Killing White Space

First Sunset on Paros (April 25, 1996)

We sat on the balcony with white wine and cheap cigarettes,
and through the white arch,
watched the sun set.
Embarrassed by our keen and unrelenting observation,
she blushed.
The sky became a deep sapphire,
yet hints of her flushed cheeks remained.
And as the crags and cliffs became unidentifiable
in the seeping darkness,
lights appeared sporadically—
flickering, winking eyes waking for night shift.
A tree, now merely a silhouette,
became a black sketch against the fading polychromatic sky.
Then sky, too, became black as a Greek widow’s scarf.
A few boats lingered on the Aegean,
only visible as flecks of light, like stars.
And the sea and sky were reflections of each other.

The Time Machine

image

The four of us with two yellow paddles on blue sticks, pushed off from the shore. The water was murky green from a distance, but translucent and congealed up close — like slicing lime gelatin with an oar. The day was bright making colors hyper real, digitized. The blue of a cloudless sky was seemingly detached and effervescent in contrast to the green of mangrove leaves, of the intracoastal, of our forest green metal canoe, which pulled hard against the air, weighing down. The sun slapped me against the face; heavy-handed beams blinded me.

The canoe wobbled right and left under the influence of our amateur strokes as we glided past mangrove roots, which at low tide, seemed regretfully, apologetically sad. Like emaciated grey arms, they stretched toward the seawater for respite, but the tide pulled back. King Tantalus eternally doomed to be unquenched —- to stretch for fruit and bend for water that recedes. Black sea crabs laid siege to the feeble roots, crawling the limbs freely like soil bugs on a cadaver. This morose image was so out of place amidst the vibrancy of the day, and so was heightened the more for it.  

We leaned to watch the fish skitter. The silver minnows were so plentiful and unending in their stream that the shallow water seemed to be made of their metallic reflections, as if the movement of the minnows created the water itself, created the volume and the ripples.

The canoe slid under a tunnel of corrugated metal, topped with sandbags, then cement. Pedestrians walked atop the bridge as we swept past beneath. “Helloooo” we called, and for the moment our timelines intersected with theirs.

We called the tunnel our time machine and pretended it threw us five seconds ahead into the future. Five seconds I would sacrifice, willingly, for a day like today.

’80s Dance Party

Black sea, under a black sky— dark water touching air without horizon, without firmament. Stillness kissing silence. At once, empty and full. No sense of what may teem beneath the meager whitecaps created by the ship splitting water.

The cruise ship like a discarded harlot — red rouge smeared, hair tousled— tore the night. Strung lights, amplified music and toes crushed into heels as the waves hurled us across deck, port to starboard and back. And we danced to Michael Jackson.

Golden Age Thinking

I sit in our backyard on the royal blue-colored string hammock we purchased in Key West, strung from our white-washed wood pergola. Feet brushing the patio floor but enough give and sway to feel simultaneously freely adrift and nauseated. My mind swings. Key West burns my brain: Sloppy Joe, Pauline, Whitehead Street. And before, Paris: the Select, the Dome, Montparnasse, the Left Bank. I feel an ache, acute, for what is lost but was never mine to mourn. I yearn for that time, nonetheless, to sit in the cafes, the discourse, the community. But I sit, during the week, miles and years away, behind a computer in a law office, nostalgia burning a hole in my heart, a postcard of Hemingway scotch taped to my monitor.

 Wynwood/ Art Basel  The page bekons (sic) The poem accompanies me through the night: plumes of cigarette smoke inhaled by the fibers; fingers - moist with subtropic sweat - rub down words, smearing type. I crease the paper, clutching too hard: trying to avoid urine on a splattered toilet stall - paper long used by heeled women in fedoras; avoiding condensation of the iced vodka in my other hand- without tonic, which too, is long gone.The poet sitting on a corner, somehow hushed,beneath the orange tinge of the street light and amidst the bustling parade of party and people reveling, and art-appreciating. In muted neutral color, he hunches over a typewriter - matching his suit in era and style.I think of Midnight in Paris. I think of A Moveable Feast. I think I want a distressed wood table with an uneven leg and a dark-amber liquor: a rum, a whiskey, a bourbon. And a conversation.I read a paper scrap which his fingertips gingery slide from a stack of same loosely piled in a vintage suitcase on his left. To my right- I face him.I read the word rum and can’t recall the rest. I think Cuba. I think guayabera. There are typos which I point out. He says: “I only go forward. I never go back.” But he lies.We all go back, selectively. I go back to a time when I was bold as the poet on a corner typing poems for tips. Writing as performance art.Rony paid twenty dollars for my poem. For some reason, I like that he overpaid. The poem begins quite perfectly: “The page bekons”. But there are words crossed out by X’s. There are revisions, emendations. He went back too.

 Wynwood/ Art Basel 

The page bekons (sic)

The poem accompanies me through the night: plumes of cigarette smoke inhaled by the fibers; fingers - moist with subtropic sweat - rub down words, smearing type. I crease the paper, clutching too hard: trying to avoid urine on a splattered toilet stall - paper long used by heeled women in fedoras; avoiding condensation of the iced vodka in my other hand- without tonic, which too, is long gone.

The poet sitting on a corner, somehow hushed,beneath the orange tinge of the street light and amidst the bustling parade of party and people reveling, and art-appreciating. In muted neutral color, he hunches over a typewriter - matching his suit in era and style.

I think of Midnight in Paris. I think of A Moveable Feast. I think I want a distressed wood table with an uneven leg and a dark-amber liquor: a rum, a whiskey, a bourbon. And a conversation.

I read a paper scrap which his fingertips gingery slide from a stack of same loosely piled in a vintage suitcase on his left. To my right- I face him.

I read the word rum and can’t recall the rest. I think Cuba. I think guayabera. There are typos which I point out. He says: “I only go forward. I never go back.” But he lies.

We all go back, selectively. I go back to a time when I was bold as the poet on a corner typing poems for tips. Writing as performance art.

Rony paid twenty dollars for my poem. For some reason, I like that he overpaid. The poem begins quite perfectly: “The page bekons”. But there are words crossed out by X’s. There are revisions, emendations. He went back too.

Being married to Okat has its perks. I sometimes get to write for the stupendous art blog Doodlers Anonymous. Here’s a recent entry about Guilherme Kramer’s wall of painted faces called We See People in the Crowd. 

Being married to Okat has its perks. I sometimes get to write for the stupendous art blog Doodlers Anonymous. Here’s a recent entry about Guilherme Kramer’s wall of painted faces called We See People in the Crowd. 

Office politics

I lack some mechanism: a rudder to steer me ‘round the psyches of others; a star chart to navigate through their discourse and intentions; a worthy sail to flit past it all.   

do-over

Clearly consistency is an issue. Let’s try this again…

Some inspiration… Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, and Dharohar Project perform Devil’s Spoke

Change

This “interaction” happened a few weeks ago at a corner gas station in Aventura, an upscale city in North Miami infamous for its mall. Knowing this, i think, lends something to the story. Writing can be tough because it demands dirty laundry. A great writer may not always be proud of the human condition, but is always honest about it. 

—-

The noon sun beat down like a curse.

I drove to the rear of the gas station and parked adjacent to the coin-operated vacuum. The feeble buttonwood trees did nothing to shade me as I drudged my listless arm through the humidity of August in Miami. I inserted $1.50 in quarters into the robotic, metallic cylinder, half expecting the machine to burp in appreciation. The suction began, and in its path, fragments of history were expunged— scattered mounds of Oreos my son crushed underfoot, rainbow glitter my daughter shook off a camp art project. Then I peered over my shoulder.

My eyes were met by the gaze of a shirtless, shoeless, homeless man with leathered skin and flaccid, sun-bleached hair.

I instinctually turn away.

He probably hadn’t noticed the glance, but it triggered a thousand fractured thoughts in me. I work hard to avoid them at stoplights—picking up a cell phone, fidgeting with the radio, putting on makeup. Perhaps it’s aversion. Perhaps it’s anger. He looks capable of working; we’re struggling too. I want to hear their stories, but not told by them—maybe a documentary with background music and dramatic editing. But, I’m not unsympathetic. I feel for the homeless, at least in abstraction. So, I decide, this time I will overcome the reproachable, unnamed thing that prevents me from feeling. I decide to give him money not to ease my conscious, but to help.

I think and sweat and wipe my brow and realign the floor mats and return the car seat and replace the vacuum hose on the hook. I pull a $5 bill out of my wallet. I usually don’t have cash on me— this is a sign. I like my decision and walk in his direction. Then I see that the homeless man is now sitting on the curb against the back wall of the convenience store. His pants are at his ankles, and he is wiping himself.

I instinctually turn away.

I spin on my heels and race back to my car, disgusted. As I exit the gas station, I pass a highly polished Mercedes pulling in. He can better afford to help the homeless I think to myself.

The car A/C blew at my neck like a blessing.