat rolling down my
face while I sit and read The Sound and the Fury or Mike’s poetry,
of the impossibly sweet beer as
it slides easily down my throat,
of the woody cigarettes and leafy
marijuana,
of the bitter Tequila,
of leftover Mexican food from Cafe
Pierpont that Ruben or Mike bring to me and Wendy from work,
of the palpable taste of ripe joy,
hanging redolent in the air.
