It ain't all pizzas and cream

April 30, 2011. So long, April, and a few thoughts.

"Depression is my kitchen, and I can whip up a mean ennui."

 

Was just talking to a friend and that came out. Sometimes I forget and have to be reminded. My mind takes me places I don't want to go. Like a drinking buddy who turns slightly sadistic and reckless after a few beers. If you ever wonder why I don't blog more about the day-to-day nuts and bolts of my life, there are several reasons: 1. They're not that interesting. 2. I write as a way to process these events, and to do so I cannot simply chronicle them. I have to step back, sometimes far back, until I seem to be talking about another subject entirely. 3. You don't want to read about how we're always struggling.

So, if you're not already my Facebook friend, here are a few pieces you may not yet have seen.

 

SOME PARADISE

I was separated and had this one-room place

I thought would knuckle me down. Full-time job

in the daytime, drunk every night. I had no TV,

one window and just an old electric typewriter.

Like the others in that building, I degenerated:

scribbled cartoons on my walls, read Hamsun's

"Hunger" and believed the radio was talking

only to me. Oh but the poems! They landed

on my arms like parrots in a Miami theme park.

You should have seen all the colors.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

The house is quiet
as an old woman sewing

Solemn as a Hungarian
folk tale
where a girl grieves
her love
until she is nothing but
cloth and tears

And must
like a doll
be darned whole.

April 26, 2011. Happy Birthday, Cecily!

 

Remiss

 

Every good woman

deserves at least one good poem

 

and every beautiful woman

deserves at least two

 

which in your case

means

 

I’ll be coming up about 9

thousand short.

April 25, 2011. Trophy

 

I once bought a car from a guy in South

Philly. He lived in a tiny house

but on his wall was the head

of an 8-point

buck.

 

"Hunting?" I asked.

 

"Runway," he said. 

 

"Planes hit deer

awla time," he said.

"All you gotta do

is drive out at night

and get 'em."

 

I paid him cash for the car

and left.

 

Two years later

it died

on the road.

I keep its bumper

over my fireplace.

April 23, 2011. That Old Black Magic

It is a tiny storefront on a quiet street in the French Quarter, with a tall slim wooden door and one grime-clouded window. If not for the handful of books stacked on the marble step, I’d hardly have noticed it is a shop. Inside, the proprietor sits quietly amid canyons of books. Poetry, literature, history, psychology. When large numbers of old books are stored together, there is a smell to the place: a mixture of wool hats and irises, steamship tickets and creosote, lampshades and leather suitcases. If you haven’t smelled it, it’s hard to explain. If you have, it’s hard to escape. The only cat I’ve seen since arriving in New Orleans dozes quietly in a box, atop a hip-high stack of books. I let him be. Cats and I understand each other. The proprietor and I exchange nods of greeting and I ask for the poetry section. “It starts here,” he says, gesturing to a nearby case, “and wraps around there.” I’ve just located a title by John Ciardi when I hear the shop door open. I glance up to see a woman, mid 50s, dressed as if she’d survived being struck by a bangle truck. 

 

“I’m looking for a book,” she announces in an unfortunate New York accent that reminds me of a cathedral pillaged by drunken linebackers. “My son said it would be here.”

 

“Here, in my shop?” asks the proprietor.

 

“No,” says the woman, “here in New Orleans.”

 

“Then it must be here,” says the proprietor. “What’s it called?”

 

“The Black Pullet.”

 

“Bullet?”

 

“No, pullet.”

 

“Oh, like a chicken.”

 

“Yes, a chicken. My son said it would be here. It’s about black magic.”

 

The proprietor falls into silence, finally, with finger to chin, announcing, “Can’t say I’ve heard of it. But there are other book stores in New Orleans.”

 

Then she notices the cat. “Can I pet him?” she asks.

 

“What time is it?” asks the proprietor.

 

“Excuse me.”

 

“Well, he becomes progressively more irritable as the day goes on, so if it’s afternoon, I’d have to say no.”

 

The woman moves a hand toward the cat, who opens his golden eyes, raises his head, and hisses.

“See,” says the proprietor, “must be afternoon.”

 

With a pfft of annoyance, the woman leaves. The proprietor turns to me. “Are you ready?” he says. I nod, pay for my purchase, and wish him a good day.

 

I imagine him at day’s end, locking up for the night, and retiring to the back room, where he will carefully take a black hen from its cage, and with one swift stroke, cut its throat.

April 21, 2011. Fuel

 

We had enough fuel oil for ten days, and got paid

every two weeks. “You pay cash,” the man

from the oil company had said, “up front.”

So for four days of every two weeks,

no heat.

 

The stove ran on gas, so we boiled

water in huge spaghetti pots and nailed

sheets of thick plastic across the livingroom door

so the warmth would find its way

upstairs.

 

It went on like this all winter, it seemed

to snow every Tuesday for weeks. We all had

colds and walked around the house in caps

and sweaters, sleeves stretched long to cover

our hands.

 

But when the oil truck would come

it always felt like Christmas.

April 20, 2011. Bones & Slate

 

Past drumbeat and starlight and little tin crosses, we walk arm in arm thru the night streets of the Quarter.  Over on Frenchmen, the buskers are still playing, their collars turned slightly to the cool breeze. In a vacant lot, a man sits painting skeletons on sheets of slate by candlelight. His mustache drooping, his beard crusty, his face could have leapt from a Civil War tintype, so beset is his regiment of teeth by deserters. He’s the kind of guy young boys call old and old men call pal. I nearly address him as Colonel when he first speaks. “Feel this one,” he says,“ offering the slate on which he’s currently working. “It’s from 1880.” My wife’s not sure whether to take it, but he insists. “Light, in’t it?” She agrees that it is and hands it back.  He takes a sip from a can of beer he’s been keeping at his feet. Someone has woven once-living roses into the vines of the wrought iron fence.  He’s been to Paris, he says, to study art—then confesses,  “I might not make much sense, I had some marijuana earlier.”  I have the feeling that no matter where we say we’re from, he’ll say he’s been there. I tell him anyway. “Reminds me,” he says, “of a guy named Spoon. Had his arm tore off in a wreck, and they put this fake one on. One night, Spoon gets in a fight, takes off the arm, and whacks the other guy a good one over the head with it.” I don’t ask what that has to do with our home town. “Twenty bucks for the small ones,” he says, indicating the slates standing like soldiers along the fence. We plead poverty and apologize, wishing him well. He returns silently to his work of skulls and bones. A few yards away, a cymbal crashes at the Spotted Cat. The next set is about to begin.

April 19, 2011. Home from the Big Easy

 

Love me, New Orleans

Jazz me, fleece me, sing me a Creole lullaby

Wash me down with hand grenades and hurricanes

And when you pierce my voodoo heart

Do it easy.

 

April 15, 2011. The Abandoned Movie Palaces of Canal Street

The Loew's State (1926)

The Saenger (1927)

The Joy (1947)

 

 

April 14, 2011. Welcome to Voodoo Vegas

The big drink in New Orleans these days is the "hurricane," a concoction of rum, passion fruit syrup (or grenadine), and orange juice. Don't worry, I'm still sober. The marvel of the hurricane for me is that this city, so devastated 6 years ago by Hurricane Katrina, has named a drink after the thing that nearly destroyed them. That's like New Jersey having a drink called "the Hindenburg." Or Haiti serving up an "earthquake." But New Orleans in a party town that doesn't miss a chance to capitalize on its fame. And it's a town of resilient, hard-working people who know what it means to rebound from disaster.

Now, I haven't been to the Lower 9th Ward, or what's left of it. And I feel like a ghoul for even admitting my curiosity. If you want a sense of it, try Google Earth. So many of the houses have been bulldozed that the area looks in large part like a marsh, its true identity betrayed only by the streets and by the driveways leading no place. The photographer in me wants to explore it in person, the poet shuns the idea of making any personal gain from such monumental pain, loss, and grief. So, there'll I'll leave it.

The things for which NOLA is best known, other than Katrina, are all still here. The music surrounds you, rich in its emotion, depth, and texture. The squeezebox and washboard of zydeco, the mournful twang of the blues, or the celebration and brass of jazz are all around. The buskers too are some of the best you'll find anywhere.

And of course, there's the food. We haven't been here long enough to sample everything we'd like, but so far we've enjoyed an oyster po'boy, crawfish etouffe, crab boiled potatoes (boiled red potatoes rolled in spicy seasoning), redfish, blackened chicken, and the slightly less traditional crawfish ravioli. Still on the to-eat list: a muffaletta sandwich, beignets, and jambalaya.

What I've learned so far: booze is available everywhere, including drug stores (which almost makes sense), the Mardi Gras masks are 70% cheaper at Walgreens than at a souvenir shop, and if someone bets you he can tell you where you got your shoes, say, "On my feet."

In the company of gentlemen

"Guess what I am," he said. He was  sipping from a tallboy in a paper bag.

"You look like the creative type," I told him. 

"I'm a fighter pilot. Name's Bill." 

"Well that's an art of its own," I said. "No offense, but you look a little old for a fighter pilot."

"I'm 60. And I don't fly anymore."

"Oh."

"I was a bartender too," he added.

"Really?"

"Yeh, I used to work the late shift, so I could give all the waitresses free booze. And you know what happens when you give waitresses free booze?" He winked.

"All your dinner orders get fucked up?"

Bill told me he has 3 grown kids whom he never sees. They're all in their early 20s and were born about a year apart. He claimed he could impregnate a woman on demand. "One time, I came home from the hospital after a neck operation. I was in a lot of pain. My wife had to help me upstairs to bed. Then one night she raped me. I didn't press charges. Nine months later my son was born."

We talked about alcohol. He said he had been sober awhile back, "because I have lupus," he said. But then he started drinking again. "I've got a fifth of Jack back in my room!" he suddenly remembered, with the look of a kid remembering a secret stash of baseball cards.

I told him I was 15 years sober.

"But now that you're older," he said, "you can have a half a glass of wine. Or a whole glass. Or two."

"I can't drink safely."

"But Jesus drank wine at the last supper, " he said. "I'm a Christian. Do you believe in God?"

"Some days more than others."

"Alcohol is like a tool," Bill said. "You can use your thumbnail or you can use a screwdriver."

"That was my problem," I said, "too many screwdrivers. Maybe next time I see you, you'll be sober."

"And maybe the next time I see YOU, you'll have a drink with me."

The odds were long, either way.