. . . and counting

. . . years, that is. you're as young as you feel. hate that expression. or: 70 years 'young.' puhleez. but yes better than the below-ground or for that matter above-ground funereal pyre-combustion-result alternatives. okay, so officially old. i'll take it. tho' not sure what changes occur regarding my juvenile habits, wants, desires, impatience, attitudes, pretensions, fantasies, poses, memories, laments, hopes, or dreams . . .

hey, sir!

Walking to the Boulangerie bistro by the coffee shop, I was in a hungry hurry. (The name of the place begs for a spooky underwear promo every October.) "Hey, sir!" I heard but kept walking for a step and a halt. "Hey, sir!" is the perfect intro for a panhandler or evangelist. Someone asking me to sign a petition, or to sell me something. Ask for exactly $1.73 to get a bus ticket to Auburn. As if. Keep walking. I was annoyed, mildly irritated. But I stopped. I stopped and turned. Did he say it twice? Was it an undertone of sincerity blended with urgency that stopped me in my tracks? "Did you drop this?" Or was it: "Is this yours?" A young professional. White shirt and tie. Who wears a white shirt anymore? Even in my corporate life I hadn't worn one since the 1990s. When our company president wore white short-sleeved shirts with a tie, I'd mock him. "Lee, what do you think this is, NASA in the Sixties?" He never wore one again. My interlocutor was Asian American. In his twenties. Is this what they call a millennial? A white envelope sat on the just-rained-on sidewalk. I picked it up. Or he picked it up and handed it to me. I saw right away that it was a bill from St. Camillus, the long-term care facility (nursing home). For Mom. A bill that had come in that day's mail. It must have slid out of my grip holding my laptop portfolio with my other mail, nothing of consequence. If so, I'd've handled it all more carefully. "Thanks." Now I can't piece it together. Did he say this from his Mercedes (Audi? Ford? Saturn? black? white?) with the window rolled down? Or was he walking in my wake? But my thanks was real. I detected an honest civility in his act, an uncommon courtesy. What if it was something terribly important, not just a bill that would be re-sent? An atmosphere of gratitude washed over me. No, seeped out of me, from within somewhere. I could have kept walking, I could have ignored his entreaty. Likewise, he too could have ignored what he saw, something dropping from a stranger's personal effects. He didn't ignore the seemingly minor mishap. Neither did I ignore him, ultimately. My irritation, disturbance, "rude" interruption took on a different complexion and turned things in a different direction. And I hadn't even bought my hungered-for lunch yet. 

Quotidian encounter. 

Small miracle.

thesaurus rex regina

Now you search the books in vain for a better word for lonely . . . 

 "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," Phil Ochs

adrift unmoored broken islanded hungry stranded abridged severed cut fractured vacant zeroed parched drowned halved kenneled asunder rent null quods torn unned x'ed entrailed gutted lost jonesed moitiéd wasted only yearning  

 

Small Acts

being there

absent

being here

AWOL

cold sheets crumpled

small ax chipping

away the last word

unsaid curses

speaking volumes

splaying fingertips

smack

one needle's

kissless breath

a death

a broken branch

brakes the cliff

as two strangers

across a room

clutch hands

almost

stepping off a Manhattan curb

taxi's concussive whooosh

you twelve feet behind

14th Street Union Square

a drop of blood

an aneurysm of ecstasy

the hot spinemelt of lava pleasure

purchased in vein

no dial tone

to text

my year of living dangerously

around the corner

around the bend

of a prisoned purse

pursued and purloined

before locking the door

after praying to

the dried rose

I once gave

her

you

robo-crush

'I would take care of it and it would take care of me.' -- Old, frail-looking man in green parka on subway, "Roomba Nation," Patricia Marx, The New Yorker, November 26, 2018

Take care.

Caregiver.

Command.

Performance.

Artificial.

Intelligence.

Limbs.

Artificial.

Heart.

Emotional.

Intelligence.

Feeling.

Virtual.

Reality.

Me.

You.

It.

Take.

Care.

Give or take.

palimpsest people

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.  

Joan Didion

82. He crashes his head onto my chest. The baby blanket draped over my shoulder. Will it hurt him? The rhythmic pacing and patting. The ardently sought burp. His eyes on mine. And when he cries it's full and all and now and forever. To him. I know, he doesn't know, it'll pass. Travail will not last. Baby, be my metaphor. The sobs of relief and joy into the bathroom towel before they came home. Triggered by John Lennon's Beautiful Boy.

54. The first-grader whom Mrs. Nutter called "Sunshine," memorialized in a photo lost, for now. The one who forever onward remembered "left" as the windows side in the classroom and "right" as the wall side with the entrance door; he who idolized Willie Mays but more so decades later cherished fatherly arms wrapped around him, secure, swinging at a lobbed baseball, this being the hugs and outward love signally recalled; he who played priest with a blanket over his shoulders, awed by the breathless fear of eternal hellfires and brimstoned purgatory mirrored. bookended, by pristine absolutioned after-bath crisp sheets purity. 

73. Soho. A few pounds sterling. Drunk. Another drink. A few more pounds. In for a dime in for a dollar. Another drink. More pounds. How much is that in dollars? Her name was Tanya.

77. At the altar, at a cathedral no less the velvet kneelspace of the prie-dieu not cushiony enough. Her back hurting, she in Renaissance array. Vows. Not a word of the sermon called to mind. Mom and Dad supposed to bring up the "gifts" but a foul-up, a confusion. Have and hold. For richer or for poorer. Sick or well. Unto death do they part. No incense. No asunder. No consummation, not here. The exchange of rings. Looking into the eyes. The hand places the ring on the finger. The public kiss. Not the consummation. The communion, even for Protestants. The beard, gone. The suit, not a tux. 

86. The splash of liquids, fluids, on the other side of the draped cloth. Here. It's a scissors. Here. What? Take the scissors and snip. Tough meat, that umbilical cord. Want to keep it? No, thanks. The fierce and roaring wind the night before. The nub on the bottom of her foot, subtracting from a perfect Apgar score but not hindering the strength or stamina or stretch of a soaring ballet career. Looking across the glass, at the latest crop of newborns: there, there, no, yes, there there that's her his beaming.

79b. Noon. Up the dark wooden stairs, slowly, hopefully, warily. Raise your hand. Stories. It was just stories. J. was there. Drunk in the middle of the night at a party months before on your side of town. He was not drunk now. Serene and sober. Just stories. Only an hour. The hot bath at home. New water. Lighter. Buoyant. Walking up those steps. And back down again.

97. Kentucky Derby. Waiting. Timing contractions. Chinese takeout from Seymour Street. Her walking, her nausea, her vomiting. What? She had taught childbirth. What was this? Walk halls with her, the IV tubes trailing. Sleeping in the room. Sunday morning. Here we go. Is this possible. This is physically possible. The slow miracle. The shrill cries. Hold her. New. She's okay. Newer. They're okay. Newest. We're okay. More. Even more. She. Her.

95. Let's try this again. A chapel we never returned to. Warm and windy for November 11. Veterans, we joked, of previous wars. Was the priest drunk? What did he forget? There was talk. The kids said we came back, driving in a November blizzard, peppy. Was that their word? Peppy. 

79a. Out there, the life of the party. They were all laughing. The Rolling Stones' song about the Puerto Rican girls. Miss You. Carrying on as if it were a dance floor. What a time we were having. We were all laughing. Shitfaced. Almost falling down. In the bathroom, in there, staring into the mirror and proclaiming and praying: You can't do this anymore. You can't. It's gonna kill you. You can't keep doing this. You... What am I gonna do? Back out there, the life of the party, the ringleader, manic. What a carnival. A circus. Closing time.

The Clementine Chronicles

The morning rite: one seedless succulent clementine on the tabletop, on the wood portion, near the slate. Sit in high-backed chair. Steaming black tea, half and half, no sugar. Heidelberg Cracked Wheat, toasted, three slices. All three with butter. One with Bonne Maman Red Raspberry Preserves, French. Clementine, Algerian. The Clementine Challenge: peel it uninterrupted, unimpeded in one fell swoop, one unbroken peel. Has yet to happen. Its taste less acidic than the typical, larger orange; its size, small; its nine morsels edible. (Nine edible portions? Sometimes, for example, ten. And if nine, here's a mathematical conundrum: when I break the sphere in half, 50 percent, how do I get two equal halves [4.5?] without splitting one morsel in half, squirtiness and all?  The peeling: paper towel underneath in case of juice release. Aren't polishes for wood citrus-y? The first challenge is the start. To puncture, to break through its skin without squirt or puddle. Skinny dipping. Take a fingernail to break the barrier. Pierce it. Then curl, roll, peel, delicately. Okay, so the disrobing is interrupted. Breakage. It won't be one exciting unpeeling with a presto! ending. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, what, six segments of peeled skin which, if fitted together, comprise a fruitful Rorschach gestalt structure. Four or five on an exceptionally good skin-spin cycle. Is one perfect Pauline peel possible? Who can say? Then, a reversal: the inability to puncture, to get things started. Is it because of closely clipped fingernails? A difference in the batch of clementines? Temperature or humidity? Try a small cut with a knife. Bleeding of clementine juice (not blood orange's). Droplets on the tabletop's wood, the paper towel yellowed, urine-colored yet still brightly and refreshingly citric. The worse wound: the whole peeling venture has run amok! Portions cleaved with skin intact. Take the fruitflesh to mouth and peel that way. So unaesthetic. So sloppy, drippy, and skill-less. Such anarchy. What happened? Who knows. But the next morning, after the words up to this point, a refreshed peeling venture. Softly, with pressure, pick at the outer layer of the outer layer. As if performing a patient surficial scraping. Indentation. Breach. And then, ah, the most exquisite peel-curl yet: inches long, liberated from the sphere, fragrancing the morning air. Five peeled-skin segments but really four if the crumb-sized bit is not counted; three if the large-crumb-sized bit is discounted. Mostly one, an elongated scroll, a clementined unfurling in all its clement mercy. Maybe it was the switch to Smuckers. Most likely the recast attention afforded from the previous draft, the one that had ended with "What happened?" And did anyone perchance mention the pruriently pleasing uncleaving of the crescent sections of edible fruit, a secret, quiet, and delicate undertaking requiring the dexterity of a surgeon, a lover's tender patience?