RIP Tim, Between Total Eclipse of the Heart, Now Together in Electric Dreams

In DC after an arrest to save the affordable care act. The actions, solidarity was expanding everywhere. Thank you to AlanTimothy Lunceford-Stevens for all his leadership on this. He was there supporting us action after action in DC, welcoming us out of jail. Note the plastic bag, holding my belongings, I was holding. “America has no idea what is about to hit them with this bill,” noted Tim, who has combated HIV and cancer for years now. He depends on just the sort of public health insurance being gutted by this bill. “Americans who have their parents live with them, who get Meals on Wheels a few day a week, they are going to lose that funding. They are not thinking about that. We’ll see it in block grants for healthcare, cuts to entitlements, money for transportation, schools, etc..."

Road Trip with Tim and Mel, October 2019. 

Looking at these pictures of Tim from three years ago, hanging out with Mel in Prospect Park at the annual Virginia and Andrew picnic. So many smiles, so much care and friendship.

I think about Tim as part of my first month club, the people I met my first month in NYC in 1997, going to SexPanic! meetings, someone who was there for Matthew Shepard protests of 1998 and garden protests and immigration protests and trump protests for 25 years as movements ebbed and flowed through our lives.  The years of friendship, laughing about the sex and activism, our collective flaws, Tim wanting to knock all the books off the bookshelf in Susan Collins' office.  I think about it all now.

 

I had three distinct periods of friendship with Tim, the late 1990’s with ACT demos, speaking out against homophobia and the two decades of activism that grew out of that, the Trump Years, when we drove to and from DC to fight for the Affordable Care ACT, under attack from Republicans, fighting the GOP tax scam, taking bust after bust for civil rights, and talking about it all along the way. The COVID years followed this somewhat golden era of friendship, with Tim’s illness taking increasing intensity; isolation following, before he eventually  departed.   By far the happiest time of our friendship took place on those trips to and from DC, the demos he was a legal aid for when we were getting arrested, when he articulated an urgent need to save healthcare for everyone. For a while there, I talked with Tim every day, chatting about actions coming up, greeting him at Rise and Resist demos, etc. When he joined us in the car to DC to fight for the Affordable Care Act, Tim held court with the other activists, chatting with Austin, my cycling comrad, all the way to DC, laughing all the way, even when he left his glasses behind, probably crumbled in the parking lot, he lamented with a smile and a giggle. We talked about his life in New York and Columbus, Georgia, my Mom’s home town, as we sat in the bus on the way to fight the Kavanaugh appointment to the Supreme Court. We got arrested together on that one, cheering and celebrating when we got out, chatting about ACT UP and sex and needing to get away from the bigots of our Southern childhoods all the way home. In DC, Tim made common cause with disability rights activists and immigrant advocates fighting for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.  On the stories continued to and from demos, meetings, court dates, etc. 

 

A blog entry from October 2019, when Mel, Tim, and I went to DC to pay our fines after an arrest at the Supreme Court captures some of the feel of those conversations and Tim’s history as an activist: 

 

“Only 277 miles to Brooklyn  from Washington…talking. Timothy recites two monologues of his, in a new play he and Melvyn are in, that will premier on November 10 at Stonewall Inn, Upstairs in Manhattan.  Julius Bar – The Philosophers – A Revue.

 

“I’ve always been an activist,” reads Tim. “When I was ten, my parents asked me what I wanted to do for the community. I said, I wanted to help disabled kids just like me…”

 

Timothy plays Together in Electric Dreams, asking  Ben to listen  to the words:

 

“I only knew you for a while

I never saw your smile'til it was time to go

Time to go away (time to go away)Sometimes it's hard to recognize

Love comes as a surprise

And it's too late

It's just too late to stay

Too late to stay (Love never ends)We'll always be together

However far it seems(Love never ends)We'll always be together

Together in electric dreams Because the friendship that you gave”

 

And tells a story of his lover Stephen who died of AIDS.  After Stephen was gone, Tim found a note reminding him to  listen and remember. The song was for him. Ben says it is one of his favorites from long ago.

 

Timothy recalls his first trip to New York City. Attending University  of Georgia in Athens, he was dating Clair, the sound for the B-52’s. On a whim, the two travel to CBGB’s in NYC, wandering through the lower East Side of Manhattan 17. At years of age, a year after finishing treatment for AML Leukemia, to come from Atlanta and Athens, to New York, the experience changed Timothy. Timothy still stays in touch with Fred and a little with Kate..

 

Chatting about the South, road trip music, and our lives, Ben is thirteen years younger than Timothy. Both lived in Georgia as children.  Ben went to Texas and Timothy  stayed in Atlanta, until school took him to California schools when he was 15.

 

The First Action Tim remembers was un September of 1987 when ACT UP protested the inadequacies of the newly-formed Presidential Commission on AIDS. It met for the first time in Washington, DC. Tim did not give testimony,  but sat in witness that day as other Act Up members did.

 

Tim’s been with the group ever since that action in September of 1987, using the group as a tool for advocacy.  

 

As he told  Sarah Schulman in  the ACT UP oral history project Interview 7 April 28, 2010:

 

“I had my first friend who lived down in the Southern Tier, but he was a gay man living in Rochester. And he got this disease that he totally withdrew into his apartment, and we couldn’t understand about Dean; what had happened to Dean. And then he died. And his parents wouldn’t tell any of us what happened. Before it was over with, then we had other friends that were getting sick, but people weren’t talking about AIDS. My work caused me to come to New York City periodically. And I’d be down here, and all of a sudden, I started seeing messages about these men in Chelsea that were setting up a hotline. And I contacted Paul Popham. And then I ended up getting involved in GMHC, right at the beginning of GMHC. And Michael Shernoff asked me to join the 300 Men. And I happily, with the time I had in New York City, participated in those interviews. And then I did this study. Andy Humm was in my group. I became friends with lots of men in the community, and then I understood the urgency of HIV and AIDS, as it was beginning to be called, in ’83. And I’d go back to Rochester, and it was this whole hush-hush. And I think that set up a lot of the, I guess, internal anger that I had. Because in ’86, I helped found Dining for Dollars in Rochester, with the local AIDS group. And we would have an evening where people dined at home and then all showed up at a downtown mall. And I organized silent raffles there, for fund-raisers; and started helping with the local group. But down here, in ’87 — let’s see — I was at a candlelight vigil. And I met a guy named David. And I told him about how I was feeling about HIV, and concerned about getting it, and didn’t understand all my friends dying around me, and things like that. And he said, you know, there’s this new group that just got started, like two months ago. And he said, they’re really tackling it, and whatever. And he said he had been to a couple of meetings, but he wasn’t part of it. But he said, you know, they meet on Monday nights; seven or eight o’clock, and you can find out about them. And it was maybe a couple weeks after gay pride that year that I ended up going to ACT UP. And pretty much, that changed my life, because I was still going back to Rochester. And I had all this ACT UP mentality. And there, I was considered just a little too in-your-face. I remember – there was a problem. AIDS Community Housing — not AIDS Community Housing; Community Health Network, a local clinic there — one of the doctors had called me, and said, we have a patient whofs got a problem with Blue Cross, and is there anything you can do to help him get some of his AIDS meds, and things like that? And so all I did was pick up the phone. I was hearing at the time. And I picked up the phone, and I called this woman that was at Blue Cross, handling his account. And I said, he’s a friend of mine. And I don’t understand there’s these two drugs he needs, and you’re saying they’re not on your formulary, and this man needs Timothy Lunceford Interview 8 April 28, 2010 them, and whatever. And she says, well, we just don’t have any provision, and all that. And then I said, well, I’m in ACT UP New York. And we don’t like it when insurance companies deny treatment for people, and whatever. And before it was over, that turned into a whole mess, because she called the doctor and said that I had threatened to bring busloads of ACT UPpers…Blue Cross knew about ACT UP. And she said that I threatened to bring Blue Cross – lots of people up there for this guy. And she said that they were going to give him the medicine, but she didn’t like that I called her. And that’s when I knew that ACT UP could make a difference in people with AIDS’ lives. I had never threatened her. I had always been as nice as I am. But she had some information that I didn’t have. And it really changed her mind about taking care of this patient.  Paul Popham - A sweetheart. He had an idea – Nathan Kolodner was in the group. Basically, they saw where government, community, and everything wasn’t tackling what was happening in New York City. And by setting up this hotline, I think it helped a lot of people. And I don’t think they had any idea that GMHC would be what it is today. But I think it was more concerned about helping a fellow brother.”

 

Tim and Mel came over for movies on New Years day, January 2020, chuckling away,  irreverently laughing at it all. 

 

We talked about bromance, adoring catching up at Rise and Resist or World AIDS Day demos, uptown, downtown, Staten Island, and Washington Square Park, Reclaim Pride with Mel pushing his wheelchair, all day long, or a Virgina and Andrew’s summer BBQ in the park in June 2019. 

 

Tim always had health issues he was grappling with, a broken this or that, a fall on the stairs on the subway that left his arm broken, unable to hear. It just wouldn’t heal. As the years went on, they became more serious. And his health deteriorated. I didn’t see him much once COVID exploded.  His speech was barely audible at Larry Kramer’s memorial, two years ago. But the point was real. We were all in the struggle together, fighting AIDS and ALS and cancer for each other and for the community. By the time we reconnected in the Spring of 2021, Tim was bedridden in his tiny West Village, New York apartment. 

 

We had a few video conferences that summer.  The mystery of Tim’s eroding health was solved. He had been diagnosed with ALS otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  It was like HIV in the early days, a death sentence. Life expectancy after diagnosis was around two to five years. Not good. To date, there is no cure to stop or reverse the progression as muscles lose control. 

 

On one call, Tim cried and cried, more than aware of what was happening. Mel caressed Tim. But I knew this was a stress on him as well. 

 

Fully vaccinated Mel said I could drop by. The visits became weekly or biweekly to their West Village apartment. There we chatted about old ACT UP friends, who disappeared with his old issues a Steam, a public sex journal, we loved, broadway show tunes, Barbara Streissand, the nature of poetry, Walt Whitman, leaves of grass, what being friends was all about.  The reality was he was the closest of friends.  He always had a smile. Visits with Tim and Mel made my Sundays. I’d ride my bike to Judson memorial for services, and keep riding West to chat with Tim and Mel.  Usually for half hour or so.  Tim sat up in bed and talked about friendship could mean. Gradually speaking got harder for Tim as ALS wore on him.  Words became less and less. But we still had a quarter of a century of cultural references to share.  I read more and more, Ginsberg’s poems of cocks and erections, buildings that are violence, that we translated into our dislike for de Blasio's plan for East River Park.  

 

Once there, I’d run into AIDS activists from all over town, Jim Eigo, Damon Jacobs, Viki Noe, dropping by to lend some cheer. 

 

When I brought the teenager to visit after Thanksgiving, he could only muster a few words, although he’d seen her demos for some two decades.  

 

“I like your hair,” he told her, sitting up with great effort.

“I’ll see you again soon,” she said on her way out that day, although none of us really believed it. 

 

With a spouse he met at an AIDS bereavement group after they both lost lovers in the mid 1980’s, Tim was the consummate AIDS activist, as he told Sarah Schulman (see oral history above).

 

I thought I might see Tim at World AIDS day last December, but I just missed him, arriving after he’d left.  

 

Tim wrote about the day, one of his last to leave his apartment:

 

“Yesterday was special.  I was taken down the stairs by two lovely men from Senior Ride, an hour late for my seven hours in my Greenwich Village neighborhood. We were going to buy new pants, after I tore the back of my kaiki’s climbing up my in-home hospital bed, we walked up 7th Avenue.in my backpack was a marker, hoping to see Benjamin Heim Shepard to sign new book about SF. It was World AIDS Day. As we walked up 7th Avenue. Mary, my AIDE, my devotional care giver Spouse Melvyn, and my wheelchair carrying me. First, my desire for a Subway half size turkey Sandwich. Mary got one too. Melvyn does not eat lunch.  We went back to the AIDS Memorial to eat. We sat in the Sun. We saw a lone man, working on his world AIDS Day poster.we walked to actual white metal art. We saw Doug of housing works setting up candles for the later event. We rolled around the park. At the AIDS Memorial we saw Ed Barrón.we talked, bringing up Matt Ebert and his niceness. Matt had invited Ed to their home. A staircase, that was climbing up and fell down. Matt took Ed to ER and home, stayed for a week helping Ed out.  Ed was preparing to speak the AIDS Memorial avtivities at 5pm. A selfie with Ed, Melvyn and me. Ed talked of his visi ACTUPNY and how we met initially. He said ACTUPNY was where Ed turned when he seroconverted. Ed said that was where he met me and we became friends… We left for my Special Dinner at 5pm, with family. I said walking down, I would like to visit the AIDS Memorial again. the crowd was forming now. All I could think of was loosing my paramours, to AIDS, Dean, Tony, Buddy, Donald, my lover Stephen, Paul, and Michael. Then I saw Valerie and Jennifer Johnson Avril, I bursted out crying. Everyone looked for tissues, Valerie came to the rescue. Jason Rosenberg hugged me. Tim Murphy hugged me.I balled. Jennifer said do you want to go home to rest, I said I have to go to a special dinner. We left. I had blanket all day. My feet were ice cold. Walking and Rolling to the restaurant Morandi on Waverly Place and 7th Avenue. Melvyn said we were eating outside. Just then we saw Michael Kerr and Joan McAllister. Michael had cornered all the outdoor gheaters. Mary rearrangedk blanket. Joan had a blanket too! I had a Roy Rodgers drink, coke, with cherrys. Marion arrived and she liked the Shirley Temple drink.Adults were drinking white wine and red wine.  Michael Kerr announced it is Timothy’s 21st Birthday.I was elated. We ordered I stuck with Minestrone alla Genovese soup and Focaccia Margherita. Others ordered Insalata Verde, Insalata d'indivia, risotto topped with Osso Buco, scallops stuffed in big pasta shells, with cream sauce and a artichoke plate toasted plate. Then they brought out a Classic NOVASERRA

GRECO DI TUFO wine for my first drink at Sweet 21. I told everyone it was my last birthday. Everyone said no,it should be every month. Another said every quarter. Then someone said every Spring and Summer months. I like Birthdays, especially mine. Then Cinderella’s attaché said, it’s 7 occlock, it’s 7 occlock, we have an important date with our carriage.so Melvyn left for the 2 senior ride men. Melvyn tapped on window of driver, asking if they were here to pick Timothy, they no. As Melvyn walked away, they hollowed we are just kidding.Meanwhile, the staff brought me a lighted candle tiramisu dessert. The staff (6 or more) and dinner guests, all sang Happy Birthday. Party crasher Melvyn returned saying we had to go. Grabbing my wheelchair, my feet were not on the wheelchair. Mary quickly put cold feet back on the wheelchair.  Marion carried left over bags. I lost my GRYT new hat and mouthpiece case. At home, everyone entered, while I did the transfer to stair-chair.

During the  come up, the apartment had to be cleared for my arrival of guests. Then a lot of fuss getting me in the bed. My legs were cold up my thighs. Melvyn was tired, so he went to bed. Mary went home, Marion helped get ready for bed. Cinderella slept well.”

 

The following Saturday, Tim, Mel and I chatted about World AIDS Day. He was in great spirits after seeing everyone. But he was worried.  His health was in decline. And research around ALS was not progressing.  It was harder to breathe or speak. Still he sympathize with the campaigns i was involved in. 

 

“DeBlasio should be tried in court on New Years Day for tearing culture on the East Side Park and the Amphitheater,” he wrote on December 24th. 

 

On December 30th, he wrote a desperate note about what he was going through:

 

“ALS- It breaks down the muscles in your body until you die there are 20,000 of us in the US 400,000 in the world. Nobody patients, family’s, or friends are advocating for a CURE and Pharma do not want a CURE so we die in 2-3 years It SUCKS to be with this illness when you see the life’s of AIDS patients and cancer patients and diabetes patients. None for ALS patients.”

 

Each day, he posted more and more about his declining health and the nightmare he faced as a slow motion car wreck, his future uncertain.

 

Alternately angry and elogiac, he wrote about his life:

“Something about my life, you never heard about my 20’s. I did not like the drugs in my modeling days of Heroin and Cocaine. It was my religion growing up in Georgia.

I modeled for Tommy Hilfiger line sports wear

I modeled for Hugo Boss line suits and Tux’s

I was a model from 17 – 23  in New York -Paris -Milan

Drugs were the reason I left modeling

Right before I left modeling, a kismet occurred

I was in Paris to modeling

For the HUGO Boss line suit and Tux

A gentleman saw my FORD resume.

He asked to see me do Ballet after the Runway, to do a classical piece.  It was Piano Concerto Number 2, (Rachmaninoff), a serious piece about coming out of depression, a terrible rebirth in life.

After, He flew me to England

Sheffield England,to a empty sanitarium

In the video For the Bonnie Tyler video

“Total éclipse of the heart”

It was fun to make at 23. Bonne Tyler was nice and played with the boy’s during off time.Now will live forever in YouTube and other media after I die of ALS Lou Gehrig Illness.

I want all of you Watch it now…”

 

When I visited, he was less able to communicate with me.

Still he posted notes about his struggles:

 

 

“Daily Struggles with Lou Gehrig Disease or ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Key

X Can’t do

& still Can do with problems

Nothing  Can do still still do

X Can barely walk

& Can’t speak

Can’t cough

Can’t blow my nose

X Can’t whistle

Can’t use a zipper

X Can’t put my gloves on

Can’t balance

X Can’t cook

X Can’t get anything out the fridge or freezer

X Can’t wash dishes

X Can’t grab a package on the front porch

X Can’t walk my dog Margarita

X Can’t pick up dog Margarita poop

Can’t fly

Can’t travel

X Can’t work

X Can’t shovel snow

Can’t move anything

Can’t carry multiple things

Can’t get money or cards out of my wallet

X Can’t go out in the cold temperature

Can’t floss my teeth

Can’t cut my fingernails

X Can’t cut my toenails

X Can’t open windows

X Can’t go in the basement

Can’t use tools anymore

Can’t play guitar

Constipated

X Struggle wiping my ass

X Struggle to get off the toilet

X Struggle to shower

X Struggle to stand up

Struggle not feeling my toes

X Struggle with my feet under a blanket

Struggle pushing tissues up my nose

Struggle cleaning my ears

X Struggle unlocking the doors

X Struggle to open the doors

X Struggle turning a lamp off

Struggle getting a mask on

Struggle breathing with a mask on

Struggle getting a hat on

X Struggle getting a coat on

Struggle pushing the stair lift remote

Struggle brushing my teeth

X Struggle doing a haircut

X Struggle shaving

X Struggle pulling the blinds down

X Struggle filling the dog Margarita bowl with water

X Struggle feeding my dog Margarita

X Stuggle feeding my Cat Fanny

X Suggle with cleaning our the Cat Fanny box in bathroom

X Struggle picking up anything on the floor or ground

X Struggle getting the mail out of the mailbox

X Struggle opening mail

X Struggle filing documents

Struggle to type on the computer

X Struggle opening a Ziploc bag

X Struggle hugging people because of balance

X Struggle getting in and out of a wheelchair

Struggle to chew

Struggle swallowing pills

Struggle swallowing liquid

Struggle swallowing food

Wish People understood ALS Mentally and Physically?

Especially those close to you?

It’s not a level playing field!

So many other daily struggles, and it will get worse as time goes on.

No one deserves this disease!

Lou Gehrig Disease or ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis…”

 

I visited in the hospital on several occasions. 

Sometimes staff turned me away. 

Compounding matters, Tim was struggling with COVID. 

So, I could only stay for a minute. 

On a final drop by, a nurse asked how long we’d know each other.

25 years I told her. 

25 years. 

And I broke down saying goodbye, it all hitting me. Tim looking at me, unable to speak. 

I love you, I said over and over, making sure he could see me say it. 

 

The last time I saw Tim was at Amsterdam Nursing Home. 

After testing for COVID downstairs, I went upstairs to see him. 

Tim was not really able to type or say more than hello with his eyes. 

He ate a bit with the help of an aid. 

And I said goodbye, not sure if I'd see him again. 

 

A few days later, Mel called to tell me Tim was entering palliative care. 

It was for the better. 

 

He didn't last a day. 

 

Jim Eigo made the announcement:

 

“My dear friends & fellow activists – I want you to know that our friend & fellow activist, Tim Lunceford, died peacefully at about 1:50 PM on Saturday, May 28, at Amsterdam Nursing Home, in the shadow of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Morningside Heights, Manhattan. From all I could see over the past 4 weeks, Tim received excellent care at the Home. There will be a memorial service for Tim on this coming Tuesday, May 31, at Greenwich Village Funeral Home, 199 Bleecker Street, between MacDougal Street and 6th Avenue, between the hours of 2 PM & 5 PM, & then again between 6 PM & 9 PM. All who can attend are welcome, but Tim’s spouse, Mel Stevens, asks that all who attend be vaccinated against COVID – a suitable request, I think, for a gathering to honor a man whose healthcare activism began when he was a child.”

“I have Viking Blood.  The age of my death is 94,” Tim told me a year ago. “The doctors are not as optimistic as I am, he told me when it first started. How quick that changed.

 

I think about Tim now, that smile, those thousands of demos, seeing him at World AIDS Day actions, reading the names, recalling what it all meant to be an activist and to care, to fight to alleviate the suffering of others, to care for the DACA activists.  We love you, he screamed.  He showed me how to be a full person, embracing our collective experience of pain, of connection, of the joy of fighting the bigots, with a foot in the gutter, our eyes looking toward the skies, his ashes on the way to Paris, joining the immortals.  

Text messages remain...

East Village/ East River Poem / Land/ Water /Public Space

 

A week in the life, land / water, music/ friends. 

Poems are always flying here - 

Somes from the trees, 

Others across the streets, 

Murals on the walls. 

Intersections between this life and that.

Bikes zip to and from. 

Land /  water 

Down Jay Street,  up the bike path, into the sky, the abyss.

Will the bike path hold? 

Will it manage all these cars and bikes, all this weight?

Can it make it?

One day we won’t make it. 

Could today be the day it crumbles, we stumble, tumbling through the sky, down to the water below, between the motion of light, disappearing into the dark water?

I’ve thought about that for years and years, day after day.

 

For  a day, we make our way across.

Ferries crossing below. 

Bike lanes surging.

Energy passing between us.

 

Land/water

Gardens beckon

Squatted spaces, green spaces returning, re emerging from the rubble.

Space ever transforming from Chinatown to the Lower East Side.

 

Land / water

Stories colliding. 

Along with bodies, 

Cars and bikes, ebikes zooming.

Bullets flying on the Q train, a store in Buffalo.

 

Land / water 

Poets and sax players,

Puppeteers and gardeners,

A few of us are converging in the garden

Meeting for stories at Paradiso, 

Puerto Rican flags down the street 

Story after story.

 

Brennan and Elissa

Ann and Max

Tree house beckons.

 

Arriving, meeting, chatting, 

Kids zip about. 

Old trees welcome us, neighborhood friends. 

 

“I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen,

and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,

 

and it was miserable, for that was how I thought

poetry worked…” says Virginia.

Sharing Mingus at the Showplace, by William Matthews. 

“bad poems were dangerous,”  

 

Sara reminds us of Frank O’Hara, who insisted:

“…Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves…One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store…    It is easy to be beautiful…It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”   

 

I’m sure where the plot is leading. 

Birds fly away as I walk through the garden, passing the casita on the 5th street side.

As usual a bunch of guys are sitting about. 

The public space party is ever emerging and disappearing, a mirage through time. 

Crickets hang out downtown from their locker in Time Square.

Flowers in the tree house. 

Apologies on my phone. 

It's too hot, says one.

Gotta go upstate says another regular. 

 

Music plays. 

It's too late to read. 

Still Wendy, Anne and Harry, and the ghosts.

 

420 we are beyond the line, says Wendy. 

Watch the buildings.

Watch the banks

Lets ride up to check out the digester eggs along newtown-creek.

On Kingsland Ave

I’ve got a new chain. 

It's like butter.

 

“I’m nobody, who are you?

Oh you are nobody too,” Wendy concludes paraphrasing from Emily. 

 

Ann is talking about the singularity, wondering what will become of us.

She reads Joy Harjo, stories of stars and poets just me and you:

“I was a star falling from the night sky - I needed you to catch me - I was a rainbow lifting from a dark cloud - I needed you to see me..”

I guess we all need each other from time to time. 

 

Harry shares a birthday poem. 

“Earth axes shifting in our chemistry.”

“I first started writing when I was a kid,” says Harry, as the conversation turns to poems themselves, those we write, or hope to write, those we feel compelled to grasp, even as they fly away, some our way, walking through the neighborhood, howls at our doorsteps, in our dreams.

“Fires in her heart, and her heart beats hotter, her heart beats harder than his drum” says Ann, reciting from her first East Village Poetry spoken word gathering at Exotic Cafe Confab.  

“Don’t blue, let the rainbow out of you.”

The stories continue in countless directions. 

On the way to Cambridge, we visited Amherst, taking in the trees down the street from the yellow house where Emily D wrote those 1800 poems on losses and friends and death, a lovable recluse for the ages, rarely leaving. A cemetery greeted us on the way out of town. Witches died here, noted @seashipsailing, reading poems into the night, parts of our lives and streets, our dreams and desires and reflections. 

 

Gradually, more friends drop by, Elissa with her parasol. 

And then Natalie, one of my favorite former students, with her kids, talking about mental health and struggles for public space.

And our conversation turns to nature, to Melville’s tale of the whale no one could quite conquer. 

Nature will take over, says Ann. 

Earth will be here for eons.

But will we?

Poetry is a way to purge, to be vulnerable, to be real, says Ann, reframing the conversation.

Try a haiku a day, punk rock bands murdered.

Two words, ideas. 

Three lines.

With five syllables in the first line, seven the second, five the third. 

Try it. 

On we howl, reveling in the magnanimity Allen G knew, that we all know. 

We have so much potential. 

Can we ever bring back the commons?

The gardens are a commons.

I have this dream to make a physical cork board, with tons of stuff people are announcing, putting it up at Union Square, says Ann. 

Harry worries about the machine people on hypocrite street. 

The rest of us see something we attach ourselves to.

They are scared of the non-machines. 

There is still beauty; the sun still rises. 

One more by Joy Harjo:

“We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.

We are still America. We

know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die soon.”

 

 

 “I am dreaming of a house just like this one…” says Sarah, from “Visitor” by Brenda Shaughnessy. “I was hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a nightgown in a real way. Did you receive my invitation?”

 

I didn't get one. 

But JK did.

So did JC. 

He couldn’t make it. 

 

  JC’s poem served a  confession:

“My poem for tomorrow   

 I really want to go

 And join you in the garden Tomorrow’s wonder. 

But the rain’s pressing down  

Saturating my presence For Saturday  

With tenets- 

Responsibilities, some name them- 

chalk marks washed away. 

Rain pelting meetings 

Dropping tAsks Reflecting light on sidewalks of uncertainty- 

Shining  a semblance of authority  

Drumming commitment  (Some people wear suits) 

 But I know, as the water mounts, 

It all amounts To a puddle. 

A mere pile of water 

 Accumulated in a convex plane Signifying nothing.

 To be splashed  

And stomped 

 In hollering mirth

 Or savagery. 

This woeful ode  

To take my place 

In the springtime

  Frolic 

Of burning poems in burning daze. 

My rage

 My sage 

My tender song 

Rains down 

Only to vaporize

 In the sudden 

 Summer heat.”

 

In walks Peter, chatting about our movie and the farmer’s market. 

Kids are running about. 

Peter ignores them.

“I was kicked out of the farm stand,” he confesses.

We turn our attention to our never ending film of public space and its contested terrain, our stories of cities and their public spaces, bodies ever clashing in them, critical masses and gardens, Occupy and Sandy, the search for a commons, we’ve been part of for years now, as its disappeared and re emerged.

 

Kids are zipping about playing in El Jardin. 

We reconvene at Le Petit Versaille, a quiet garden on E. 2nd Street. 

“Public spaces are our living rooms,” says Natalie.

They are spaces for mutual aid, places to be authentic, to be ourselves. 

They are vital for us to survive. 

There’s no separation between us and public spaces. 

We are our environments

You are the space. 

We are. 

Yet, some see them as threats.

They charge you to get inside. 

Yet, we need them more than ever, as we saw in the pandemic. 

People were stuck inside with no space to breathe. 

Outside, we see so much, Natalie concludes, pointing out one final obstacle.

There are still too many cars, way too many cars.

 

I want you to be mayor, says Barbara. 

 

“It's our birthright,” says Natalie. “Each of us benefit from it. Yet, people always want to monetize it. Yet, with climate change, we have to find another way, with less cars, and more innovation.  Learn from Amsterdam. There are other models for cities.”

 

Barbara recalled a progression from Critical Mass to garden protection to Occupy to Black Lives Matter. “We started seeing the same people at the demos.  And became obsessed with creating change, each day more, and gradually the activists I saw every day helped us gain power.” 

 

The conversation extends through the years and the ways we look at our city and its stories. 

It followed me, riding back to Brooklyn, to the Interference Archive, where some of the banners that we made all those years ago were on display as a part of a show about struggles for public space: "our streets!our city! Self determination and public space in NYC!",  organized by my comrad @norasays.  Walking, countless images fill the walls, flyers, banners, propaganda by my buddy @l.a.kauffman from our days in Lower East Side Collective and reclaim the streets days, tracing “past and contemporary strategies used by activists to reclaim or reimagine urban infrastructures.”

 

Riding back home, words from all the people, all the conversations, run through my mind,

Leslie Cagan, whose birthday we celebrated Monday, and all the years of protests, No War, no Nukes Marches, the clashes, fights over access to bike lanes, for a livable city, conflicts, battles between ideologies, between men and women, on and on, it runs through.

 

We have to live with each other and work with each other, says Alan Moore, whose in town giving book talks about his new memoir. The world is too small to stay in an argument. 

We have to see the bigger picture. 

We need each other, he tells me. 

 

Al sat at our place for a bite as I got back home. It was my second time this week to see Al, who I meet most Wednesdays or Thursdays. He's still optimistic. "Unless there is a civil war I can't see anything changing, until we are all obliterated by climate change." Walking the streets of Brooklyn, I feel optimistic.

 

Corey Dolgan was more tongue and cheek, posting.

“In their race to the bottom, Missouri just passed legislation that bans abortion at moment o erection.”

 

I kept on dreaming about it throughout the night, the clashes, separations, unhinged, wondering, becoming lost in the cycles of history and conflict, our country ever ready to ban abortions and force mothers to bring kids into a world in which they kill or are killed in school, assault weaopons filling the streets, our eternal conflicts over god, guns, and bodies. 

 

Out I ride into Brooklyn, still dreaming, on my way to the waterfront, clashing into a car parked in the bike lane on Smith Street.

Best not to double park in bike lanes, I find myself replying to the double parked car driver.

 

I was not the only one having troubles biking through the city.  My friend Tedd Kerr was busy with his own ruminations: “A few weeks ago I was riding my bike, up hill, at night, in the rain. The journey echoed the tumult I was feeling inside. At one point, even though I was persevering through the weather, my inner life got the best of me. I had to stop. I found cover under a canopy of leaves and typed a tumble of words into my phone that would not leave me alone: I feel abandoned by the structural response to emergency. It was early spring and the death march towards normalcy that political and economic leaders were forcing us to make had become that much harder to avoid…what to do amid raising gas prices and Roe v. Wade being overturned; as social media is clogged with people making fun of Amber Heard…many of us thinking again of the early (and ongoing) days of AIDS. But also, the past I'm talking about is not that long ago. It is kinda wild to think about how only two years ago many people left lock down for the first time to march for Black Lives. We attempted to social distance as we gathered to mourn, we handed out food as we marched, and chanted through our masks. A current push towards some idea of a pre-pandemic life is not disconnected from a drive to make what we are living through seem like something we lived through.”

Recovering from the crash, I cruise back down to the East River, meeting Kevin at the WO Decker, “the last surviving New York-built wooden tugboat” at the Seaport. 

We’d spen the morning on the waterfront, howling about the East River, crossing the Brooklyn Ferry… where he was leading a tour, “[h]opping on and off NYC's superb East River Ferries, explor[ing] the 10,000–year history of the lower East River waterfront of both Brooklyn and Manhattan.”  All morning, “Dr. Kevin Dann narrate[s] the epic story of this channel's cultural and environmental past, focusing on the lives of those who have worked and played here. Beginning with a short walk through the South Street Seaport to Pier 11, up to North Williamsburg, debark[ing], then ferry to DUMBO for an in depth look at Brooklyn's historic shoreline. … enjoying poetry, song, and story from a native New Yorker who has lived and worked on both sides of the river, and written about its colorful past in books, plays, and novels.”

 

“When I was 14, I fell in love with Walk Whitman,” confessed Dann, in between stories of pirates and mobsters, vying for space along the liminal waterfront. 

Dann’s grandfather was his guide to NYC and its waterfront. 

Without the ferry, New York would have never happened, he insists, referring to Fulton’s ferry that crossed from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back during much of the 19th and early 20th century. 

 

Up past Stuyvesant Town, Dann points to Stuyvesant Town, named for Peter Stuyvescent, the first Dutch colonial governor here in 1647, learning about Manhatta the "hilly island," of the Lenape People. 

 

“The heavy wind pulled the driver off the haligot,” says Kevin, referring to the the ferry rides on 

Fulton Ferry,  the original steam ferry connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn.

“How do we pull together?

How do we navigate the winds of the modern world. 

We have to do it together?

There is no place more erotic than the water!”  Dann exclains.

“Anything could happen.  We could find that on the river…”

That was the experience for a lot of us. 

“away you rolling river…” Kevin sings, “wide open to sing together.

We make a prayer together for the poets.”

 

The whole river seems to scream with their stories. 

Dann reminds me of Speed Levitch, in the Cruise, touring us through his distinct brand of philosophy, channeling “the lascivious voyeurism of the tour bus.” 

 

“The steamboat killed Roebling,” say Dann.  

“And Roebling killed the ferry,” he quips back, referring to the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, who was killed by boat as they stood on a dock on the 28th of June 1869. 

The Ferry ended on 1924.

Everyone was comfortable walking the bridge instead, driving or biking.

 

The East River Ferry across the water would not begin again until 2011, only another eleven years before the city would start bulldozing the trees of East River Park to save us from the rising tides, ever surrounding and possibly engulfing the city. 

 

“For 100 years, the city ignored the water,” Dann rants. 

“The dead are never dead.  The dead are never gone.”

 

On we cruise up the river and down, past the shuttered Domino Sugar Factory and Navy Yards, past New York’s industrial remains, still along the waterfront, ever transforming from sites of  work to play.  Yet, access to the water is limited, often privatized. 

 

“How curious you are to me,” says Walt Whitman, Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry, in his day, imagining us doing the same, generations later, still navigating the space between land and water. 

 

“In the presence of the dead, it nourishes your soul,” says Dann, looking as we make our way to the Fulton Ferry landing, in front of the River Cafe, looking at the Walt’s old newspaper offices for The Eagle, at 28 Fulton Street. 

 

“Flow on flow with the flood tides,” says he poetry at the docks, Walt’s words, time blurring, light shining on Brooklyn's original, 1642 ferry landing.

 

Across the water, our eyes take us to Manhattan, the raging city, even churning. 

And I keep moving. 

 

All day, we listen to Leonard Cohen records, zipping about, moving, walking, imaging, over bridges, to Princeton and back, wondering what will become of us, between here and there, on the Goethals Bridge, connecting Elizabeth New Jersey with Staten Island, wondering if it will hold or if this is the moment we come crashing back into the water. 

 

“"I'd like to tell my story"

Said one of them so young and bold

"I'd like to tell my story."

 

“The mark of a good song is if you can listen to it as you go down,” says the little one, my travel companion on the way back after lunch and a hike along the D and R trail.  

 

Back to Brooklyn, back over the Bridge, I ride to East River Park, where poems are rising and trees are disappearing.

 

The New York Times reports:

“the park now seeps into [Eileen] Myles’s work constantly, especially the poetry. A recent poem, “120 Years and What Did You See,” ends like this:

I look up, you’re shaking

meeting, you’re bigger you’re wiser you’re stronger

than me, and always will be. Each of us walking

around and blessing

                     

you today

And you

will always

be TREE…”

 

 

Riding through the maze of construction equipment and people trying to enjoy last moments before the park is completely destroyed, I arrive at 6th street rrove under  a few remaining trees. 

 Reverend Billy is preaching to the trees.  Some 700 have  been killed in the last few months, more in the coming months.  The Earth Church is “meeting at East River Park to say goodbye to the grove of trees before they’re cut down.”

 

 “Listen to the trees. Listen to the earth” says @revbillytalen ... “Learn about the hidden life of trees… How do we learn to inhibit this Hieronymus Bosch image of destruction along the edge of the East Village? This is alive to the South Street Seaport.  These roots are still alive.  The Earth is still alive, even if it looks like Maripol, it's still alive.  Trees talk. Talk to me. Talk to us. We’re gonna listen.  I’m listening. Feel the breeze, feel the wind.”

 

Dozens of us are listening under the trees. 

One is Allen Moore, the East Village artist, in town by way of Madrid.

“They did the same thing in Atlanta.  They started with burning the trees. Thats how they started,” he quips. 

 

On Talen preaches:

“Can you hear the earth?

Yes, I hear the earth. 

Each of us is a talking ecosystem. 

I got apocalypse fatigue. 

Beautiful world. 

Love runs wild.

The sixth extinction is coming. 

Bill DeBlasio’s bulldozers are taking the lead.”

 

“We can find ways to work together,” says Allen. 

We have to.  The city is too small otherwise.”

 

Save the trees; save ourselves.  Save the gardens, save ourselves, I think, reflecting on land and water and the spaces in between riding back over the Manhattan Bridge, water below, once again, back to land, along that space in between.