guns

scare the shit out of me. i was never the brat with the plastic holster and a pop gun. i liked Tonto more than the Lone Ranger and Silver more than either. i played doctor, house and store not war. i can count on one hand my encounters with the dark metal. 1) dad marching into the living room with a Civil War musket that he strung up on the mantle that now leans against my bureau like an exhausted whore. 2) the brass flare gun he fired into the night sky chasing my sister and her boyfriend around the block in a jealous rage. 3) the 22 which, along with my mother's jewelry, was stolen out of our house in Philly. my parents were away. i was in charge. i brought some inner city kids out to the house to drink, smoke weed and go crazy. which they did. (i was probably after one of them.) when mum and dad returned only to discover the missing jewelry, the 22 and their screwball son, they flipped. weak-kneed courage and guilt carted me down to South Philly to track down the culprits and the loot. i located two of the guys on the street and pleaded with them. 'the shit ain't mine. i have t get it back. i understand why you took it. i'd been a fool to have you guys out to a house with a lot of stuff around when you have little. i won't call the cops. i just want the shit returned. pretty please.' one of them sent a scout to find their leader. he sent back a message: if i return the next day he'd hand it over. i did and got it back, but the 22 had been sawed off and the punk pointed it at my head, watched me sweat, lowered it and laughed at my silly, tail-between-legs girly idealism. no more social work for Berlin. 4) in Somerville my sister and i met a pyro who'd burned three houses to the ground. we considered adopting him (cross-eyed hearts). i'd met the kid when he was 'working' at the Ritz Carleton beauty salon the same time i was wall papering the back room. (this was the same place i unearthed hair rinses with fancy names like 'Frivolous Fawn', 'White Mink' and 'Chocolate Kiss' that got transformed into the Orchestra Luna song 'Doris Dreams'.) he moved in, slept in my bed and enjoyed nights of passive blow jobs and meaningful looks. one day my next door neighbor, the boy i was really in love with and who'd become jealous of pyro, showed up at the door with a 45, heavy in his hand. i think it was his way of telling me to dump blondie. i hid it under the mattress until the fire starter left, nervous about the maniac next door. in seconds me and my sister grabbed the gun, walked to the Charles and threw it in the river, plop. 5) in JP, back from seeing 'Raging Bull', stoned, my boyfriend and i walked into the kitchen and there it was, on the table under the lamp, thick, gray and nasty, a serious piece. it had been put there by some coke dealer staying the night. i yelled at him to get the gun and himself the fuck outa the fucking house or i'd call the fucking cops. truth be told there were times during the operatic scenery of my relationship back then when i tried to manipulate my boyfriend under threat of suicide - prima donna Berlin. had there been a gun lying about i think in a split second of weakness i might have tried to use it on myself, or worse. so there ya have it. i hate them. i'd love to get rid of them. fuck that i-am-a-real-man-with-a-gun shit. fuck it up the ass.

money

freaks me out. supposedly, the 'law of abundance' (Isabel Hickey style) claims that if you don't ask for what you don't need the universe will provide. even as i buy into that i'm buying way too much, although my collection of the useless seems less indulgent than it might be. the clothes i buy at Old Navy. for dinner out it's chinese-in-a-bag. my last vacation was 15 years ago and paid for by a dear friend. when i was a kid i watched mom pay the bills, while the old man in his red leather chair smoked a pipe and chewed ice on his 5th vodka tonic. mum sat at her creaking antique desk, leaning forward, neck long, writing checks and balancing bills vs income. i'm like her. i try not to live beyond my means. i refuse to be held hostage to debt. i don't O.C.D. balance my checkbook, but i keep a wary eye. i didn't have a credit card for decades because i'd never bought anything on time. i paid up front or didn't buy. i loathe the idea of paying money to spend money. eventually my friend's dad cosigned for a card and now i have one, which i pay off as fast as i use it. i love the bitch. the simplicity of the hard shiny rectangle. the clarity, tax time, of the statement. the speed of web transaction. but here's the rub: my grandfather's father was a millionaire. he lived in a mansion in Rhinebeck, NY. he lost his shirt in the crash of '29 and my grandad, having grown up with dough, with a chauffeur to drive him to school a) never learned to drive and b) didn't give a fuck about money. his son, my father, felt cheated out of 'the life'. he wanted the show money could buy. Broadway musicals, fancy suits, new cars, a 50's bullshit status with decals of the colleges we went to littering the rear window of his Jaguar. my mom had a small inheritance that doubled dad's income so we were ok, just shy of upper middle class. we lived in a big house with 9 acres of lawn, two cars, private schools and big-assed vacations. but we saw how much dad hated his job at the 'Girard Trust and Corn Exchange' (who's name shitted out of his mouth like an oily turd). he wished he'd been a writer. he resented mom's income as a sword held over him even as he lapped it up. my sisters and i never mastered the money game. we scratched out a living, two of us as waiters, one a teacher and none of us making the big grab. this painted us into a corner at times. the fat options money could buy were out of reach, but we saw through the charade of vacant materialism, opted for art, life, love and spirit ahead of wallet. we seem happier for it. my sisters have great kids and their lives are full. i don't have a family, but i spend my tips making records. i lose money, but i love it. it's who i am, it's what i do. i stand tall on the catalogue. i wander afield only on rare occasions when i want to give a friend a good time and they can't afford it. or if a Democrat has a chance of kicking Republican ass in an election. still, i worry. what will happen when i'm 'let go' at work? when my measly Social Security check can't pay the rent, let alone a trip to the movies. i fantasize myself sporting a beehive and pencil and pushing a walker around Doyles 'til the cows come home, but without that, to tell the truth, i'm screwed and drooling toothless in a wheelchair onto a linoleum corridor and hopefully so out of it on tranquilizers i won't know the difference. was there ever a time in history when money had nothing to do with quality of life? probably not. were this India i would head out onto the dirt path with a rag around my waist, low balls, a wooden bowl and chase all the skinny black-eyed boys who'd have me.

the roof

may be the only place you can find infinity in a city - the big dome sky, clay soft tar under bare feet, vertiginous ledge to piss over, a blimp lit from within circling Fenway like an overweight duck. i don't go up there often, but when i do it's with just one person and the time spent is as rare as the location. stars shoot, traffic below purrs like surf, moonlight quicksilver melts on the face of a boy, laughter lifts like beating wings, like a beating heart and closeness is possible and real. one night, up there, after wine and too many cheap beers, the two of us peek through splayed fingers at a fatty in his underwear bucking towards his girl in mock sex-god pantomime. he looks silly and doesn't know we're watching. we try not to be voyeurs but can't help it. we fall down on our backs giggling like girls. we can't believe what we're seeing and the party on the next-door flat, raising bottles to us, has no clue. we move about, changing position, place and view. the conversation is wild and out of range, an acid escalator to the shifting pale pink clouds overhead. things are told that until this night were secret. these are dark, embarrassed, wonderful, poetic, sexy blood brother confessions. the pipe we hold onto, like a rope on a keening ship, keeps the body from falling into the bushes below when we piss, studiously apart from one another. a golden arc splashs onto the cement, chases a cat and turns on lights that are movement activated. we hear Hispanic staccato cha cha and buzz on a nearby porch, the girls invisible and big-titted in our comic book fantasy. we lie at the edge above the street and spit. a white cotton ball floats haphazardly three stories to the sidewalk. in a laughing fit you stomp on the tar and wake the guy in the bedroom below who didn't want to be an asshole and make us shut up like a mad mom and who sends in his place a magic girl, a proxy, to tell us that although she's fine with the noise, he isn't. she hugs you and touches your face as if fireflies had landed on your cheek. she leaves with a silent Navaho drift, her skirt like soft breath, downstairs and we are alone again. we get close up here, you and i, as if proximity isn't possible in other places. statements pontificate and play, but it's ok. we know how silly and how deep we talk. time stops or flies as we ride the wave. the imagined glint of sunrise soon to flash on the curve of earth tells us it's late and it's time to go. that we are lucky for the hours we had, uninterrupted. sex has happened here and kissing, but not with you. love and sex hover like a hornets, but do not bite. we are probably thinking about it, me a lot more than you and you not with me, but the sex talk is honest, hot, revelatory and brave. it is as if we could, but can't or won't. there's been 5 nights of this. one would have been good enough, i guess, but we go for repeats. it is astonishing and ridiculous that more that once has worked. when something so wonderful happens we worry we'd mess it up with repetition, but fuck it, worry never got anyone anywhere. you say: 'language is the biggest obstacle to communication'. i say: 'my heart opens up when you're around'. 'yes' you reply, mentioning Joyce whom i can not read. maybe you will read him to me aloud some night on this roof. we thump downstairs into a dark kitchen, down a dark hallway, outside onto the sidewalk we just looked down upon. we shiver and i walk you home, off roof. we finger snap 'good-night' with exhausted smiles. the sky is more full with fading stars and a thin pale moon.

plum boy

eating another diarrhetic breakfast on a quiet Sunday i see him with his friends. he's a geek. they're all geeks at his table. geeks are hot. i think they really put out in bed, even if there's stinky fingerpaint in unwashed tighty whities. or so i imagine. but there he is. knobby El Greco fingers pulling on chin hairs, picking his nose and rubbing his neck. he has enormous teeth, too many it seems, deep water blue eyes and a big jumpy smile. i can't tell about the hair. it's combed aggressively forward. when i get up to take a caffein dump i pass by and glance at the crown. hmm, maybe he has an early spot? oh well, he's still hot, fuck it. then it begins. the looks above my book. he doesn't notice at first, but like radar (i hate the tag 'gay-dar') he sniffs something in the air, eyes catch eyes and there's a bewildering fog in his Sinatra blues. he's not sure. was Freddy Krueger in the corner actually staring at him? he steals another glance and sure enough he knows. the book dude is in fact looking directly at his face and smiling as if t say 'hey, it's cool, just looking. you're cute. i like the sound of your laugh'. he blushes but quickly returns to his gesticulating conversation with fellow geeks. uh oh, something weird. he pushes his tongue out of his mouth in a chub arc, locking the tip behind his lower front teeth. his lips open and the tongue protrudes. it's as if he's sucking on a plum. a dark crimson orb when in fact it is his own engorged member. i don't think he knows what he's doing. maybe his friends are used to it or don't notice. who cares? i can't help staring. he's sexy even with the tongue trick and his leg, his right leg, is bouncing under the table like a jack hammer, ratta-tat-tat. i think he'd have fun at my place over for a visit. he'd let me look at him for longer periods of un-embarrassed time. of course i wonder if all these at-the-moment idiosyncrasies would, after awhile, turn me off and i'd wind up hurting his feelings. build up his nascent narcissism only to tear it down. i remember years back another kid, a bad-breath yellow-toothed geek stayed the night. he wanted to. i doubt he'd done anything like that before, or would again. but somehow his awkward, skinny body fell into my bed. he might have left before dawn not wanting to be caught by room mates. i can't remember. but i would have loved to have been with the plum kid. at least i think i would. perhaps, like so many fantasies, it's best to have remained un-acted upon.

false endings

'how can a thing so perfectly ended, continue?' is what Peter Barrett said in a spoken word intro to Love Is Not Enough, the Orchestra Luna song that made it onto the 1974 record (Epic). Peter complained: 'the Beatles say All You Need Is Love and you're telling me Love Is Not Enough? i don't get it.' i was thinking Bergman, not Lennon as in Through A Glass Darkly. a boy's sister is insane. 'why can't she get better, father, when all of us love her so much? when she is surrounded by our love?' but it was not enough. she was helicopter-ed to an asylum. nevertheless, Peter had a point. how can an ending continue? we get fed up, wrung out and quit on each another, on a job, on family, on ourselves. all the love in the world, prior to dissolution, fails until something unexpected happens. the pencil flips (eraser to lead) and scratches a new sketch. jumping out of a canoe in one direction sends it off in another. the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. nevertheless, when doors close we have a hard time imagining escape. it is not until we give up completely that we can be born anew, or so the cliche spins. and what about lovers who've thrown in the sweaty towel? 'she doesn't love me anymore. i can't take it. it's killing me! i'm fuckin' outa here!' crys the losing boy. 'he's a shithead. he's checking out my best friend. he's always 'confiding' in my fucking sister! i'm gonna throw up!' that's when the 'maybe we can still be friends' coin hops into the fountain and bubbles hope to the surface. 'i still love you. differently, ok?, but we understand each other too well to cast the baby out with the bath water. maybe there's a new way to be.' so whispers the cross-my-heart prayer. it is most often put forth by the losing half and seems unrealistic to the one who cares less. and it's a ploy to wrestle lost love back into the sheets. 'we'll talk. have coffee. learn to deal the 'new person, ok?' is the argument put forth to re-discover what had joined the two together in the first place. the big unsaid: 'we're not fucking right now but maybe we will again'. it's the fucking, isn't it, the sex. where did the attraction go? why did it stop? who were you thinking about when i wasn't around? who were you fantasizing when we were still together? who is sucking your cock, eating you out, driving you crazy with impossible pleasure? sexual jealousy, more than it's emotional cousin, voids the 'let's be friends' fantasy. unless one is, at long last, emotionally neutral or has that rare disinclination to be jealous, the ending is true and not false. it's over. let it go. let him go. let her jump out of the car and die. get over yourselves. i love false endings in music, getting fooled into thinking that the song is over and then it's not. it's easier in art. to finish something only to fire it up again. to paint over a ruined canvas or wad up a poem and try another. in love it's not so simple. all those painful complicating failures and soul-lacerating endings, all the refused-to-be-believed expiration dates scream back at us from the chasm when love is not enough.

kitty projection

my cat is neurotic. she will not to be picked up unless just before the pellets hit the bowl and then just behind her shoulders, legs stiff as drum sticks, a measly 3, 4 feet off the linoleum and not in arms, not hugged against chest. visitors oo and ah and reach out to pet her, but she darts away, fussy and paranoid. with visitors she hides in my closet on a shelf waiting impatiently for them to leave. if a dog barks she hibernates until it's gone. on the other hand, with me, she's awesome. she sleeps under the covers, in the crook of my arm, on her back, purring. she loves to have her belly rubbed when it's cold out. her purr is so loud you can hear it a room away. her prized trick is to slip in and out of my bedroom through a pantry portal between the kitchen and my room, a miniature swiss window she discovered when we moved in 7 years ago. she's getting on, 10-12 years old. i worry that once she hit's 17 she'll be shitting herself and unable to jump, to access the glory hole. when she arrived at my apartment for the first time she hid behind a couch for two weeks until she got up the tits to emerge and stake out the territory. for years that territory has been this apartment, unshared with any other beast. a revolving door of room mates and friends until last week when a new kitty, an irresistibly cute, fluffy, Yoda-whiskered guy moved in, skin, bones and fur. his name is Mao after the Chinese dictator. my room mate thought he looked dictatorial with his tough guy stance and big paws. we went down the list: Hitler, Stalin, Idi, Pol Pot and chose Mao, because, ok, that's the sound he makes: 'Mao'. we love the little fella. how could we not? he's fuckin' wonderful. but Sofi is petrified. Mao scampers about the house on curiosity skates and Sofi hides on her shelf like a rejected glove. i don't know what's going on in her kitty brain, but i imagine all sorts of terrible thoughts. that i'm cheating on her, that i don't love her anymore, even as i pat her more than ever. i've made my bedroom her sanctuary so she can eat in peace. once Mao's big enough to leap through the hole, that'll be the end of the quarantine. at first i blamed her. i thought, fuck, get over yourself, Sof, you weirdo. any other cat would have handled the kid no problem. but i call the vet and she tells me that this is normal. that it might take one to six months to a year for Sofi to adjust, if not longer. a friend of mine went through the same thing with her guy and that cat is still, two years down kitty lane, freaked. i did take one indulgent step. the vet suggested a product from France, a plug-in atomizer good for a month. it wafts oily feline fumes into the atmosphere that have a calming effect on an upset kitty. sometimes it works, sometimes not. but i bought the Eau de Chat and it seemed to do the job. Sofi acquired a sort of Xanax equilibrium. occasionally she peeks around the kitchen corner and stares down the hall at Mao who's staring back from the far end. maybe when no one's home they hang out and have a laugh over how worked up we humans get over all this. i love her. i need her to be ok. i tell her that. she purrs. i imagine she listens and is working on it with some invisible, screwball shrink. coda: things seem to be better of late. both creatures lie on the same bed blinking at each other, paws crossed.

miracle

i have a friend who believes that everything can be explained scientifically. that all is chemistry, math, physics. one doesn't fall in love, one's chemicals interact. one is not inspired, one's neurons fire ganglions that spark synapses which translate 'i will paint the library red'. there is no New Age or old age other dimension, after life or ESP. spirituality is soft brain. Tarot cards are a gypsy mirage. astrology, meditation, prayer, religion - a fool's fabrication. miracles do not exist. all has an objective, rational fingerprint understood and languaged by the mighty mind. i'm in the other camp. a hard core ex-hippie who believes that whatever you imagine is 'real'. other dimensionality via drug spoon, deja vu or a dream-triggered song is evidence sufficient and who can 'explain' love anyway? Keats, Auden, Bishop - it takes a poet, not an ivory tower. why clutter up a pretty mind with dirty facts? i defer to a Van Gogh landscape which was how he 'saw' the fields of southern France, or the dazzling whirl of stars. i take the inexplicable as an 'of course'. of course there are previous as well as follow-up lifetimes. of course there is karma in love, in difficulty, in the dharma bum path of each snowflake being. of course there is a soul. of course there are miracles. case in point: healing a burn on my hand. two weeks ago in a frantic rush to yank a pizza out of the hopper at work, the hot edge of the oven door nicked the skin behind my thumb. it curled up like a window shade snap-exposing a pulpy pink spot the size of a nickel. it made me gag just to look at it. i had a waitress tape a band-aid over it so as to not infect or gross me out. back home i slathered disinfectant only to learn that it's best to do nothing. to not cover up. to let the burn air out, dry and heal. my fabulous t-cells went to work collecting around the wound like circled wagons, ant busy and tireless to clean, repair and rebuild new skin. it took 15 days and itched as i waited. the sting of the work done was a reminder that something amazing was going on. like ET healing Elliott with a god-creates-Adam touch of forefinger-to-forefinger. the Hollywood miracle became true blue 'reality' on my hand. i appreciate the happy rehab. i know, it's all science. any idiot with half a brain could explain what was up, but not me. it was, for this stubborn old bird, a miracle.