COVID Blues – Part
I
I have a long-standing
relationship with darkness.
She said it in
bed over coffee.
I’m not
languishing, I’m either happy or depressed.
But everyone is
feeling it.
My brothers
depressed.
Feels a lot.
Remembers,
forgets, feels excluded.
Dad wounds
We wound.
He wounds.
Separation
follows.
It goes on and on
and on and on and on.
On good days, I’m
out teaching and biking and interpreting the text that is New York.
A poem like no
others.
Stories
connecting streets and desires, union rallies and pot parades.
Dana is passing
out jays at Union Square as he has been for five decades now,
Be-ins now and
forever.
Everyday is
mayday.
Mayday is jay
day.
Everyone’s
talking.
Planning,
Conspiring.
Evil developers contemplating skyrises.
Moloch, your
buildings are violence.
Contenting with
the vox populi
And the poets
reminding us of a sunflower sutra, reading in the gardens, napping all afternoon
long.
All week, we
planned for it.
Talking about the
freedom of assembly at Barbes on Tuesday.
Sitting at Lavender
Lake on Thursday.
Everybody is
feeling it.
His daughter
won’t talk with him.
They got in a fight
about vaccines.
Her first five years
were in Santa Cruz.
Did you see the
sealions on the sea rock, where I baptized her, he asked, sitting at the outdoor
tables on Carroll Street,
I gave her that.
Now she won’t
return my calls.
My daughter
ghosted me.
What did I do?
I would love to
get into it, he tells me.
Unfinished
conversations here and there.
Few completed.
Some days the
monotony hits us.
Others, the
grief, the parent with covid,
The lingering
sleepiness, drowsy mind.
The memories of
the colleague who had brain cancer who came to visit us before he departed.
The colleague who
worked with the homeless who left.
The high school
classmate whose boyfriend found him at home, dead on the couch.
And we’re not
quite out.
Do you have those
fallings out with your friends, asked the teenager’s boyfriend after his
roommates fought.
Every day, the
ditchdigger who won’t speak with me after I violated the male code, betrayed a
confidence.
Male heartache
goes on and on. -
I think of my Dad’s
old friend who rarely heard back from him and my colleague who didn’t like my
review, and the friend who descended
into a year of isolation, still scared to get outside, his girlfriend now
crying on the phone about our existential dilemma. At least we’re talking again.
First talk in a
year.
I have a long-standing
relationship with darkness, mon amour says in bed.
I think we all
do.
Rupert developed
one when they caught in a queer tryst in Another Country.
We all do.
Desire and
retribution.
Punishment.
Repeat.
Its not easy.
Debating accusations
among mayoral candidates, Sarah Schulman explains:
"Anyone can be accused of anything. Being
accused should not be grounds for punishment. When claims are made in the
context of a relationship, there is a story and stories can be told in very
different ways…. I can’t believe it has become so verboten to state the obvious…
We are living in a very punitive and moralistic time when what we need is
complexity and accountability."
I'm disappointed with this life, says the
little one, rain pouring when she wanted to skate.
Empty nest looms.
I feel like Eleanor Rigby.
Its starts to rain.
And then comes the pain.
I need to go.
I need to go, she says.
Out to Princeton, we all need each other.
Virginia is going.
One second,
She is here.
But so is cancer.
But she is quieter.
Less and less,
She was talking,
I walk outside.
When I came back in, she was gone.
Upstairs for another nap.
Another mirage, now an empty Sunday,
another empty Sunday.
Dad gone, David gone.
Too many this year.
Do you want a painful end or constant
pain?
When I was young,
I was happy when it rained.
I'm less so
today.
I feel everything
today.
You seem raw, says
Caroline.
But the sun’s out
today.
Maybe its time to
shake it.
Parks Are for Poems,
Mayday’s Jayday,
Part Two
“Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán
detener la primavera.”
― says Erik, paraphrasing Pablo Neruda’s
lines from La Primavera.
"They can cut all the flowers, but
they cannot take the spring," says Erik.
Its mayday, the planet is teeming with
energy.
Riding over the bridge after another
clash with the teenager, I think of all the ghosts of Mayday,
Of police chasing McKinley's Ghost,
Of cries from the streets,
Marching here.
Thinking of decorating May poles and
Beltane at Le Petit Versailles in
alphabet city.
At Union Square, the flags are out, red
and black and green.
The Socialists are out to change control
of the means of production.
The anarchists are conspiring to abolish
the state.
And Dana, the last Yippee is giving a
jays for Jabs.
Mayday is certainly Jayday.
Pot Smoke in the air.
People are celebrating legalization.
Legalize it said Peter Tosh.
Now it’s happening here, finally.
After jail sentences and arrests and a
lifetime of smoke inns, maybe it’s finally his time?
JC meets me on Ave B.
Que pasa?
I got the blues.
The
Blues, then you
Lose.
Blues
Booze.
We don't do the drugs, we are the drugs.
We don't read them.
We are them.
We are the poems.
Babs joins us by the jays for jabs near
the George Washington Statue.
And we talk about it all,
The blues and bluesology.
When the blues get you, you gotta talk to
blues, says Huddie Ledbetter.
Others know him as Lead Belly.
But we're moving further and further away
from the light.
Or maybe we just can’t see it.
There's always light.
Its Mayday.
Ann Lee reminds us, screaming, imploring
us to see our interconnections:
"Ears on rise up rise up we can live
a life of love not hate Together we remember in each other's company our
strength 1 love united hearts and hands and minds we're wise, we rise we
strike.... we strike, we thrive!!"
Mayday Is
for Poems, afterall, I post in public call.
Parks are for Poems
El Jardin del Paraiso NYC
Mayday is
for poems... a rebirth of wonder, stories, heartbreak, hope, chaos, yearnings,
liminal times in between this, season and something else, this life and the
next. With the death of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the opening of Spring, let us
usher in the gods of words and anarchy, reimagining poetry as insurgent art. Bring
a poem of your own or a friend, maybe a snack, a flower or an a hope for
something abundant this spring. We'll be by the old treehouse, reading and
lounging about. Join us. xo Join us for a public space party on
mayday and every day.
I pulled
out as many poetry books as I could carry in my bags.
Still too
scared to read my personal ones.
Maybe, one
day.
"We've
been doing these readings together since my dad died in 2014," I tell Brad,
my friend from the Gowanus rezone fight.
We're
trying to beat back the big boxes.
Today it’s
with poems, in the old tree house at El Jardin, another mayday.
We’re tapping
into that most primal of our energies.
At El Jardin, all my friends are
arriving.
Kids from New Alternatives.
Virginia from Rise and Resist.
Elizabeth from Esperanza, on and on.
Everyone sits around the tree-house.
"17" by Harold Norse,
I read starting us out.
"Same streets, same faces, every day
of my life," he wrote about his early days, his Coney Island moments before
he met Chester and Auden and James and Allen and stayed at the Beat Hotel and
lived in Rome and Venice Beach and San Francisco, on his way into everything.
Brennan read his "Solipsistic poem,"
from his James Franco series, waking us all us up, with his homage to poets and
poems through time, revolutionary poems, love poems, up and down, hopes and
possibilities.
My poems slipped under the window, he laments.
Its gone now, solipsistic pillow.
In a luminous sunflower dress, Virginia
reads “Brokeheart: Just like that” by patrick-rosal:
“The wood’s splitting. The hinges are
falling off. When the
first bridge ends,
just like that, I’m a
flung open door.”
A poem about aging and adapting.
Catherine follows with an homage to being
a part of it all, everything, pulling out a poem we read last year during a quarantine
book club moment:
Luke
By mary oliver
“I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,”
....
“She adored every blossom.”
...
“…we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving..."
We are the poems, says JC.
Its beltrane.
The portal of the universe is open.
Its ok.
We go there.
We go there right now.
Poems and non poems.
We were riding, Babs and Ben and I were
riding.
Do you have a poem, asked Ben.
You are the poem, its not a cop-out.
You are a poem.
Each anarchist gardener.
Each rise and resister.
Each holy skater
And surfer.
Yes, surfers are poets too, says Lawrence
F.
RIP.
Ann Lee reminds us to
cheer interconnectivity.
Love thy neighbor.
Cast away winner takes all talk.
We rise.
Love everyone.
See ourselves in everyone.
I am thinking of that sphincter locomotive.
In the meantime, Catherine recalls
a chance encounter between a poet and god:
Frank O'Hara
"A-True-Account-Of-Talking-To-The-Sun-At-Fire-Island"
“The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
…
"Sun, don't go!" I was
awake
at last. "No, go I must,
they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to
you
too." Darkly he rose, and then
I slept.”
You’re ok, you’re different… our days are
a daydream… of consciousness…
Always remember to embrace things.
Go back to sleep Frank.
Wearing his ACT UP t shirt, Erik stands up
to tell a story, thinking about his life.
It began with a a picture that came up on his phone, a facebook memory
from years ago, his first pic with this blogger and this gang of cycling anarchists
poets, dressed like polar bears in the Spring of 2010.
Catharine, Ben, Babs, Brennan, it brought
a bit of joy to his heart… and the hang out that was occupy the next summer.
And how we manage to make poetry and keep
going.
They may now down the flowers, but they
can’t mow down the spring, he says, paraphrasing
Oda a la primavera by Pablo Neruda, first in Spanish,
then English.:
“The bird has come
to give us light:
from each of its trills
water is born.
Between water and
light, air unfolds.
Now the spring’s inaugurated.”
Last year, all that
isolation, and now we’re back.
Down is up,
Up is down.
All the poems
remind us of those in between spaces.
Everyone is telling stories
now.
Adventures of Berlin here.
Quiet moments there.
Brennan Cavanaugh stands up to
share his poem about a friend of ours:
[PETEY THE SHAPS aka]
AFTER OUR SECOND BREAK UP”
“when a stranger asks you
what’s wrong with your friend
and you say I don’t know
what’d you do to piss him off…
and the pyschotropic fireplug
dances off on a short string
like a teenage genie faeirie
making the stranger
peel off in unreal fits…
that’s the symbol
of a great being,
one who wears a crown of eyes
beset with skeptical lenses.
we almost lost him when
he delivered himself in person
to the fire station
requesting a heart operation
you know you are dealing
with someone stellar
problematic stellar.
psychedelic alley cat
he’ll yowl at you for
his heart attack
and then leave you
but when he comes back
the love is still there, visceral,
stored in basements
with the moldy records
a little scabbed treasure
With the petey shaps
you are dancing with acrobats
an acerbic cowboy, urban…
the most unlikely cheerleader
there won’t be another
honey bear in headdress.
I’ll put this poem in a treehole
seal it up with tar
and years from now
when it’s knots cut down for condos
people will question, who
who do we know like that,
no one, will they, ever. A glass.”
A poem about friends lost and found, it’s
the highlight of my day.
With each day and each poem, it gets more
personal, reminding us, we can forgive each other and chart new paths.
Brad reminds us of
“17 ways to carve up Kazakhstan”
reflecting the day after his second jab.
Perhaps I am not going to die, he gushes.
Maybe we’re going to make it.
Wendy welcomes all of us, with one more
poem:
“Today I guarded the street
- I tipped two tables over & made it
sweet
· now in the garden - over the top with friends &
all around, outpourings of creative love.
·
Ave B to el
Jardin..”
Each story gets more personal,
And even silly.
Story after story.
What lines stick with you, I ask.
More kids drop by.
Youth from New Alternatives,
Stories about giving trees.
Sitting in our tree, still holding us,
after Sandy battered her.
Brennan reminds us we can still laugh,
reciting the immortal words:
Fuck the Pain Away
Song
by Peaches
“Suckin'
on my titties like you wanted me,
Callin
me, all the time like blondie
Check
out my chrissy behind
It's
fine all of the time
Like
sex on the beaches,
What
else is in the teaches of peaches? huh? what?
Suckin'
on my titties like you wanted me,
Callin
me, all the time like blondie
Check
out my Chrissy behind
It's
fine all of the time
What
else is in the teaches of peaches?
Like
sex on the beaches. huh? what?
huh?
right. what? uhh.
huh?
what? right. uhh.
huh?
what? right. uhh.
huh?
what? right. uhh.”
On we
chuckle in the garden, sitting in the old giving tree, open to us all, old friends,
estranged friends drop by, Elizabeth with a story of La Luna, and others, 1, 2,
3, 4, 5.
The State budget is better than it’s been in years. CUNY colleges are each receiving tens of millions of dollars from the federal government. We’re accepting no excuses for CUNY’s fake austerity.
Where to Meet Us
We’ll meet in front of the CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave.) at 4 PM today for a short rally before we march to the CUNY central administration building at 205 E. 42nd St. Along the way, we’ll stop to protest in front of the Governor’s office building and in front of the Third Avenue affiliate of AMG, the multi-billion-dollar “asset management company” where the CUNY Chancellor sits on the Board.
Bring a drum, tambourine or any other percussive noisemaker. Bring a pot and a spoon to bang, if that’s what you’ve got! No whistles or wind instruments, please.
Remember your mask. Masks and social distancing are required, even if you’re fully vaccinated.
See you soon!
Andrea Vásquez
Joints For Jabs 2
And pictures for poems.
Scenes from Mayday.
Part Four
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