BODY OF EVIDENCE

Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean my fears aren’t real

Fears speak in foreign languages in dark places of my soul

They confide in me tell me where I’ve been and where I’ll go

Beyond my comprehension

Cognizance jells constancy with perceptions and prehension.

In the starry night the sun set forth with glee

Misconceived, under the impression
the sun was there to see

Seen only in one’s heart enjoying ministrations of beauty

Duped by impulsivity trying to capture eternity

Existence of time proceeds, a moment, a year, a decade,
years pass and we’re still here.

Pass like a train in the night.

Several generations away nothing’s left but the mist.

Everything in its time, beginning and end,
true love bereft by death. 

Games played to be won - there are no rules to make the world spin

Dancing in delight in the wan moonlight waiting for a generation of change

to make its way into the light

Beside me stand Jimi, Janis, Billie, Bob Marley, and John F. Kennedy before they were born

We can’t find the light to see the way out of a bad dream a nightmare in reality

Relativity exists the nightmare is as real as the window I gaze through at midnight

Looking for a light a sign that everything’s going to be alright

What is true is a lie

Searching for truth

Secrets overwhelm us

Secrets lie hidden beneath the earth still warm with the regrets of my piss

I have no more left inside that was a lie I scream as my entrails are pulled out

Steam engine losing control seamlessly riding the track

Meant for dancing then changing course before making that last turn

One turn after another wondering what choices were right

What else should we have done? Did we leave any any secret unturned?

Needing release was it left ignored to rot to die with our bodies

An epiphany of infinity a chronological weighing of events adds up to peanuts

Imminence of ends finds not one of us survive forever acceptance of the next rain

Contrives a storm a demise of quintessential gains in a new sunrise

Judgement Day

“You’re not a Jew,” she says, “not one of the few chosen ones, you’re a big nothing, a song a dance, a few laughs.”

A Johnny come lightly flowing to my rhythm, I reply, “And you’re a bitch, a vicious witch with a twist, you give me a stitch in my left side.” A brutal switch to her words, I continue, “You call yourself a Christian yet sit in judgment, call me a nothing. Step lightly," I caution. "Everyone is someone. You think because you sit in church and pray to Jesus it erases your sins, your forgeries your jealousies. Who died and made you God?”

Her mouth falls open. She is not accustomed to being answered back.

I continue, “Who gives you the right to decide what I am.”

I stop. I’m tired of this dance. What’s the purpose? I cannot change how she sees. She has cohorts of sorts who see the way she does. I live under the misconception I’m a Jew because I was born one, through and through. No one can take that away from me.

Impassioned by the fruits of my labor I know I’m a Jew. In a stew, it’s not important to define myself by her illusion. Misconceptions, putdowns and judgments morph into perceptions. I look at her again and see she’s never been my friend.

Get thee behind me I say to myself as much as her and continue on my way.

Mean People Suck!

Sally Is Dead!

I should have known how wrong things were when she rang my bell suddenly at midnight on a day before work. I didn’t know what to do and at first considered not ringing her in. I hadn’t heard from her for at least ten years. I rang her up and tried to make short work of it but spent over an hour listening to her repeat the same sentences, sometimes as many as three times. I knew something was amiss but couldn’t figure it out. I wondered if my old friend had Alzheimer's. Sally was only 43. How could she have Alzheimer’s? It seemed strange that she would repeat sentences I told her and act like it was the first time she asked the question. I gently asked her, “Sally, don’t you recall? We just said this same thing 20 minutes ago. Realizing that it was now going on 1 a.m., I told Sally I had to get up at 6 for work the next day and escorted her to the front of my building both of us promising to keep in touch. After many unanswered calls, I ran into John, her ex-husband, in front of the hospital where he’d worked for 25 years. It was 10 p.m. He sat there calmly eating a sandwich in his blue scrubs, chatting with a co-worker.

“How’s Sally?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear?” John responded.

“Hear what?”

“Sally’s dead.”

“Dead from what?” I asked surprised.

“She died in her apartment about a month ago. She’d been dead at least a week and neighbors noticed the smell.”

“She visited me two months ago and I hadn’t seen her for years,” I said. “She showed up at midnight.”

John laughed. “That would be Sally,” he said. “No one could handle being around her anymore. Even our daughters moved in with me.”

“I didn’t know that. How old are they?”

“Stephanie started college this fall and she’s 18. Brenda is 23 and just graduated Queens College.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “How did Sally die?”

“Sally just stopped eating and going out. She was found on her bed. They said it was death through starvation.”

“Oh my God! Just starved herself to death just like that?”

“She said she was too fat and needed to diet. She used to come here on my lunch hour and sit here with me while I ate my sandwich. She did it at least once a week.”

“Yes she told me too she’d gotten too fat but she didn’t seem too fat. Maybe she could’ve stood to lose 15 or 20 pounds. She had no one else in her life?”

“Her mother died some time ago. Her grandmother is gone too. There was no one left. I guess that’s why she used to come here to sit with me. She had no one else in her life.”

“No one knew how desperate she was?”

“We were all used to her eccentricity. When she showed up here a month ago and said she was starting a new diet, we figured, here goes Sally again, off on a new spin.”

“No one saw how ill she was,” I said, “not even me. I saw she repeated herself over and over but I didn’t suspect things were that bad that she’d starve herself to death in seclusion.”

We said our goodbyes and I left wondering if there was anything I could have done to prevent her death. I knew her mom had been institutionalized when Sally was a child and we used to hang out at her grandma’s apartment. I remember we visited her mom together in the institution. Her mom never left the hospital except once for a visit. I remember grandma made us matching dresses in a beautiful stretch nylon sleeveless with a round neck and knee length. Sally’s dress was gold, burnt sienna and brown diamond patterned and mine was blue, turquoise and green diamond shaped pattern. I remember because it was the first really pretty sexy dress I had clinging to all my curves. Back then I wore a size 34 size A bra and had a 25 inch waist. I weighed 125 pounds. Sally weighed 115 and had brown gold eyes and a heart shaped face. I introduced her to her husband. She married him when she turned 17 and was pregnant with her first child.

I sit here today, 18 years later, remembering Sally and wondering if anything could have prevented her death. I miss Sally too as she was my first true friend.

 Sally took this pic of me in the dress her grandma made for me when we were 14 years old.

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