Patrick Fealey's Blog, page 10

Symptoms (of madness)

Symptom’s (of madness)

down by the nightmare, the smell of burnt leaves hangs over the bank. it’s yesterday spoiling our dreams. the dead are never fully digested, just as the beautiful are never fully ignored. i was staring at the starer. the starer stared back. the wall was the best. it was blank and white and hurt less than colors and wallpaper patterns. i was pretty sure this meant i was insane.

yeah, it is funny how a mustache isn’t always what one expects. i saw a bare-footed black honda stretched out in the tree-tops. i took six shots before i realized it was dead and i couldn’t eat it. and here we go, the hedger is at it, always at it with his shears and dust mask. robbing the trees of their leaves with a little help from black & decker and the electric company’s in there too, in on a piece of that aesthetic of straight branches squared and flat like the world before columbus. i must live on a regressive street. where are the angels when insanity abides like the sea? rolling coming. rolling going. but never going going.

people are easier to see through than blinds and i have seen through the interstate with glass eyes. people are easier to jump over than buildings and tho i have yet to leap over a building in any number of bounds, my skeleton is the key to every soul. my gift is finding love and exposing arrogance. i can make a man hate me or flee in one minute. i make men appreciate me in one minute. i can inspire generosity and genius and souls with my ears.

nobody loses his mind, he loses the ability to ward off invasions. you lose sight of the mural while your hands fight the abstract invasion. you become a monster and an island. it is the replacement of the individual by the all, a martyred flight toward the source, losing one life to be a thousand.

he must be drunk. but it doesn’t show. he paces himself like a good drunk. the bottles are the footprints he’s left behind on his journey from his mattress to his mattress. we are silent. the darkness yields to a story. and laughter. then silence again. anticipation displaces the darkness like a light behind the eyelids. he grabs a beer and the walls close in for a taste. i take a drag and locate the ashtray again. we lay in the dark. hidden. a small fire, a candle. sometimes i believe this could go on for forty more years. killing the days with a sense of obligation. falling into the rock bottom of the night, our one comfort. i dream the night could keep us alive. i dream the night could keep evil away. i dream that in the darkness our naked voices become the completion of an immortal circuit. maybe they do. but in those pauses, those silences, i am reminded of what we cannot change and my eyes burn with helplessness and shame.

my best friend

BLOOD SPLASHED ACROSS THE

MATTRESS, RUNNING DOWN THE

SIDES

 

KATZ PUT THE GOVERNOR IN JAIL

FOR EXTORTION AND BRIBES

WITH HIS STORIES IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

WOULDN’T TAKE HIS STORIES

BECAUSE THEY WERE REPUBLICANS

AND LIKED THE GOVERNOR

AND THE FBI WAS FUCKING LAZY

KATZ HAD WORKED AT THE JOURNAL

WHERE HE PUNCHED OUT ANOTHER REPORTER

IN THE NEWSROOM

“HE HAD IT COMING.”

KATZ STRUGGLED ON

TRYING TO GET HIS INVESTIGATIONS

INTO PRINT

BUT NEWSPAPERS HAD CHANGED

SOFTENED

REPORTERS WERE LIKE SOCIAL SECRETARIES

AND KATZ DIDN’T DO FLUFF

BROKE AND BROKEN

HE BLEW HIS BRAINS OUT

ONE SNOWY DAY

AND WE WENT TO CLEAN

UP THE MESS

WHERE WE FOUND HE HAD

LEFT

CHAMPAGNE AND BEER IN THE FRIDGE

BEHIND WHICH I FOUND

A FOLDER

FULL OF SHORT STORIES

I OPENED THE FIFTH OF MOUNT GAY RUM

HE HAD LEFT

ON THE KITCHEN TABLE

THIS WAS THE DAY I STARTED

DRINKING AGAIN

AFTER SEVEN YEARS SOBER

BLOOD ON THE MATTRESS

BLOOD ON THE FLOOR

BLOOD IN MY THROAT

ANIMAL AND SWEET.

I HAD JUST BURIED MY ROOMMATE

I HAD JUST BURRIED MY GIRFRIEND

KATZ WAS THE BEST FRIEND I EVER HAD

manic-depressive shopping

manic-depressive shopping

 

when she gets

her social security

check

she sends him shopping

his brothers

and sisters

always complain

but mom trusts him

he always buys

what he thinks

is

good

which is

what

he’s craving

while

he’s shopping

today

he spent the whole

check

on:

35 pounds of bacon

40 heads of ice-burg lettuce

150 tomatoes

two gallons of mayonnaise

30 loaves of bread

he suspected

he bought

too much lettuce

but his sister

will feed

some

to her rabbits

man without woman

Man without woman

@6.99 per 1.5 liters

I’m in the cheap seats

I don’t know where I’m going

But I am not swallowing lies

Just to get my end in

I can inhale

Here i am

A prince decked out in torn jeans

While one more pot of spaghetti

Turns the walls greener

I kicked out the blonde

Because . . . my guess is she was blonde

The red-head split west to go find herself

Ma belle fleur wilted and turned to celluloid

I won’t let the

Lakota in the door

Because she thinks I am responsible

and need to be fucked to death

The Dominican stripper was getting

Too jealous, opening my mail from women

Including my grandmother – “MADGE”

L made me grind my teeth

She had been breaking free of her father

Who had fucked her when she was a girl

She was in therapy and hypnosis

And not returning the rapist’s calls

So he offered her a new car

And $10,000 cash

L took the money and our fight was the last

Peace has found me

Lester Young and Bud Powell

And the morning’s quiet brilliance

Seduce me                                                            

Into thankfulness

There is nothing to be done

Life is not irrelevant

is it or isn't it?

is it or isn’t it?

 

waiting for the mailman

while my pants dry in the

sun

i tremble

i’m weak

dry roasted peanuts

do not cure

my shakes

last night at aa

i read

one of their books

i read that people who have suffered

a series of losses

or are ill

are very unlikely

to succeed in the aa

program

this news

was the best excuse

to drink

i had ever heard

the book said failure was inevitable

because

the person’s soul

had been broken

this was the worst news

i had ever heard

homeland

homeland

FEED AFRICA! ADOPT CHINA! FUCK AMERICA – AND IRELAND TOO!

America is so RICH!

send your money

to rock stars with messiah complexes

who live in CENTRAL PARK

penthouses

betray your brother

who is DOWNTOWN eating PEANUT BUTTER out of a jar with a spoon

as churches scrape and cancel meals

the economy is good

the stock market is at a record high

and donations are down because people forget the poor when they’re worshiping their buying power (and, when the DOW falls, everyone is poor.)

empathy means energy, capacity and depth

and humans are lazy and love to reject

notice: celebrities

shy away from

the needs of the countries

where they earn the  most

but you’ll not feed Africa

before you feed

Providence and Oakland

because who wants to be

more of a hypocrite?

last scene

A small, upsetting loss for art and America. Giardinelli’s is gone and it isn’t coming back. We’re talking jazz, classical, show music –  a mecca for brass musicians. I found out this morning that the old Giardinelli instrument shop in downtown New York, started in 1947 by an Italian immigrant, is no longer there.  The name lives on as a catalogue. Giardinelli’s was the place to go if you were a horn player. They sold and repaired trumpets, trombones, saxophones – horns --  and even manufactured their own mouthpieces, of which I bought two. Both times I went there I was with my grandmother, who was very patient amidst all the trumpets and trombones hanging in her hair. We’d taken the Staten Island ferry over, and to her, Giardinellis must have been stranger than the Bronx Zoo. The guys coming in and out to pick up trumpets or to test horns or mouthpieces in dingy practice rooms represented Vegas, Broadway, everywhere around New York, touring band members (Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, etc) as well as unknown guys like me. Who was i? I was a high school junior who had already played with Miles Davis and had received a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. I was a nobody among these guys, but I was a comer and when I got into a practice room, they knew it. Of course, these other cats were blowing the walls down back there. Fuck! I never felt more at home in any other shop. Grandma came into the small room with me while I tested mouthpieces. The guy at the counter accommodated me with different mouthpieces and different mouthpiece parts. I tried many combinations, back and forth between the guy at the front counter and the practice room with grandma. She listened and watched for a diagnosis. The store’s philosophy was pretty laid back, but the guys behind the counter were serious. I remember just a couple years ago, GiardinellI had a website for their store, but yesterday I couldn’t find it. I was thinking of bringing my horn in because I trusted them. I wanted to play again. All I could find was a GiardinellI on-line catalogue, which I was already aware of. GiardinellI was now making it’s own instruments and they were hooked up with musician’s friend, the largest on-line musical instrument store. I wrote to them and asked if they still had the store in New York. A guy wrote back and said no, they no longer have any stores. Those dingy practice rooms are probably being rented out as apartments. If I had been more tuned like a writer back then, I could describe the place better. I remember the smell of the soldering, of the burning flux, the smell of valve and slide oil. A variety of men came in, from black suits and cologne to t-shirts and faded jeans, some talk. They talked about their gigs, the scene. I remember thinking the Broadway guys had it made, but I could never sit like that now, playing the same thing every night for 20 years. Anyhow, this is 23 years ago, when I learned Giardinelli’s was the best place in the world. My grandmother is now in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. Life goes on and there are things you will never do again.

departure

departure

we gassed up on the south end of town

and got a six of hamms. seventeen bucks altogether,

leaving twenty three for a thousand miles’ gas

and two days of beer and dog food.

bud lay in the back, quiet and apparently uninterested in whatever energy we might have been giving off.

most dogs know when they’re going somewhere,

but maybe to bud all of our motions were predictable and, to date, none had come to much. always gas. beer. wetsuits.

bobo pumped while i went in to pay.

i walked out of the mini-mart to a sight commensurate

to my needs from existence: a quiver of boards strapped to the roof of an old vw bus, about to hit the blue current of california’s asphalt seas, to vanish into the sunny dreamdrift of america’s other country with a mate i could not have made up.

it was a time which forgot all past times.

i put the bag of bottles on the seat and joined bobo in the fumes, where he had no worries. “we’re gonna make it,” he said. “somebody’ll hook us up in san luis. ask and you shall receive.”

  “the bobo code to living.”

  “somebody has to.” he smiled, white ball cap tipped to the dusk.

heather, indian princess

in response to a friend's silence

in response to a friend’s silence

that’s what she said.

i don’t believe it.

mr gorbachev, tear down that obsession

i don’t know shit

i know less and less

and then i die

we should all hear voices

telling us not to hurt ourselves

do you have a boston accent?

no, i’m not from around here

or anywhere languages are that established

mr gorbachev, tear down that train set

how many people can you talk to at one time?

it’s not quite right

this smoke wasn’t here before

the bastard looks nervous

the matches are still huddled next to the fire

do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

i’d walk a mile for an earthquake

i’d make like mr chesterfield and

hurt you

i mean satisfy

myself

after i water the camels

rare moments in the desert like

the end of the world

when right on time means nothing

and we’re all too predictable