The Yellow Tiger Inn

It was tourist season. We blended in. Sure, the crowds were pandemic-thin, but visitors stood out: Hawaiian shirts, ballcaps, sundresses, shorts, Birkenstocks, poodles, Audis, Teslas, gray, more gray, and tides of pale-skinned ex-urbanites. Folks on the large wrap-around verenda: knives gently sawing salmon or steak, forks overturned Euro-style, chilled Chablis, tea, coffee, tiramisu, chatter, clatter, laughter. We were just some anonymous passers-by.

I had never seen so many rooms before. Correct that. I had, in skyscrapered Vegas-style mega-hotels. Pictures of them. Here it was a surprise. Four stories high and a full block deep. Hundreds of rooms, though we didn't count them.

We ambled through long musty hallways with ancient carpets, paintings from the 19th and 20th century, sconces, majestic weighty drapes, ocean-liner beds, bookshelves with classics and never-made-its.

-- C'mon, let's go in here.

-- What?

-- C'mon. Don't be scared. Let's ...

-- You kiddin'?! Really? No.

I took him by the elbow and ushered him into The Clemenceau. Cavernous. To be honest, I did not usher him; I gently persuaded him with a hand grazing his thigh, wandering into his Life Valley. I led him like a lamb, his doe eyes wide and his teenage heart racing.

We did it. More than once. I lost count. That was predictable and easy. And gales of fun. I didn't know until a year and a half later that that was his inaugural romp, his Clemenceau Originale. Father of Victory. The Tiger. My own feline conquest.

As evening fell, we strolled the other floors. On the second floor, we found a darkened room, closed the creaking door, creaked the bedsprings with our raucous youth, and fell asleep like it was nobody's business.

What could be more natural? Easy come, easy go.

Except we didn't go.

We played Stowaway.

Again and again.

First it was daring, then a habit, then a routine.

No one ever questioned us.

Housekeeping, porters, chefs, maitre d's, janitors, maintenance, painters, plumbers. front desk, back desk, security. no one.

Why would they? We were part of the family. "Always had been," they'd whisper to each other.

The first year, I took a few steps off the veranda and tripped, fell flat on my face. Road rash, bruises, and sore forearms. Thought nothing of it.

A few months later, he wanted to go out for an evening stroll, shake off cabin fever. When he put his hand on the brass door handle he was jolted by a shock so fierce he fell backward.

We experimented.

Exit by window, the old prisoner tied-sheets bit. We kept bouncing back up, as if the sheets were bungee cords. It was funny, until it wasn't.

Climb to the roof. Try the ancient rusty fire escape. Another bout of electroshock "therapy."

Burrow into the basement. Find a subterranean route to the sewer. Nope.

Nothing worked. It wasn't hard to figure out. Why frustrate ourselves? No sense succumbing to futile, impotent gestures.

I write letters.

Nearly every day.

I post them in the house mailboxes: by the lobby, the gift shop, by the elevator on each floor (the old-fashioned mail chutes).

I write to friends (though the addresses in my address book are likely obsolete; and the friends may not be alive), my parents, sisters, bothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, old classmates, even a few enemies.

I am waiting for an answer.

Just one. 

fire tornado

They called it a fire tornado. Or was it tornado fire? Either way, it adds up to hellish fire hellishly swirling and fulminating. Whatever you call it, it's an indescribable inferno windsweeping into new words and definitions, invading lightning-quick into endtimes. Out of nowhere. Just like that: gone. Blink of an eye. Burnt to an unholy crisp. Still smoldering. As the heavens and earth scream out pleading for rain, give us rain, or anything resembling rain or performing like rain, drown this misery, quench the unquenchable. Its deafening roar. Its machinelike hunger and thirst. Its searing vocabulary with new flaming syllables. Rain, begging for rain. Or whatever (human, divine, natural, mechano-chemical) intervention can intercede with torrents of mercy. Whatever it takes to simmer down, to de-parch, to oceanize this fiery avalanche.

swinger

Driving down Maplewood Avenue, off to the right, just missing the windshield's blind spot, she thought she saw a swing sweep upward, a swing suspended from an unseen branch, its sight muffled by branches and leaves, the apogee a flickered flash in the afternoon's blaze. A rider not discerned: male or female, young or old. A white dress? Impossible to say. Too quick. The light turned green. The insistent beeping horn of the car in back.

cardboard ghosts of future past

Back in the old days, before cardboard cutouts depicted demographically apportioned faces, before stone-still, silent, opaque audience members dressed for the occasion (sports, symphonies, operas, bullfights), actual people were in the seats, stands, arenas, galleries. Can you believe it? In those days, people gathered en masse, in the flesh, prey to each other's coughs and sneezes, victims of unwittingly and unwillingly shared particulate matter. Vulnerable to any stranger's invisible or visible imprint. In the olfactory wake of a curnucopia of scents: body odor, body scent, soap, sweat, perfume, eau de toilette, cologne, and a gazillion unnamed human animal exhalations and excretions. Are you taking all this down? Believe it or not, in those days people thronged and congregated: in bars, churches, pubs, classrooms, assemblies, rallies, union halls, corridors of government, conclaves of commerce. Now, as you know, in every instance, such breathing, pulsing crowds (and individuals) have now been displaced by cardboard simulacra, two-dimensional facsimiles of mute stillness. You don't remember this? Of course not. It was before your time. It was before grim and horrid circumstances forced a consensus of care and protection: social distancing, masks, sanitary measures, disinfection. When these efforts failed, people endured lockdowns, shutdowns, closeouts, wall-offs, barrier-bastions, sealant seizing, communal-closeting, superquarantining. New words were invented to describe new fortifications. But it was too late. The damage had been done. The viral wildfires had, well, gone viral. Those who had mocked the seriousness of it all, those who attributed it to a political hoax or a foreign scheme were in the front lines of failure. They were among the legions to succumb first. But not all of them, not all the disbelievers fell to cruel fate and cold reality. Some escaped. Some went into exile, their whereabouts still unknown. However, the masses had no such escape hatch. Instead, they made the best of a novel way of living, three-dimensional forms floating in and around their cardboard fellow citizens. They learned to befriend the cutouts. They even importuned upon the cutouts to imitate them, to serve as substitutes, ersatz personalities, avatars. In this way, large numbers of the Three Dimensionals found gainful employment -- such as it was -- as designers, painters, artists, portraitists, fabricators, shippers. And so the old days became the new days, and everyone forgot about the old days. That is why I wrote this letter to you, my grandchildren.

The Seagull-Raven Affair

Out the front door, she sees a billowing flash from the edge of her peripheal vision. Is it white? A rippling sailing. Startling. Gust. A seagull, it swoops, arcs, and lassoes swiftly forward and above, squawking. Squawking to her. Persistent. Loops back up, down, and then around her head, circumscribing a vanilla-ish neon halo. She walks faster. Coincidence nudged aside in favor of some sort of omen, meaning, or sacrament. She hits the car fob. From nowhere, a raven intercepts the seagull's flight, just above the car. Harlequin contrasts of black and white. Checkerboard. The raven has a few words of its own to shout. A flock arrives, as if on call. She gets in the car. It doesn't start. She tries again. It turns over. She can't get out of there fast enough.

The Long Form [PLEASE PRINT]

[LAST NAME] [MIDDLE INITIAL] [FIRST NAME]

[ADDRESS LINE 1]

[ADDRESS LINE 2]

[CITY, TOWN, VILLAGE, HAMLET] [STATE, PROVINCE, DISTRICT, PRINCIPALITY]

[COUNTRY, SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS STATE, EXTRATERRESTRIAL COLONY]

[DATE OF BIRTH]

[SOCIAL INSECURITY NUMBER]

[DATE OF SATORI, SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT, SURRENDER, AWAKENING]

[MOST RECENT EMPLOYER]

[REASON FOR LEAVING]

[MOST RECENT LOVER]

[REASON FOR LEAVING]

[FAVORITE POET]

[EARLIEST MEMORY]

[MOST MEMORABLE PASSAGE OF 'REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST' BY MARCEL PROUST]

[MOST RECENT LIE]

[PERCENTAGE SUCCESS RATE WITH REBLOSSOMING ORCHIDS]

[PROPER SPELLING OF BOUGAINVILLEA]

[ETYMOLOGY OF HIBISCUS]

[DREAM DESTINATION, DESTINATION OF DREAMS, DESTINY OF DESIRE]

[ALIBI FOR MIDNIGHT, JULY 23, 2019]

[PREMIUM REGRET 1]

[SECRET TRIUMPH 1]

[NEVER REVEALED TO ANYONE ANYWHERE BEFORE]

[YOUR BACK PAGES]

[MY FRONT MATTER]

[PLACE OF BIRTH]

[FONDEST FETISH]

[DESOLATION ROW]

[OFFSPRING SPRUNG, UNSPRUNG, SPARED]

[CELESTIAL COORDINATES]

[DIVINE PARAMETERS]

[HUMAN SCENT, SIGNATURE, FRAGRANCE, IMPRINT, ECHO]

[HANDWRITING SAMPLE]

[CRESCENDO, CODA, CLIMAX, COMMINGLING, COMMUNION, CHIASMUS]

[THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY BLANK]

curbside pickup

In the old days, in the days before the epidemic became a pandemic, when they innocently strolled boulevards, shook hands, hugged, and sneezed or coughed with abandon, curbside pickups were reserved for nefarious exchanges on streets with no lights, beyond the surveillance cameras, beyond the arms of the law and conventional decency. Unlike during the coronavirus age, curbside pickups were not advertised with lawn signs. Retail merchants were discreet; they mumbled. They didn't advertise curbside pickups by boasts and neon. The demimonde was a subterranean circus in the old days, secret and raucous. It's private culture made its entreaties all the more alluring. But when curbside pickups went mainstream the sizzle fizzled. What fun is a curbside pickup that is all aboveground, on the up and up, family-oriented, and sanctioned by all authorities, federal, state, and local? Curbside pickups became so legit as to garner praise from politicos for feeding the economic engine. Where was the praise when the economic engine was steaming ahead at full throttle on Demimonde Drive, no speed limit, no red lights? Why was the civic championing muted despite a rampaging-rapids revenue stream? They know why: pride, respect, decency. They wanted to keep the curbside pickups discreet, charming, and wink-winkable. Those days are gone, perhaps forever. The signs said Call Ahead. Curbside Pickups Only. Stay in Your Car. The cars lined up. A parade. A festive flotilla. What took so long?

swiped left

Left? I meant right. Dyslexia is ruining my life. Spatial dyslexia. Is there a word for that? Dyslocusia? Dyslocalia? Left, right, up, down, who can keep track these days, such polarities, mere labels. I swiped left. I wanted to swipe right. Her Joan Baez eyes, Salma Hayek hair, Ingrid Bergman mystery, Grace Slick smile. It was all there. Plus her Ph.D., dog breeding, charities, operatic compositions, Harley Davidsons, weightlifting championships, MacArthur genius grant, David Hockney collection. The whole shebang. Down the eternal drain of dead-end, missed opportunities, late train, passing glances. The whole bit: the subway car going the other way. Frozen in time. Eyes locked. Cinematic longing. Sayonara. Arrivederci. There's a Craigslist category for these lost souls. No, no, I'm done with remorse, self-pity, self-aggrandizement, regret. To be fair, life gives us lots of do-overs, reboots, mulligans. Recalculating. Redial. Draft version. Revision. Track Changes. Recovery file. Is there some programming trick in the dating app? Oh, the oops of oh-no. Swipechosis. Swipal envy. The evaporation of what-if even before the ink was dry.

FOMOed.

Next.

Route 175, 1972

I picked up the payments from Eddie Finnegan, $56 a month. My first car. A 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. Lots of power, though I didn't know, or care, about that stuff. The kids I taught at the high school filled me in as to how many cc's or liters, or whatever it was. It was cooler than I first knew: a speedometer consisting of a rolling cylinder you viewed on the dashboard straight in front of the driver, headlights that lifted up so that they looked like mechanical, futuristic spaceship eyes. They stubbornly and frequently stuck open. Eventualy the one on the right stayed half-open, giving the appearance of a driver whose eyes were barely open or droopy. Which was true. I drove drunk countless times. Only fender benders. One night, my birthday, 90 miles per hour on Seneca Turnpike. Why? Death wish? The invincibilty of youth? Unconscionable and indefensible. How did I survive? Or those in collateral range. A big hump through the middle for the automatic transmission. No, not so much a cliche as to escape my virginity in the back seat but not for lack of trying (another cliche). Yes. Late bloomer. But it was the car I owned in the time when that rite of passage transpired. Why am I saying all this? Like some scene in a movie, her hand on my thigh, beer can between my legs, radio full blast, windows down, her honey hair sailing out the window and shrouding her face. Screaming and laughing. For a minute or two.  

valedictory volleys

do you have any last requests

like a favorite song or something

hello goodbye

any parting words of wisdom

a word to the wise

the wise don't need no wisdom

or words

like a last meal

be serious

bon appetit

pass the ketchup

what about blindfolds

for me or the firing squad

sayonara

can I have a cigarette

au revoir

spare change

hasta la vista

do you take cream or sugar

down the hatch

a leap of faith

shake it up, baby

 

doc said I have essential tremors

I get that

who doesn't

I know, right

a little trembling is downright essential now and then

you got that right

especially in this day and age

it's the dawn of another age

or another rage

for real

maybe an earthquake is the planet's essential tremors

letting off seismic steam

try a little tenderness

is it contagious

ain't no cure for love

Love Potion Number 9

keep searching

my teeth chatter

who could blame them

the words they've uttered

makes me judder

in my own skin

my nervous envelope

as Proust said

remembering things past

and present

 

Harry and Hiro

don't do it, Harry
we have to; we must
don't do it
then surrender, Hiro
we can't
you mean, you won't
millions will die
they will, either way
think about it, the children
yes, think about it
but such a bomb . . .
you hold the key
no, you hold the key
peace
war

honor

shame

if..., then

then..., if

up in smoke

incinerated

the past

leveled

the present

scarred

the future

fallout

forever

sometimes I wonder

do you
ever
think of me
sometimes I wonder
what if
what if not
and everything in between
sometimes I wonder
that I wonder
which is wonder aplenty
sometimes I suppose
I wonder
which is just as good
sometimes I forget
to wonder about wonder
which is my loss
though wonder
still awaits
me there
fresh and fierce
patient and planted
mountain solid
and the trickling stream
the chickadee
and snow spilling off the branch

cell mates

you threw your phone away?
just like that
out the window
on the highway
me too
really?
into the lake
gone 
tossed
really
it was hard
scary
then it wasn't
right
why
I'm not even sure
gone
tossed
just like that
brave new world
land of the free
the bearable lightness of less
is more
and then some 

hit 'return'

where were you
I was around, over there
where
on the other side
I have returned
I see that
I told you that "I shall return"
I don't remember that
you can look it up
I did. General Douglas MacArthur, and all that
it's complicated
what isn't
hero or coward
stunt or strategy
whatever works
whatever that means
why "shall" and not "will"
that's a whole nother story
other
what
whole other
either or

you talkin' to me?

pardon me
you heard me
no, really, I didn't
I said, "to be or not to be"
that's what I thought
so you did hear me
point taken
I'll say it again
I dare you
"to be or not to be"
let's face it, that's pretty fuckn grandiose
how
c'mon
it ain't grandiose, it's basic
like "back to basics"
I've never understood what that meant
it's elemental, fundamental, mental, unsentimental
now you sound like early Dylan
nothing wrong with that
it's alright, ma
elementary, my dear Watson
he never said that
not exactly
anyway, where were we
right here
right here is where we always are
nowhere, man
now here
clever
slow down, you better slow down
break it down
when you said, "to be or not to be" were you serious
of course I was
serious as in suicidal
what, where do you get that
well, you're standing alone all serious and shit
it's a fecking play, I'm a character, on a stage
all the world's a stage
bingo
the play's the thing
how 'bout "play's the thing"
as in juggling, like the king's Fool
not that kind of juggling, more like thi
jousting
joisting
James Joyceting
ca-ching
bada-bing
to be
or
not to be
sproing
back to Square One
exactly
approximately
approximately King Hamlet
that's rich, even royal
royal manna
give that man a cigar
he she it them
that, too