Ma$e Double Up

So I feel like doing a double post. Look at Dunston up there with Jason Alexander. Such a touching scene in a beautiful movie. I am going to post a poem I finished tonight below. Check it out and let me know what any of you think. If not I will just be vain and think it is good.



Sunday Dinner


There goes the flash of the silver –
Aluminum and wrought iron
Passing with coffee indigestion
And the quick touch of blue eyes,
Blonde hair and the grey striped parka.

One tuft of blonde hair is reminiscent
Of one that is more familiar,
A head shorter than you and
As equally younger but
No less filled with love and anger.

She doesn’t dictate which way her heart moves –
Everything moves in a million places,
Everying shatters and comes together again –
The words she speaks on the computer
Will splinter into an hour’s worth of tears.

And there’s a black quilt spread wide
With curling hair from a rhyming story
A song underneath the chapel’s juncture
The apse and navel of form
No temple and not yet a woman.

But there’s an overgrown beatnik
With a Lost Generation haircut
Who relies on words from an alpine cabin,
White pine memories that gave him happiness,
Which doesn’t mean anything at 5 AM.

Where we once saw the sun rise
We now find ourselves alone and sore,
But no shoulder pressure and mistaken passion
Will make us fall and give up –
Misunderstanding and patience give way to love.

One morning you’re a young professional
With a quick stride and an overcoat,
Pomade ambition staining your shirtcuffs
And that night, you’re in boots with beer
Stomping a wood floor in honky tonk reverie.

But the drizzle will straddle the two.
A dinner underneath the mounted wolf’s head,
Someone forgotten but loved once again,
The girl by the stone wall in a purple dress
The one who makes you a stranger to yourself.

What sadness does that blonde hair know?
What line will she read in blankets
So that everything will feel like it is OK?
It’ll take more than a green dress, a concert ticket
Or the love of the next man to make it true.

And you’re in the passenger seat
With champagne on your back and leather
Driving shoes halfway up your hands,
Passing them to a girl who drives at night
Looking for the ice, something clean and sharp.

What will you give her? A vacant stare?
The want of that engagement dinner
The steps you skid on the way to love
On the way to death and taxes and
Sunday mornings with music from the movies.

There’s no going back to the room filled with letters
The dusty rain soaked carpet of green.
There is only your cooking that burns my nose
With the strength of black pepper at dusk
And that’s all I wanted in that room with letters.

Anything you read on Wednesday morning
Is not serious or written in stone,
It is fluid like your love is.
And I’m in love too, maybe with you
But maybe with something that I could’ve been –
A time when knowing one thing was better
Than knowing so many others –
My friend taught me that with dinner
So I can never repay him or his images
Of forests and a firepit with friends.
No matter how hard I try, I will never repay
You either for letting me know exactly
What I wanted for just a time.

Now, there will be curling hair and blankets,
Missteps, guilt loneliness, but freedom.
Because my hands always fit in my pockets
Because the sun goes down and lights the porches
And stairwells of my life where I walk,
No longer defining love or your tight hair,
But feeling them within me – making my way to the door.

Wade MVP (Or the End of the Argument)

So we've just gone through an amazing week of Dwyane Wade heroics. I'm listening to "Every Night" by Paul McCartney. This whole NBA season has been completely focused on Kobe Bryant and Lebron James and rightfully so. Their teams (along with the Celtics) have been dominating the standings. Lebron put up a not so triple double at MSG right after Kobe laid down 61 in typical Kobe fashion (0 assists). The Cavs and Lakers could very well meet in the finals. We all know Kobe is a killer and Lebron is a freak of nature. However, Dwyane Wade silently, consistently is the best player in the NBA.

The MVP debate has historically centered around this dilemma. Player A is putting up great numbers and his team has a great record and is in the thick of the playoff/Finals discussion. Meanwhile Player B is putting up astounding numbers and without him his team would win maximum 15-20 games. Usually Player A, if taken away, would see his team drop in his absence, but not in such a dramatic fashion. Usually, Player B is putting up the bigger scoring numbers. In the end, in the NBA, it's player A that gets the MVP.

This year is different. Not only is Wade the leading scorer in the league, averaging an even 30.0 points per game as of this evening, he is also in the top 5 in steals and assists. Now, Kobe certainly shoulder a huge load for the Lakers from 2004-2006. However, that was the era when we saw Kobe score 81 points. Dwyane Wade is never going to score 81 points, nor does he ever want to. Dwyane Wade is a killer just like Kobe. Kobe, Lebron and Dwyane are the only three killers in the game today. There is no one else, and if anyone argues then they are arguing to degrees, because those three are the only ones who will kill you to win the game (i.e. the M.J, Bird, Magic, Isiah gene). I may give you Chris Paul as a 4th member on some nights, but not full fledged yet - he's too much point guard.

Now, where the difference arises is that, Wade will not let his team lose, but he will not go about it by trying to score as much as possible. Sure he pours it in, but his assist lines are just as ridiculous. Look at his lines the past two weeks:

OPP MIN PTS TREB AST TO STL BLK 03/04 PHO 39 35 6 16 1 1 1 03/06 TOR 40 42 6 8 8 1 1 03/07 CLE 41 25 8 12 3 4 0 03/09 CHI 50 48 6 12 5 4 3 03/11 BOS 37 32 4 7 1 4 0 03/14 UTA 52 50 10 9 6 4 2 5 out of 6 games he broke 30 points. 3 out of 6 games he broke double digits in assists. 1 out of 6 games he broke double digit rebounds, which a combo 1/2 guard really isn't expected to do. 4 out of six games he had 4 steals - a great to extraordinary stat for those who don't know. The turnovers are still his one weak spot, but look at that - 3 blocks in one game for a 6'4" guard. See, Dwyane Wade is putting his team on his back entirely, but still remaining an all around player who can fill in the stat sheet, he is explosive, he is physical and yet still graceful. I know the media and any true NBA fan will be in awe of Lebron. Lebron is a physical specimen, he can get it done in the clutch, and he has carried a team to the Finals. We can't go by history in an MVP race. I think we can safely say that Kobe should be ruled out of the race this year. This race is down to the two guys who will be dominating this award for the next 5 years. Lebron and Wade. You can't lose with either, but if you look at Wade's overall body of work, the caliber and amount of support he has compared to Lebron (Lebron can get plenty of assists with Mo Williams knocking down 3's, with Varajao flopping baskets in out of control, with Big Z lumbering in for a dunk) while Wade has to hope that his young shooters can make a three to get an assist. The Heat will be better next year and the Cavs will be just as good and may be the reigning champs. So let Lebron get his MVP as he defends his title. This is Wade's year. No one has worked harder, taken on more, but still shared and been a model player. Sorry 04'-06' Kobe you were amazing, but not at the same balance as Wade, which is why it took the 2007-2008 Kobe to win it. The 2008-2009 Wade season is changing the mold, and that's why he is going to win it. Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt: Ben I’m in my bathrobe and the shower is running. I’m wasting the water and I know that. But I’ve always loved the sound of the shower, the sound of repetitive falling water as natural in its way as rain. I remember when I used to take a shower in the morning and when I’d step out James would be curled up on the bathroom rug with a towel over him sleeping. I’d laugh every time. There’s something natural about it. The warmth, the moisture and the sound. It’s like the womb. That stuff was always surprising about being a father. How your kids could do strange little things like that. Be so attached to you. You never imagine that. Another person being so attached to you that they’d wake up to come and lay and listen to you shower. But that’s what it is to be a parent. You can never project that, you can’t project a child sleeping on the bathroom floor or waking you up before dawn on Christmas. Those are the images you have, but you can’t fully project that. You can’t fully project the feeling of being in that bed in the dark on Christmas Morning and you are still a college student in some way wanting to sleep as late as possible when you can, but here they come. Here are these little people that can’t wait to wake you up and be alive and can’t wait for you to be up and be alive so that you can watch them open presents. And you want sleep so bad, but there is a joy in you – an unknown glowing organ that flourishes at moments like that. When the little legs and arms jump on the comforter in the dark and these kids are you and they need and love you. But those are all memories and old feelings. I’m still here in my bathrobe and drunk. The bathroom still looks the same with the jacuzzi empty and the baskets with the different colored soaps and gels that I never used. I should just dump them all in the jacuzzi and lie there instead of taking a shower. Maybe I will. On the sink a glass of water is resting on the flat part next to the faucet. It’s one of the glasses with the red flowers on it. In the sink is my second Cutty Sark bottle. I took a few sips before. I open the stall. Water sprinkles my forearm. I turn off the knobs. Steam has started to fill the bathroom and everything feels damp and comfortable. I step to the jacuzzi and turn on the water. I stop the drain and watch it fill. When we first moved in, Rose and I would use the jacuzzi all the time. It was a luxury to have. That was the beginning of the prosperous time. We had Maggie and James. So much room and so many bathrooms. We still had a healthy sex life then too. Three times a week it was I think. We’d put the kids to sleep and the house was so big that it didn’t matter. But she’s dead now. Thinking about the sex you had with your dead wife. And how can I possibly get all of that back? I can’t and I know that but it would be nice. The water is filling and I pour in some soap. It’s a round smooth plastic bottle with blue liquid. Then there’s a red one, its raspberry scented. I pour that into the mix too. A green one is next: kiwi. A purple one: passion fruit and plum. These are all scents I’ve smelt before but never known. Although it looks like the bottles have hardly been used. The soap and bubbles are rising and frothing beneath the flow of the faucet. The water is just about higher than the jets. I turn the jets on; some of the water shoots out of the tub and hits my robe thigh. It’s warm and leaves a soapy mark. The water has risen above the jets and now everything is bubbly and the room is steamy and smells like a strange rotten and overripe fruit vendor. I remove my robe. My skin is wrinkled. There are some liver spots on my thigh. I could’ve had more if I drank all those years. I step to the sink and take the bottle of Cutty Sark with me. I look at my naked self in the mirror. Just another day of vanity. Remember when I was 20? Looking in the mirror all the time then. I’m walking over to the tub and now I’m sinking into the bubbles and the steam and watching the suds wrap around the bottle.

RED ROSE SPEEDWAY

Basketball season is heating up and we are getting towards the playoffs. Some interesting storylines need to be discussed, but that will come at another time. "Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie" from Little Feat's first album is playing now and I feel the energy to write about Red Rose Speedway - Paul McCarney's fourth solo album.

I know I have mentioned this album a lot on this blog if any of you follow it. I know one guy does because he wrote a comment so I thank you Lautreamont, my first blog commentator. Anyway, Red Rose Speedway is pretty shitty by most people's standards I would think, but not for me. My good friend Nick Mencia was always raving about it while I was in the majority, raving about Ram, which most people consider the only bearable (aka not too sticky sweet though very semisweet chocoloate) Paul solo album. So I picked up the album and gave it a listen.

When first song "Big Barn Bed" comes on you are in full 70's mode. The sound is terrific I think and I am no real judge other than I like to listen to a lot of music and I know what I like. So when I hear chiming acoustic guitars, a slinky electric guitar and some good drums and bass with Paul singing in funny voices and running his voice all over his register, I know it's a great song. See, really Big Barn Bed could sum up all of McCartney solo and it was what he was really all about even though he had his missteps like anyone - I mean Lennon's shit sucked a lot of the time, lets be honest and he is my second favorite singer of all time - fun. McCartney had all the tools and he wanted to have fun with his music. Overproduced? Who cares? Too sweet for you? Who cares?

The second song "My Love" is absolutely too sweet. Overproduced as hell with a line that YOU could not make up "When the cupboard's bare, my love's still there." If you were that smart then you would not be reading these words about this song or even writing the words about the song - you would be a billionaire riding across the country in an old Ford Bronco.

"Get On the Right Thing," the third song, is my favorite song. Its a classic Paul rocker with some of the best lines in the history of rock music. "All at once you get love on your mind and your world is as unkind as a penny." That is just one line of genius. But while those kind of lines are going on, someone is playing ungodly Ringoesque drums and we have soul singers backing Paul and Paul is playing some honky tonk/Ray Charles piano. Then the drums really kick, the piano pounds, the soul singers belt it out and Paul starts putting on the Lady Madonna/Abbey Road medley voice that we all know and love. We get more of this and Little Richard shrieking for a blissful 4 minutes or so - I don't have the time in front of me.

Next is the country ditty "One More Kiss," which is so effortlessly melodic and perfect only Paul would've written it.

Fifth, is "Little Lamb Dragonfly." With a title like that and with Paul behind the wheel, you know this is one melancholy son of a bitch. A wistful acoustic guitar brings it in and then the strings swell and take over. Soon melodramatic horns are blowing and Paul is singing in some weird voice you never heard in the Beatles, like a strange opera singer. The song cascades and finishes, and I bet you (insert number) dollars that you will be humming this song when you walk down the street for a week after you hear it. Even if one lyric is "Dragonfly, fly by my window. You and I still have a way to go."

"Single Pigeon" is literally classic McCartney. Nice piano line, Paul singing perfectly. Even putting in obscure and abstract lines like "Sunday Morning, fight about Saturday night," that he hadn't touched on since "You Never Give Me Your Money." Perfect Paul. Put this one in the time capsule along with the next.

"When the Night" is another in Paul's great R&B line. It's in there with "Oh, Darling," "Why Don't We Do It In the Road," "She's A Woman," "Lady Madonna." This may be the best out of them all though. He really nails it. Steady piano, his voice doing that crazy Paul deep voice and then in the end the crazy Paul shriek. He even does the funny Beatle groove and quiet voice jams they would do at the end of the song.

"Loup (First Indian on the Moon)" Instrumental weird McCartney. You have to love it. The man liked tape loops. They aren't here, but it came from that Stockhausen part of his heart.

"Medley: a)Hold Me Tight; b)Lazy Dynamite; c)Hands of Love; d) Power Cut." Abbey Road medley? This is the only medley we should ever speak of.

This is one of the masterpieces of western music. Put it on with friends over on a Sunday night when you are drinking the hair of the dog to get better for work. Have a home cooked hot meal, enjoy the taste of beer and this album will reveal its miracles to you.


Now, From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt.


Maggie

I’m sitting with Eve in the living room. She’s watching me play the piano. I haven’t played in a long time. I would’ve played at Easter if I’d been home. Something sounds off with it. No one has kept it in tune I’m sure. I used to spend hours here playing and playing in the afternoon. Mom would sit with me. She’d fold laundry or read the Times or whatever book she was reading. The philosophy she dabbled in too. But now it’s Eve and I and I’m playing a Bach etude that I learned to long ago. I forget if it even has a name. I like seeing my fingers move along the white and black keys. My fingers still look young even though I’m not. Thirty-two, dear God! I always dreaded when I would be able to say, “When I was thirty.” The past tense of being thirty, which is everyone’s cut off age for kids and marriage and all of that. I stop playing. Eve looks at me.

“Does it upset you to see Ben this way?” She asks. Her legs are crossed in jeans and she’s bouncing the right one, which is crossed on top.

“Why? Does it bother you?”

“You were the only one who was alive when he last had a drink. James treats that like its folk-lore or some sort of holy myth.”

“He does?” I ask.

She smiles and her eyes widen. “Yes, I think that you all do.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “You’re right,” I say.

“It’s because of how legendary Ben was, isn’t it? How he was going to be famous?”

I know she knows this, but it’s the first time she has asked me directly about it.

“That’s what they say. He was famous in a way I suppose.”

“As a doctor in the town.”

"Well I guess that makes it more than one way.”

She smiles at me. I always liked her. I’m glad James married her. I hate that they’re married, though. What does it take to do that? What do they both have that I don’t? Or is the key word both?

I play around in the key of A. Linking subdominant chords, minor chords. Eve’s knee and draped thigh are bouncing.

“Did James tell you we’re trying to have a baby?”

No one had told me that. I didn’t know.

“No, was he supposed to?”

Eve shrugs and rests her chin in her palm. She looks French. I don’t think she is, though. What is she? Now she’s shaking her head. The light from outside is falling in. It’s grey and not so light but it gives the room that atmosphere. The atmosphere that something is heavy and that somehow that light is in your stomach and weighing you down like a big brick of dough.

“He wasn’t supposed to,” she says. “I just thought he might’ve shared.”

“Well we were never the closest, you know that.”

“That’s true.”

“He was closest to Liza I think. For some reason.”

Eve laughs. “I always wanted to be from a big family.”

“We’re not big,” I say.

“To me it seems like it. It was only my older sister and I. I just love the way it works between all of you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, who is closer to who and how everyone has to vie for attention.”

I’ve never had anyone talk to me in admiration about my family. And I never gave it a thought. You never do, or maybe there is a point growing up when you’re supposed to see your family as a whole unit. A whole and complete entity as its own that you are within and without. I must have missed that stage. I was too busy being without - chasing images, photos in my lens. Stories. Maybe if I called Jake he’d come to the funeral, though if I were him I wouldn’t.

“I’ve never really thought about it in that way.”

Eve stretches out on the couch. “I guess if it was my family I wouldn’t either. But then again, maybe I would.”

This is the longest conversation I’ve ever had with her. She is my sister-in-law now. She has been for two years. That’s another thing you don’t think of - in-laws and who they are going to be. Eve and I are very different. I think a man would get the sense if he just happened to walk in the room and see the two of us, the two of us sitting relaxed in a grey heavy morning.

Eve sighs. “I’m going to miss this house.”

I nod my head and play an old progression that sounds familiar. F, A minor, G. “I don’t think any of us have any idea.”

Double Dip (Not Skoal, Grizzly or Kodiak) aka Red Rose Speedway

So February was a long month and not filled with much promise - well as far as this blog was concerned. But for me, it wasn't a bad month. It was cold, sure; there was Valentine's Day, sure; the recession got worse each day on as if it were that first cup of coffee in the morning moving your bowels on cue - and in many ways and for many people it was. For me, as I say, it was an enjoyable month topped off by just seeing Grizzly Bear play with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at BAM on Saturday, February 28. My dog got to stay with me in my apartment for a month which really raised morale for me. It's hard to describe or really emphasize how much having a little furry pal to come to changes the dynamic of the living square you spend your time in when it is cold outside. The morning walk, the evening walk and everything else changed up my normal routine of waking up, not really wanting to work but being glad to be up and the sun is shining, coming home making dinner, drinking 60 beers listening to music and trying to write while the traffic of Grand Street goes by. This all leads me to something I am going to write about
now.

It seems to be a common trait or at least accepted phenomenon in the climate we find ourselves living in, that climate being the year and the impulses culture propels itself with, that large scale issues out drive a simple pleasure. I know that even that sentence makes a person sound outdated or at the brink of being a codger or as the old say "youth is wasted on the young." However, with iPod touches and iPhones and how great the internet is at placing you into any place in time or on the planet you want to be - something as elemental or clean (well many times not that's why you bring the bags) as walking a dog can be lost. Internet, fast-paced TV, handheld devices are great at giving us the news and opening up small portals of the vastness of this planet - of the atrocities and injustices that occur daily, the differences in culture and pace of life. However, it is those clean motions and small enjoyments that lend the portal into the vastness of the universe. For as our news and immediate gratification through song let us see the differences in things, just walking a dog at a slow pace, underneath a cold sky that, even if you are in a place as polluted as New York City, feels like crystal because it IS cold and the sky is that damn blue and there is just a hint of the fact that there are stars up there and the silhouette of buildings turns the night into a contained barnyard, where planes from two different airports take their dips in the trough.

This is for art as well. The art I find myself drawn to and the art I feel compelled to create. The simple will lend to the profound - or rather the messy things that seem profound. A teacher from my college that I loved, that was much like a father figure to me tried to teach myself and many of my classmates of the importance of novels and art that leant to the exotic. He warned against the allure of exoticism that a text's subject could provoke in a reader, however at the same turn he found himself in that same allure. A novel about radicals in South Africa, or a novel about a crusade in 14th Century Albania FEELS much more important because we don't know those things in the most immediate sense. I do not know a thing about the suffering that goes on in South Africa or the suffering that went on centuries ago. I don't know a great many things about a great many people. However, that take on art or on your life is crippling. You might as well make the amputation at the start. For as much as we do not know the sufferings of those from another time or another remote place on this great planet, we do not know the sufferings that lie beneath our own skin or beneath the skin of the people who are closest to us. What is that strange look, that glance to the side a friend of 20 years gives you? What eternal message is that telling you - that is the message of mankind. The ritual of sharing one drink on a curb in suburban Long Island, of enjoying the company of a canine connects us to the vastness that is history and space, rather than being boring, it is all time, it is all things. The pain you feel relating to a garbage man on a cold day because you are damn glad you aren't him but you wish things could be better, but they aren't and that is the way things are, cut and clean and that man came to that just as you came to work a job in an office you don't want to, or come to make the decisions you don't want to make. That is where art is. Art is not in the exotic. Artsy is exoticism.

However, what of the civic life? You can't turn your head to your naval your whole life. A bottle rolling along a curb won't solve any economic problems. For me, art was never meant to answer our politics and our economies. All The Kings Men was a story about fathers and sons and about love between a young man and a young woman couched in a political mystery. The best art is meant to make us turn and evaluate our humanity, where we stand in the story of history, the history of people borne by mothers and fathers, forever separating ourselves from death by calling ourselves Kings and Queens, politicians, Presidents, lovers, artists when all we are left to approach is that initial cause, that word known to all men, which we have all forgotten and are forever seeking to find the answer to. Art was not made for "The Times They Are A Changing," "Ohio" is not even one of Neil Young's best songs. '64 Bob Dylan had to be murdered by '66 Bob Dylan who was then murdered by the press and people looking for '64 Bob Dylan, but that kind of art doesn't exist and was never made to - which is why Nashville Skyline had to be culled, to create that barrier. Even War and Peace, a book that is heralded as the story of Russia, is really the story of Tolstoy's youth, couched in a sweeping epic of wars and eras of Russia. Which is why it is a masterpiece, it cradles the fine line of the simple, of the way things are, and perhaps no one did that better than Tolstoy. It was either Joyce or Tolstoy who did it best. This is the way things happen, this is a man shitting in all its disgustingness and reality, but didn't Odysseus shit?

A strong example of the simple is Merriweather Post Pavilion. "My Girls" alone attests to the power of the simple. "All I want is four walls and adobe slabs for my girls." Politicians, stock brokers, pet shop owners, musicians, and the dead wishes of corpses all have that same desire burnt into their bones, in all of its manifestations. That album features the best love lyric of all time, "I want to walk around with you." What do you want to do more when you are in love, than to walk around with that person?

Anyway, you may say that this entry sounds like David Foster Wallace. I never read him. I'm just drunk and listening to Little Feat. Anyone else done that?

Here's Tom from From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt



Tom

It’s cloudy this morning but it’s still warm. I could’ve drove, but here I am walking to church. I didn’t ask anyone else because I know they wouldn’t want to go. Well maybe I should have asked Liza to go; she and I were the only two who would go with mom before…

Dad would come every other week or two weeks, he’d use excuses about the new receptionist or the people in billing so he had to lower himself to clerical matters on a Sunday. I knew he wasn’t working but relaxing. Not like the old days when we’d all go all six of us and stand there proudly in our khakis and polos and button downs and skirts and dresses.

I can see Saint James’ white tower as I walk up the hill. I check my watch. 10:10. I’ll be there just in time for mass. I’ll walk in and smell that initial blast of perfume and incense and then the wet of the water on my forehead, the cross, and then kneeling and sign again. Then I will sit on the wood of the pew and feel the heaviness of church. What will I pray for? Mom of course. What else could I possibly pray for? I’ll pray for her and for dad. He was bound to take this the hardest and he has. I don’t like to see him this way, lolling and drunk, zoning out and then laughing and cracking jokes like an imbecile. He is almost speaking his own language, though in a way I guess he always did that.

The tractors are moving over the dirt on the farm. What do they grow there anymore? It was always pumpkins in the fall. When we were kids, we’d take field trips and pick out the best pumpkin. It didn’t always have to be the biggest, you could get one with the best shape or one that would curve easily although that was tough to figure out and I don’t know if you could ever really direct that to a science. But we would carve them and have a school wide contest. In fourth grade I won for the grade with my carving of Mona Lisa. Maggie and James both helped me. Maggie did the vague outline with me using that small metal carver. She was always a great lover of paintings, especially Cezanne. And then James would help me carve out the rough and thick sin. It was tough work. We messed up twice and had to go back to get new pumpkins. No one noticed, though.

I hear a plane fly overhead and on my right a door slams and I can hear the echoing of a basketball bouncing. A young kid comes out wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He’s yelling, “Mark! Mark! Mark!” Mark is probably his brother or his cousin. It could be Deluca’s little brother or cousin. I don’t remember him having a little brother just a sister, and I don’t think he lived in this part of town anyway.

It’s nice to have siblings. I was always glad to have an older brother and sister and also a younger one. It makes you more well rounded I think to juggle all of those different interactions. I’d never give any of the fights and awful car rides back. In a way, I’m glad Mom died. Now we’re all back under the same roof. My brother is back and maybe I can tell him how much I hate him for moving away. I’m not really glad that Mom’s dead.

I turn onto the church drive below the overhanging trees and I can see into a sideyard with a little wooden swing set. On my other side is the second half of the church’s cemetery. We won’t bury mom here. Grandpa had a plot all set up out east. We will bury her there. I wish she were alive so much. Just so I knew that she would be around to help me with my problems, to help me explain how I feel when I’m stifled, frustrated and trapped on this Island. I know I’ll get away someday. The way Mom never wanted me to. She was a simple God-fearing woman at heart. But she was good with words in a way that I’m not. I bet she could’ve been a writer or maybe even a psychologist with the way that she explains things. Explained things.

The parking lot is nearly full. Families pull up in mini-vans, dads in leather jackets holding the hands of their kids. There are some frumpy mothers and also sleek well-kept rich mothers with nice neat tan coats and slim black and brown sunglasses. There are old people too; there are always old people at mass. Walking or caning their way up to the altar to receive communion in ivory white sneakers. Or the old dames like grandma when she lived with us with her big hats with bows and feathers and large pearl necklaces. The perfume of church is a mix of mothballs and incense.

I open the heavy white door and enter in. An old woman hands me the weekly flyer, which is written in maroon ink. I push open the lightweight light wood door and hear the large echo of coughs and whispered talk. The organ is playing low. I reach my hand over and touch my fingertips to the water in the iron bowl. I always forget the real name of the holy water holder. I cross myself and a little drop of water remains on my forehead. I can feel it. At first glance I don’t recognize anyone. I slide into a pew closer to the back. I look up at the wood ceiling that always reminded me of a ship. It’s wooden, curved, and highly polished. The wood just looks strong like a ship. Then my eyes fall on the cross. I pull out the kneeler and it squeaks and is made of blue padding like always. I feel the heaviness of church, but it has a different twist because I’m alone at mass for the first time in my life.

Liza

Monday Night. Tired. Will talk Super Bowl this week. Maybe talk Little Feat or McCartney too. Below is the next section of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt."


Liza

I liked being the last one home with mom. We’d sit at the kitchen table like I’m doing now and have coffee together. I’d make it. We’d talk, both with our white and blue ceramic mugs in our hands. Tom bought them for her for mother’s day one year. It was my single after school cup of coffee and it was a time for mom and me to just chat. In the summer we missed that time to share. I was too busy going to see my friends. She’d stop me sometimes and try to get me to stay. But I had to go, even though I could hear and I guess even feel the sadness in her voice. It’s funny that you can realize and even feel those things and not act on them. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why I did it. I just wanted to spend time with my friends before college. I knew mom was sick, but you never think that your mother is going to die.

It’s not sunny like it was yesterday. The clouds have moved in and I can see specks of rain on the skylight above me. The coffee is a little strong, not enough water. I always did that. The coffee at school is fine, although a little hot in those thin paper cups. The inside of the mug is grayish clay, which looks nice with the black of my coffee. James always asked me if I was a fisherman drinking my coffee black. I just like the flavor, the bitterness, and the strength. But he liked to tease me.

I don’t think that mom ever talked with Maggie the way she talks with me. No, its talked isn’t it? The way she talked with me. I was too young to really observe how they acted towards each other when Maggie was my age. And she was out of the house for so much of my time growing up that I could only really see on the holidays. I think mom was always hard on her. Maybe it was because they were so different but looked the same with their terrific red hair. And me with my strange blondish hair that no one in the family has.

“Maggie did you and mom ever just chat like girls?”

“Like girls?”

“I don’t know. I mean you know about celebrities and hair and I don’t know share with her your problems.”

“No, I don’t really share my problems with anyone. And I never did with mom. Celebrities?”

I look down embarrassed. She’s my big sister and sometimes I don’t know where to start with her.

“Yeah, like gossip.”

She laughs.

“You mean you never even shared your problems with Jake?”

She stops laughing and looks at me closely for a moment. Then she smiles and turns away.

If only I could talk to her that way. What happened between her and Jake? I thought they were going to get married. I was happy when James got married, but it’s different when you’re older sister is going to get married. Because even though James and I have always been closer, it was Maggie I looked up to. A sister who is successful and has an interesting job and gets to travel and sends you pictures of exotic places. “My older sister is on assignment in Siberia.” Then your friends come over and see pictures of this beautiful girl with lots of red hair and you hope you can be like that too. Well without the red hair of course.

The drizzle is falling a little bit more. It’s like a mist. Tom went out earlier for a walk. I hope he isn’t getting caught in the rain. Where did he go anyway? I see him the most but know him the least. He should’ve asked me to go with him. He’s always sneaking around going on his train rides, going for his walks with his funny and forceful stride. It’s strange to grow up and not really know one of your brothers.

I sip the coffee. It’s nice and bitter and hot. My tongue burns a little.

I’ve put the dishes in the washer after dinner. The kitchen smells like strong brewed coffee.

“Why don’t you sit with me and have a cup, Liza?”

“I’m sorry, mom. I’ve got to go meet Lauren.”

“Just a cup? Soon you’ll be gone. And it’ll be such an empty house.”

“Tom will come by. You know that.”

“I know but it’s not the same as talking with you.”

“Come on, mom.”

“Alright.”

She looked so disappointed in me. She just gave me a vacant nod. And I was so angry. Why did she have to put that on me? Why did she have to look so pathetic? And why couldn’t I see she was getting weaker? Wasn’t dad supposed to fix her? It wasn’t cancer, that’s what he said. I still don’t understand it all. You’re not supposed to feel guilty for spending time with your friends. Your parents are supposed to cope with having an empty nest, not die suddenly when they seem fine.

I didn’t kill my mother.

“Liza, is it true you killed your mother?”

“I heard that too. That she died of a broken heart because you moved out and went to school.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“You all don’t understand. I didn’t do it.”

“Liar.”

I didn’t do it.

1/2 Bird Bowl Part 2

Super Bowl Sunday. A terrible football game will be taking place at about 6:38 PM tonight. The guy who did "The Wrestler" song is going to be doing the halftime show. This game should be an awful rerun of the 2006 Super Bowl - The Steelers vs. The Seahawks (known to my friends and I as the bad Joo Joo Super Bowl but that is another story). This time we have another overachieving bird from the beautiful NFC West division taking on a predatory Steelers team that only rises to the occasion when the competition in the AFC is down a notch. Get your Roethlisburgers ready, this one will make you puke.

Thank God, then, that Sunday morning featured another classic Nadal v. Federer match in tennis. This one from the Australian Open. I hated tennis growing up. My family is part Greek so of course I loved watching Pete Sampras with his strange Grecian charms, five o'clock shadow and white sneakers. The rest of it though was for the Cardinals. My great uncle used to watch tennis all the time at family gatherings and make everyone watch it - this frustrated me to no end when there was a cartoon on or usually a better sporting event. So it comes as a shocker that I am now becoming a tennis fan. This is solely because of Nadal v. Federer. There are only a few times in sports when a rivalry can be a truly riveting event, half the time what people qualify as rivalries in sports are not even true rivalries. This has been. Their games compliment each other quite well and Nadal's unintentional comedy is off the chart. The Wimbledon final from last summer was the best match of all time and this morning's final was certainly up there. The whole match had you on the edge of your seat. However, this rivalry is coming close to one-sided unless Federer starts picking up some big wins. Nadal is truly impressive.

Anyway, that is it for the sports rant. Enjoy the game today if you can and drink 100 beers for me.

Below is my newest poem.


Whither America?


Whither America? The sound of the gas-stove
And she drank peppermint tea with honey
Talking about snow shoeing in the Catskills
Where once Rip Van Washington slept in dust.

There the wood cabins lie in the clearings
Where your friends set foot on the paths
They had thrust themselves further on,
The paths the dogs had laid in earnest,
The tracks we’d all imagined in the great shadow
Of our Brooklyns and our Manhattans and Chicagos
The places we could dunk our heads under cold streams.

Whither America? The key dropped from an open window
She pulled you close by the geranium pot
Wearing a grey skirt ruffled by the knees
With your arms on her back and two feet in the air.

Around the corner the full moon is over Christmas lights,
The neon piles of ice melt in the moist winter
Of Civil War beards and thick maroon scarves
Where boys and girls in slim black pants smile
Because they’ve known the snow entrenched season
That the picture books showed them in class –
The St. Petersburg and Moscow furies of their music
And the frozen Valley Forge December memories
With raw red feet and long tattered coats.

Wither America? The reel of a spinning bicycle spoke,
She and her girlfriend walk dogs in the Village
Where Gaslight photos make their hair rise up in cotton candy tufts
And all they want to do is shop for a stroller or crib.

Art galleries open up the front page of the daily news and
While most of their friends freelance or have no jobs,
The two women sit by their bicycles in the dusk
Watching the sun on the piers and along the narrow waterline
Letting New Jersey call out in pain to Oakland on the last page,
But the snowstorm is going to come in on Wednesday
The snowstorm is going to come in and make everything silent –
No jobs, no cribs or strollers, just white and the hair of the dog.

Whither America? The feel of a statue at summer’s high noon.
The courtyard butterflies won’t stop for the green berries
Neither will the smokers in the sunroom watching soap operas -
The woman in the straw-hat will, she’ll pick them all.

When you think of death all day your cheese platters won’t take,
The wood bases and berries won’t taste as sweet
Their flavor won’t stand above the warehouse walkways
When the girlfriend holds you both arm in arm in happiness
Knowing she did good hosting dinner for different groups –
Conversation over candles and Argentinean fillets.
Digestion is the afterlife of friendship and drunkenness
So make the best of all the secondhand smoke and sex
That juts out of the music, the mercury and moustaches.

Whither America? The hair curls in the shower drain
Letting the water fill the tub at the end of a long spring
With lobsters and purple lighthouse flowers and beestings,
Things that won’t leave you alone at the onset of February.

The underwear underneath the window belonged to her
Navy and filled with longing like anything left behind
He threw them out on the way to work in April’s relief
And she always hated strip malls with their Iowa parking lots
Their stained Stop and Shop façades and neons
She could learn that desolation means the same thing
In the Texas panhandle as it does in the rice marshes of China,
Further around to the cracked olive hills of Spain
So too does love in this life or one from two times ago.
But they both moved away wearing different sunglasses
And we never received a postcard from either of them.

Whither America? The press of a hug before midnight
The wreaths are falling from the white doorframes
Beer bottles threaten to break the table and your eyes
While you try to let the embraces leave in single file.

What makes blonde hair and stories of boyfriends
Make you feel like a father with your burnt coffee mug?
No matter how many days you try to sleep in you will never
Figure out that mysterious love that stabs you at the stoplight
The one that balloons you up for some mysterious reason
The one that deflates you as the laughs come so easy and
Fade gently out the door leaving you sitting Indian style on the carpet
Not sad but desirous of a question that has no words
Made up of apples, baby powder, arousal, the whispers
On a back deck or light snow falling on a quiet lane.
So keep walking and let the secret follow you along.

Whither America? The mother and child reunion
The red hat placed against the broad coffin’s sheen upholstery,
Make-ups, scarves and handbags sitting against chair legs
While the animal crying only comes at the very beginning and end.

Salt the roads because tonight the mist turns into black ice
The car washes will do a brisk business this weekend to the dusk
With mothers driving in and out with their kids to let their cars
Pass under the scrubbers as if it were an amusement ride.
Your mother can foresee the emptiness next to the fireplace
But you can tell her it isn’t so, if she knows more than you about love
You have the leg up for studying the movement of death,
Though you can’t let things die, you know how death
Marries love – the gaze toward the stars or snow gently falling.
The ottoman sits squat on the paneled wooden floor
And you can love your mother with all of your heart
But she feels things you never will, though you can try
Your soul will never move away from the ceremony -
The marriage of love and death in the grocery line.

Whither America? The sound of the gas-stove and
The pant of rain on the road from the basement window.
I want to put the satchel to my shoulder one more time
To let all of these stories pass from my chest like blood
Inching in the rifts made by my boots with every smile
And kiss and hug that have come across my path.
The view from the Seine will never make me forget
Those lean-tos you all built with whiskey in your packs
The friendly smile on the underground train platform,
Bus glass covering your heads while you shivered in November
I won’t let the blood get away from me; I’ll let it go.
Heartache shouldn’t be buried with the purple knit afghan
It stays with death and love - the marriage in the middle of the day -
The mother and child reunion at the nearest exit of the highway
Me standing by the fireplace, bleeding in the light.

Don't Tell Don't Tell

Tonight, I'll be going to the Motel Motel show at The Market Hotel (1142 Myrtle Ave. @ Broadway - Myrtle Willoughby JMZ stop). What a fitting venue for these two fine bed fellows: Motel and Hotel. I think personally I like a motel better. Sure hotels are great with their indoor pools and room service, mints on pillows, fine china, orangutangs running up and down air shafts a la Dunston Checks In (#9 on my top 1 million movies) and their Sealy's Certa Posturpedic Mattresses. However, no one can deny the ragged glory of a motel sign flapping in the breeze on the side of a highway next to The Best Dinosaur Exhibit in the Midwest. Heart shaped jacuzzis, vibrating beds, continental breakfasts with bad coffee, cheap room rates for two hour affairs and rattling chain linked fences around half filled swimming pools are what this country is made of.

Of course my roommate, Erik Gundel (see sideways smiling in the center), is in the band so I am biased in my lodging decision. However, these guys put out a great first record - soon to be re-released. I think I relate more to the dense rock that shows off a bit of Walkmen influence than the alt-country aspect, although I could see them sneaking in a few Little Feat swamp jams in the future. In any case, for their current sound, check out some of the videos on YouTube from SUNY Purchase, courtesy of hot shot beat reporter, sometime gum shoe, and public dick - Erik Lilleby.

Last one in the pool is a pool.

See below for the next installment of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt"

Coming soon: AN EPIC POEM

James

I’m lying in my old bed. Eve lies next to me. The walls are bare and blue. All of my trophies are gone. They’ve been gone for quite some time. Ever since I graduated from college and started at the firm. Who would’ve thought that I’d be an accountant when I was running on grass past the white lines on the lacrosse field? But I suppose I was always good at numbers I was never that great at lacrosse. I could run, somewhat, so they made me a midfielder. But all that is past now. All those faces are off somewhere. Maybe still around here. Cicero and Gertz. I know they’re still living close – Huntington I heard. I didn’t even invite them to my wedding. I knew what would happen if I did. I knew how they would act. I’m better off for it.

But Eve is still curled on the tan sheets, dreaming whatever dreams she’s dreaming. Can she feel the baby in her stomach? How long is that supposed to take before they know? I always thought it was instantaneous. A mother would know immediately when that little ball of life and electricity forms inside her. She didn’t, though. At least she hasn’t said anything to me. What if she does know? What if she has been waiting for me to tell her I lied, that I hid the positive test? Those things aren’t accurate anyway. She knows that too. Who was she telling me about? It was an actress I remember that. It was Halle Berry! Halle Berry took the test almost thirty times before they realized she was pregnant. She told the story on Oprah. If it could happen to Halle Berry, it could happen to anyone and so that means I can delay too.

I don’t know why I did it or why I’m continuing. There she is, her chest rising and falling underneath my white comforter. The white makes the tan of her skin and the black of her hair stand out even more. It compliments them so well – it makes them realer than real to me and I’ve known her for so many years now.

I can still see the image of the first time I saw her. There must be millions of husbands that can say that to their wives? She was wearing a blue t-shirt and the sleeves were short. I remember because I thought there was something strange about the way the color looked with her skin and her hair, and because the sleeves were short, I could make out the slight definition of her shoulder muscle. I’ve never been one to notice a detail like that either but I did, and that’s what meant everything. She talked to me first. The image of her head and neck leaning back to look up at me. But that was the first image, not the lasting one. The lasting one was from our first date. After we finished dinner – it was sushi, yes it was – we walked up the street together in the streetlight. She had a thin white scarf on. In the orange light, her coat looked maroon because I wasn’t paying attention and it was actually navy corduroy. Her hair was longer then and pulled up, the little strands stuck out around her neck. I was so nervous I’d barely eaten anything. I awkwardly put my arm around her and I realized I was in love. Who could make a movie about a moment like that or try to explain the feeling? For me it happened with a movement of my arm and nausea in my stomach. That’s what true love felt like then and now. That same woman is lying next to me. My wife is carrying my child in her stomach. What is it I am afraid of? Is it the baby itself or Eve with the baby inside her and what this will all mean for us? I’m not afraid. I shouldn’t be scared. Not me, not the one who holds the family together. But Eve is pregnant and something inside of me is screaming in fear.

Hiatus Over...Reign of Terror to Begin?

It's been a long month. Christmas, New Year's, watching puppet shows, Barack Obama, NFL Playoffs, the sun. One of the coldest Januaries I can remember in years. I am back to one hundred percent healthy. I can do this for all of you, whoever you are. I'm gonna get ripe like these tomatos and swiss chards upstairs there.

I'll be good I promise and make sure to give ye plenty t' read. Starting with another section of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt."


Ben

I’m alone now. I’m outside by the pool. The world is dark and the moon is waxing. I’m cradling the bottle in my right arm as I lay on the lounge. Nearly waxed this bottle off over the whole day. A bottle a day keeps the doctor in me at bay.

But there is so much to heal. Both of my daughters and both of my sons. I can see myself in James so much. The way he tries to heal people, to mend wounds. The difference is, is that he’s more like his mother. He’s noble, he looks noble; he sounds noble, and is noble to the point that it can be irritating. Except to the person who loves you. Me for Rose. Eve for him. I’ve healed. I can heal. I do it and did it in my own way. Quietly because it was a duty and duties are done in silence.

There is a coolness touching everything. I can feel it caressing my skin and my hair. If I walked on the perimeter I would feel it hovering over the leaves. It’s the autumn. What was that one good thing Kerouac said? Everyone goes home in October. Well it’s not October and everyone is home.

But no one cleans the pool anymore. I did it twice this summer, but we always leave it up to that robot now. It’s not the same, though. When we first got the pool James and I would both clean it. He’d listen to his music and do it during the day and on the weekends. I’d come home from work and clean it at night during the week. Look at it, glowing greenish and dark denim. It’s always looked this way in the dark. Those deep blue stones. Santos charged a high price but the work was worth it and who am I counting pennies? I was never a penny counter. This bottle feels good on my gut. It’s not quite a gut, but when I slouch like this, it’s unavoidable.

Yes, it’s definitely a cool night. When I was growing up, every year I looked forward to nights like this in September. During the day, the sun will beat down on the flowers and the trees, but at night, the wind picks up a little. The way I thought of it was that the cold hid in the ground until winter and that in the fall it made its first reemergence only at night. It made logical sense to me then. But tonight everything is touched by dampness and coolness. On all the leaves and petals there will be little marks of moisture.

I’m an old man now. My wife is dead. The songs of my youth don’t ring in my ears like they used to. I never thought I’d be old. Look at Cutty Sark. The bottle never ages, it keeps being produced looking the same and never changing. Orange label and orange liquid. If only humans could be as simple and adaptable as that. The model of my body has been outlived. I have four children that prove that. I have four children. Each one probably detests seeing me like this. I’m sure they all know about my past, the mistakes and jokes I made. I don’t regret it and I never did. Rose may have saved me. I’m sure she did because I couldn’t have helped the kids the way I did if I was getting like this all the time. I could’ve loved them. I always would’ve. But I couldn’t have helped them. I couldn’tve been a father. Although I never quite figured out what that meant. I heard the phrase “be a father” at soccer games, dance recitals, music concerts, and lacrosse camps, but I never really understood it. I had a part in creating them and I was always there to help. But I never knew when I crossed in the holy territory of being a father.

I suppose it all means as much as you want it to or as little. There are plenty of fathers out there who simply planted the seed for their children and didn’t do a thing after. Yet, other fathers destroyed their children’s lives by taking their title of “Dad” as a license to kill their child’s independence. Being a parent is terrible, but it’s a business I’m glad I got into.

I’m getting more sentimental. It’s not just because my wife – my guide – is gone, because it was happening before that. I’m seventy in January. That’s not so old, but old enough that the memories and sentiments pile up enough so that you can be sentimental. I don’t cry about things. I’ve heard about men near death who were easily brought to tears. They cried over Christ, talk of sex, love, American presidents, war and music. It’s funny, the only thing that seems to be missing from that list is death itself, but no one really talks about that as one of the elements of life. Because it’s always seen as the opposite. I don’t think it is. It’s as much a part in life as love or anything else. I’m going to die soon. Rose already did. The clouds are moving in over the stars. I need to finish this bottle and start the next one. Each day has its own agenda. What is tomorrow anyway?