Rory's Blues

Watching the tape, he thinks about a teenage girl's bedroom, stuck between Brownsville and East Flatbush back in 1969. The walls are plain white and the furniture is heavy, plain and old. The curtain he's closing over the window is plain white. It looks more like the room of a nun than a teenage girl. Except for the bookcase, painted in day glo colors with swirls and stars, peace signs and cartoon dolphins leaping out of cartoon oceans. He taught her how to draw the dolphins one long warm sunset evening, sitting on the roof hoping for a cool breeze. He sketched in chalk the dolphin that she embroidered on the back of her black denim jacket, white chalk transformed to a hundred shades of ocean and sunset. It's hanging on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, where she's sitting untying her sneakers.

The girl on the tape knows what she's going to do is wrong but she's too hungry to care. She just needs the emptiness inside to go away, no questions asked. Fumbling, clutching, tearing the shirt off the boy who's now married elsewhere, needing. Just needing.

Back in the bedroom he remembers the girl is singing along with the stereo. She's wearing bell bottoms and a blue denim work shirt. Her long brown hair is in a ponytail and she has a red bandana around her neck. He loves her so much he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. In some deep part of himself he knows it will never be like this again, so he tries to remember every detail as he kisses her eyes, her mouth, her throat. As he opens the first button on her shirt.

On the tape the dream castle burns up into a mess of wrinkled sheets and averted eyes. She's already hungry again, and she already misses him while he's still standing in front of her. On cue her mother comes home early, takes it all in and understands in one sad glance. He feels bad for her but worse for her daughter.

Back in that other time they are lying still, arms around each other. She's somewhere between crying and giggling, which is usually a good place to be. He's feeling a warm stillness that he can't think of a name for. After a while they sit up and look in each others' eyes. You'd need a thesaurus to describe that look. They get dressed even though they don't want to; her mother will be home from work soon. They walk out into the June light, arms around each other's shoulders. Time for pizza.

He's rewinding the tape and feeling bad for the girl on it. She deserved better than that.

Algerian Wine

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. He was standing by the railroad tracks that run along Rue de la Commune, looking up at the copper statue of his mother on the roof of Bonsecours Church. The expression on his face was like a book of hieroglyphs, full of meanings if you only knew how to read it.

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. A little girl of about eight was bouncing her rubber ball along the curb where the cobbles meet the river when it skidded under the railing and down to the deep black water. The tears in her eyes would have broken your heart. Nobody noticed Jesus as he climbed over the rail and walked out across the waves to where the ball was bouncing downstream. When he brought it back to the girl not even the soles of his sandals were wet. He kissed her cheek and brushed the tears away from her eyes, and she giggled, "Merci, Jesu!"

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. He was sitting on a bench in Place Jacques Cartier, eating a smoked meat hero. The sun was on his face and he looked so happy I couldn't help smiling. He laughed and said, "Man, I've earned this sandwich!"

April Showers

Sand pouring from a broken hourglass
onto the skin of a muted snare drum
abandoned in the grass with only the sun
for company,
that's what this rain sounds like tonight.

Why it sometimes sucks to have a past

There's a dead man under the floorboards of your heart. You didn't kill him, that was his own idea. But you didn't help him either. And he rolls a little with each heartbeat as he lies on his back under the floor, and his arm waves like he's calling you to him. But it's only a reflex, and it doesn't mean anything. On the good days you never think of him at all. On the bad days it hurts so much you can't look in a mirror.

Daylight Savings Time

Just watched the little clock in the corner of my screen jump from 1:59a.m. to 3:00a.m. Earlier tonight I'd gone through the house manually changing all the other clocks: my wrist watch, the stereo, the clock radio, the tv, the vcr, the answering machine. For a few hours they were all out of synch; if I wanted the real time I had to look here. Now they're all back in balance with each other, now it's the same time wherever you look in my apartment. Like most big changes in time or season, it brings back memories....

Like some time in the mid eighties, at a closing night party for a show I'd helped produce. It was at the home of a lesbian couple, one of whom was one of my favorite people in the world, as well as a sometime drunken makeout buddy. What can I say, alcohol made her curious. We sat in the back yard looking up at the huge clock faces on the Williamsburg Bank building in downtown Brooklyn, just a couple of blocks away. At the stroke of two the hour hands, lit up in colored lights, began to move at speed visible to our eyes and went straight past two to three a.m. We clicked our beer bottles in a toast and kissed. My girlfriend was inside, kissing the other half of the lesbian couple.  At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

Or the year my mother died, and her wake spanned the weekend when the clocks changed. A month or so earlier I'd broken up with the girl who I thought would be the love of my life. A couple of months before that I'd lost the job I thought would be my life's work. And now my mother was dead. It really wasn't a good year. My ex and I left the wake together and went to Rocky Horror at Eighth Street. Back then they ran videos as part of the pre-show, and that night the video was the J. Geils Band with "Love Stinks". No thought, no question, she and I jumped up on stage and joined the floor show, gave that song all the hurt, all the sorrow, and all the laughter and relief we both were feeling. Much later on, as the sun was rising, we made love in a secluded corner of a large park in Queens. I walked her home, went back to my place, showered, changed clothes and went back to the wake. To this day I bless her for that night.

And tonight, as the rainy night loses one hour of its life, given over to man's greedy hand,I thank the night for its gift. May we all use it well.

 

Letting go, at last

Step off the path.
Step into the wind.
Walk on the rain.
Walk on the sunlight.
Climb stairs made of snow
to a window of starlight.
You're almost home now.
Goodbye.

What kind of love on the Pope's last day?

The Pope has probably seen his last daylight, and all evening the screen has been full of film clips and sound bites of people praying for him. At least that's what they call it. All praying for him to get well and stay here with them. Sounds to me more like they're praying for themselves. Don't you love this man? Hasn't he done enough for you? Can't you pray for an easy passing for him, and a happy awakening in a better place? I'm no Christian, and on most things I'm pretty much the mirror image, the direct opposite, of everything he believes in. But I've always respected him because he's lived his beliefs. And I think he deserves better than all these people asking him for more.