Jamming in the Heights

There are bad days and there are good days, stupendous days and plain old shitty days and sometimes there are bad days that stay around forever or it can seem like that anyway. Yesterday was a big day for me, one that made me feel better than I've felt for a long time, months actually, better, healthier and happier.

Today is about shout outs for me, shouting out to all those people around me who enrich my life by being part of it.

Yesterday was the Annual Ring Garden Art Show, Art In The Garden 2012, and as usual, I was listed on the menu. I use the word 'usual' because back in 2006, when I first proposed to Liz Popiel who organized the event that I read poetry at her upcoming event, Liz politely said, "Well, I kind'a made up my mind after the last poet who performed, not to include poets."

"What happened then?" I asked.
"He caused me no end of grief about the noise, about the crowd not paying attention, and about our sound system, which I provide."
"That's it?" I said. "I promise not to do any of that and just be happy to be there and be part of it."
We shook hands on it then and I asked if I could include a few of my neighborhood poetry buddies who felt the same way as me. When poetry and music began back then as part of the  annual garden art show, there was me, Demetrius Daniels, Fred Arcoleo, and Robin Glasser either reading her adult Dr. Seuss poems or reading her geisha stories.

Over the years we've continued to add many more talented performers including Carlo Baldi, Dubblex, Ruben Gonzales, Peggy Ann Tartt, Greta Herron, Carla Lynne Hall, and Amy Soucy who usually performs back up for Fred and who occasionally graces us with one of her own numbers. This year Ruben didn't show and neither did Amy, but the rest of us came and performed our little or big tushies off. This year another newbie came, Roger E Ranski, and Ranski worked it out.

Demetrius took a minute to back me and I was like, damn what's up here but later he said he guessed he became like Dubblex, afraid to intrude. I'm like, "Please don't wait for invitations in the future!" I really swooned the last number, Stormy Weather and our small but enthusiastic audience threw in, swooning right along with me. Thanks to Demetrius for his tromboetry, Dubblex for his soulful melodica and Roger E Ranski for his improv guitar.

A shout out to Donna Deming, our illustrious and charming host who replaces our beloved Liz Popiel, who nurtured this event for many years. A shout out to all the participating artists who come every year.

A special shout out too to Carolyn Stanford for her tireless work in supporting and promoting art created by incarcerated non-violent offenders through her organization, "Inside Out Art".

I am looking forward to June 30th to Poetry & Music In The Garden. Please come and enjoy and BYOB!~

Hopefully this will help to banish those blue days that don't want to go away ~

This is the line up so far:

Joy Leftow
Carol Lynn Hall
Peggy Ann Tartt
Greta Herron
Demetrius Daniels
Dubblex
Roger E Ranski
Carlo Baldi
Arthur Sherry
Mario Coppola
Curtis Becraft of Curtis and The Dilettantes fame.

More info to follow ...

New drawing

A drawing I did yesterday of someone I had just met from a very old friend of mine. It took a few minutes and I didn't have a good pencil.

No Easy Answers

I live my life in service as if curing the ills of others 

will make my maladies go away.

I define myself by the self I give away

defined by people who say what I do
but don’t see who I am

Help others define their existence helps me define myself

Help others learn to do is what I always do or try to do each time around
but can’t succeed each and every time even if you want to

so take the edge off, smoke some ganja

It’s all about love, that’s what they say; it takes a village to make a revolution

Reviewing life’s worth

Money counts but love counts more and how long does love last

when there’s no money no money no money no money

No no, no money

I didn’t do it for the money I did for satisfaction that money can’t buy you love

it doesn’t matter how hard you try money can’t buy love

I did it because that’s what social workers do is help others grow

I was a social worker before I earned my Columbia degree.

Born with the ability to see

Astrologers, tarot readers, doctors therapists teachers all agree,

I’m a mitzvah to humanity shaped to suffer their sins 
they all agree what can I do do do….

Lessons follow from Sabbath to day’s glow

I watch the surface of society grow designed for consumerism it’s not a joke.

Today bill collectors froze his bank account took three thousand. No joke!

Looking through loopholes is what bill collectors do

Money went from checking to savings, that’s their loophole to steal from disabled. 

Lawyers hired by bill collectors take everything we own – just doing their job.

No bail out for the needy! 
Only bankers and mercenaries are in charge of society.

Only they get bailouts.

I want my bailout and I want it now. I want my debts forgiven. I paid mine to society a long time ago and intend to keep paying so please please give me my bailout – I can’t survive these streets with the pennies you throw me.

And while I’m at it, please… please … no more wars…

What if everyone lived altruistically dreamed like parents

loving children unconditionally

The rich giving to the poor and paying their taxes

Let’s build a better society right here right now right on

Let’s build peace on earth forever more

We don’t want war we want peace right now right on

Peace on earth – right here not delayed heaven doesn’t exist

Let’s get it together and think of each other peace peace peace

My brother and sister after the revolution there’ll be peace on earth

Amen

Shalom

As-Salaam Alaikum

Peace out

Peace Peace Peace

Want a little piece of mind

At the crossroads between dejection boulevard and desolation road

I try to leave the dead behind I’m so

Tired of dealing with unkind references
to myself and others

I’m tired of making lemonade with so many lemons

I want to leave the bad behind, keep an open mind

I want a little piece of mind so I can leave behind

Everyone unkind, stop being confined by the tales
they unwind

People can’t see, no one’s clever; hope survives
forever blind
I live in a world where everyone is kind

Our great nation is at the mercy of another oppression
a rising recession
a looming depression of immense proportions
like we’ve only seen once before.

I paddle faster trying to stay afloat – and stay positive. I keep trying to figure out the solution to the pollution the question of destruction to humans and animals. Keep searching for direction in all this confusion, hoping for evolution a revolution a new solution for all great nations.

In a rhapsody of blue dreams undefined
blowing in the wind

The planets aligned provide piece of mind

I want a little peace of mind to keep hope alive

Like fresh brewed java in the morning served
with a little steamed cream

Sunlight steams though my window blinds
giving me my piece of mind.

Super Hippie Vegie Girl

Super vegie hippie girl wearing a thin blue Indian gauze skirt and misty blue lacey t-shirt standing on her head in the corner talking about how her organs are finally getting some rest. That girl was crazy and beautiful in her own way.

Awareness and loneliness seeping through to the bottom of her shoes so she could look up and you’d recognize her pain and see yourself in the darkness emerging out of a festering wound finally brought to sunlight. You’d place your hurt alongside hers and you’d know someone in the world really understood.

She was like that. New agers called her a good old soul, kind hearted to a fault. I once watched her give away a handcrafted velvet one-of-a-kind hat that even now, forty years later, she still can’t find one similar. A wiz on the Internet and helping friends get government benefits, she failed miserably in matters of the heart, placing her faith in one ungrateful miscreant after another.

She wore a smile on her face that made her seem beautiful. She wasn’t really beautiful but her inner beauty shined though her smile. She smiled at everything and everyone when she wasn’t busy crying.

Crazy hippie vegie girl took everything to heart. 

If you looked at her cross or had a mean tone she’d analyze the words you said for days on end crying about her loss.

When she speaks about her childhood she cries with a passion that will never end. She cries when men on helicopters shoot down on helpless wolves and wild horses with high-powered rifles and when she learned about canned hunts and how they kill penguins and seals just born, she said she couldn’t understand why anyone would kill just to kill and why are there wars by the way.

If you get her temper up she’ll never stop talking and she could probably win a war with her mouth if anyone would listen.

Her tears fell easily over a few unkind remarks or mistreatment. I don’t understand how someone can be so sensitive. Her therapist told her it was because she was stuck at the age of an infant and lacked impulse control like infants do. Generously she gave away things she’d barely used behind her husbands back, gave them away like pieces of herself floating away.

Crazy hippie girl listening to Bob Marley before he was famous, hooking her cheap stereo to her cheap microphone while she dusted her old broken furniture and mopped her scratched and damaged wooden floor, singing "No Women No Cry."

It makes me wonder if some are born to be tortured to hear the same words set to fifty different songs with so many suppositions and fears, and by the way why are there wars?

Floating in and out of words

Transcending time never out of words

Out of mind words carry me to and fro
between different uni-verses I grow

Words correspond

words transport me to another place

words fall, likitty –split,

from my lips heating your ears like whips

words channel though me

Tick Tock - time stalks me

Pendulum swings from thought to thought

Clock chimes consider moments bought and unused,
borrowed and blue

Words force me through closed doors

Unknown scary places words chase me plague me

Follow me taunt me chastise me

For dear life I hold on to words

Words ...

Searching through lost words
discovering new words to turn over and lose

An entire day spent turning words around

searching for misplaced words find my soul in words

Words play over and over in my mind

Words keep me prisoner for days in a row

Words mime me chide me imbibe me find me

Impossible to hide from words no matter where I go

Words reside in my brain jumping cell to cell

Analyzing and attributing meanings to words

Words play no way to escape

words  are here to stay

Words locked in and outside my brain

Closing the gate after words escape

once spoken can never be taken back

Words build escalate exacerbate

Words build hierarchy policy describe trap and abuse

words cause wars to be fought

words create space and places

People forgetting their place return to a private base

words trap me enslave me cause wounds to open

Never out of words in the woods because of words

Honest words offend old wounds mend

Words start race riots expose the caste system alive here just like India

Words create reality

Words keep me alive no time to rest till death inhales my words rest on paper like smoke crumbling in time how long do you suppose my words will survive suspended on internet sites in people memory ram words live on internet

Words are the beginning the end and beginning

And the word is …

Set me free Set me free

To be the best me I can be

Set me free set me free

I want to be me like you are you

I want to follow in your footsteps jet around the planet make stops in every nation

Perform and leave my words like seeds

To flourish into flowers before the final frost

Words grow along with a world that everyday is more crazy

Power and money go to those few lucky

So set me free set me free let me be me

The same way you are who you want to be

Let me be who I want to be

An overnight sensation performing in Paris

All that money and power right beside you Will I go crazy

Will I still stand up and preach loud and clear about the rights of the people

Or will I forget them if I get the big bucks?

Will I forget this poor besieged planet

Forget all that I stand for

if I become free and am the best me I can be

If I get the payoff and am one of the one percent

will I become one of them?

That’s why it’s easy to choose you over me.

Set me free set me free

Left out of everything frowned upon and looked down upon

They made fun of my name.

Looking me in the face, they’d cruelly say, again and again,

like it was some kind of fun game to make fun of my name

“Leftout, right? That’s your name?” sniggering with delight

They were justified being better than me I didn’t fight back.

Yesterday’s dreams and memories follow me

Letting go is never easy

Set me free set me free

Could I become one of you if I had power money and will the way you do?

Set me free set me free

Break on through to the other side in my fantasy

Amy’s absence screams inside and I reach to pull her out of me

my eyes sting - tears follow the tracks for who she could be – soul sister

Set me free set me free

And makes me wonder who I would be if I had half the chance

I want to be me set me free set me free let me be me

Stop the Mayo Clinic from creating genetically engineered kittens for FIV testing and research.

Paper Blues

I’ve got the blues about paper today

I walk around my house examining notes, short stories,
papers from high school written in long hand

looking through papers to throw away

Thinking about days long gone when we learned to write script

My mind jumps ahead: future generations where no one will know how to write script. Writing by hand will disappear except for a few who carry on. Handwriting will become a fine transcribed art that no one teaches and that no one knows how to do anymore.

My cabdriver explained how now-a-days, children do their assignments online on the computer so they don’t write anything down at all anymore not like we did back in the day. He said they barely learn print, they type everything on the computer.

Columbia forced me to buy a typewriter in 1978. They said hand written assignments get lower grades. Hasn’t anyone explained this to you before? I mean I ‘m sorry to break it down to you like this and feel bad no one told you before that at Columbia. Miz. Leftow, you already lost one grade this term by handing in hand-written homework. You would have gotten a B+ but because it was hand written you only are due a C+. Sorry…

When I explained how poor I was she said you’re smart, you’re here at Columbia so you’ll figure out a way to survive.

Back then all I had was two pairs of jeans a skirt a few blouses and one sweater from the $10 store. I had no money to spend but needed that typewriter. Back then I couldn’t conceive a typewriter had a memory so you wouldn’t have to typewrite the whole page if you made a mistake.

My cabbie ‘s conversation brings me back. He’s telling me how hard it is to get by with four children, two are teenagers. "The only way we get by is because my wife lies and says I don’t live there so she can get food stamps Medicaid and section 8," he said as he drove his Lincoln Town Car, working and paying for High Class radio service trying to make a buck. "It ain’t easy out here and that rent we pay would cost us 2100 instead of the 900 we pay and in this way we get by," he confided.

"Four children and us and two cats. I show the vet our Medicaid card," he continued, "and then we don’t pay. Medicaid for cats is good," he said. "We’re doing the best we can to get by and she works on the side too. My wife’s a certified home health nursing aide and she gets work a few days a week at a hospital up in the Bronx. After they take out the taxes it’s about 50 bucks for a 12-hour day then she got to make sure it don’t get in the way of watching out for our children so thank God she doesn’t work everyday."

"It gives her time off to cook and clean house and watch over our teens and younger children. We pay for catholic school – and they have to go to college. There’s no jobs out there you know. We try to get by – but it’s hard to qualify. That’s why she wants to work too. She works off the books. There’s just too many bills to pay. You know growing children need clothes and shoes - those are expensive."

"It’s a different world out there," my cabby alerts me that the ride and story have come to an end. I look around me at all the paper, the notes and each piece of paper seems to have so much meaning I don’t know how to throw it out.

They don’t do things the way they used to. My cabbie is a young man. He’s only 42. His radio comes alive. A voice asks his location in Spanish.

It’s a lot to chew on. I think about all the finagling I did to get by twenty-two years working professionally to help our young – a noble job made harder by the huge bureaucracy I functioned in.

I wanted a house but it went into foreclosure but I still have my state subsidized Mitchel-Lama. They’re hard to come by now-a-days and they don’t intend to build more. Now the Mitchel-Lama rentals are so high that when people don’t lie andtell the truth about who lives where, no one can afford to live anywhere anymore.

In Washington Heights where I live most of the people survive on a lie because otherwise they’d live so poor they’d be in deep shit .

Worked hard for that money and still

Can’t get me no no no no - satisfaction

I will overcome some day

I sing misty blue for you today

Misty blue just for you today Daddy

Sing misty for you every day

Waiting to hear you say

You’re coming on home today

My life’s on hold – my mind strays

I see you in my mind’s eye drinking that Bombay Gin

Sitting alone in a Starbuck’s café

Knowing life plays me like a Violin

But I can’t stop myself from hoping there could be a better way

Please tell me you’ll always love me Daddy

The way you know that I love you

So please come on home to stay

My soul has turned misty like the weather before the storm

While it keeps playing the same old song

Play it in reverse today and tomorrow

Let me coerce you to come on home

Let your worries disperse

Things can’t get much worse

So come on home baby

We’re going to jam the night away and 

play new music all day today Daddy

until the moon wanes in the sky and 

the sun shines again today

Someday I will overcome all obstacles put in my way