Three Fingers Short

One day closer to snow,
and one hour short is the day.

A game of dive bar hop scotch means never skipping a chance to double dutch a double scotch, three fingers short of a Tom Waits ballad.

Whiskey makes me beautiful,
at least that's what I tell myself when I'm touching my face against the bar bathroom mirror, speckled with has-been band decals and inscribed with dime store lipstick poetry.

Last call incense lingers in the air.

One pour further from boredom.

One pour closer to divinity.

I own no watch, so I watch the time pass as my cigarette packet diminishes.

Four cigs left: clearly, it's 3:00 A.M.

Trouble is, 20 more reasons to stay awake are just a deft discarding of plastic and foil away.

I just need to find the pocket they're in.

Where did I leave them?

Who's jacket is this?

A couple new ones

Grey Dog Refrain

Sweating icicle daggers onto the sidewalk below me, with each step another casualty.
My tardiness is deadly for the daydreamers on 16th Street.
For them, time moves as snails over nasturtium petals, a slothful eclipse of orange and grey.
My heart, however, beats three paces ahead of my gait and my body is a shaky steering wheel in a foreign car.
The skin on my lips begins to peel from backpedaling into forward-thinking strategies of how to abscond my vanity.
It really takes a 14-hour work day with a 37-minute break split into two followed by three hours of binge drinking with strangers and a six-hour nap on the train to look this disheveled.
I don't believe in outsourcing.

Nowhere at Night

Leather pants the color of straw and a heart black as tar.

I am prey for a pride of ravenous singles doomed to pretend they're alright with themselves enough to swill PBR cans and update their Facebook status on their iPads in a rollicking gay bar with Prince blasting in the background.

I am so many eyes as fingers working shiatsu down my back and lingering on my ass when the focus should be on my calves, taut and shimmering from 57 hours of work in four days and refusing to rest on my day off.

If this man where man enough, he would have said hello already.

I am sat alone writing under the pathetic light of a sacrificial candle purchased in the ethnic foods aisle of the supermarket.

I'm anything but unapproachable.

If anything, I'm slutty.

I'm dressed for a Halloween party I'm clearly two months late for.

But I"m not wearing a costume.

This is how I see myself.

I am paisley on a Manhattan subway in December.

My laugh invokes transformative properties in otherwise listless souls because they yearn for more of it.

They conjure spells, stir potions, and crack yolkless eggs in an attempt to be funny enough to elicit my giggle.

What they don't realize is that I speak no language.

I feel words.

I know funny when I feel it.

Karaoke Justice

If there be a hipster among us, let him be the first to cast stones.

So I bought a shirt that says Brooklyn on it while I was in Brooklyn.

The story behind where I left my other shirt is what's important.

May I continue to dance naked with the drag queens of Bushwick, tired in their faces and humble in their loins.

I am a stanza in the song of life.

This is not Gaga.

My eyes open as the cracking of quail eggs.

I see the elegance in so many glasses accumulating on a table: coffee mug, water glass, Bloody Mary Collins, Champagne flute, whiskey thimble.

This is a timpani devotedly to be wished.

This is music I understand implicitly.

My body is a temple ... in Chichen Itza.

Weathered and dilapidated, yet intriguing to the brethren that make a pilgrimage to it every weekend as it moves up and down 8th Avenue.

My howl will be heard in the belly of Brooklyn as I scream at the theater geeks of Hell's Kitchen.

Karaoke is a means to an end to get Japanese businessmen to cut deals.

Calm down, queen.

You are not getting signed for a weak rendition of Pokerface you performed for a bunch of PBR-swilling hipsters on a Wednesday in Midtown.

Our time will come.

It will be a Thursday.

Champagne Flutes and Teaspoons

Can every day be prosecco and coffee with a faux-collar sweater in New York on a Wednesday with nothing to do?

Give me a life as translucent as this prosciutto I wear as a monocle.

If Tom Waits and I produced a child, he would growl phlegmy giggles from a basinet constructed out of Champagne boxes and hung from bass strings.

I am desiring not of a partner, but rather a playmate to go in on a bottle with me so that I don't get looks when I order one alone.

While I could be sleeping, I could also be boring.

I want my life to be sweetbreads and chanterelles, with polenta dredged in robiola and tomato.

I will not accept Splenda as anything but for the weak.

If you need sugar, there is no substitute.

I love that New York rewards you for drinking during the day.

I feel that my most rewarding drinking happens during the day.

While I'm quite skilled in evening imbibing, it is an afternoon on the porch with Tom in the kitchen where my socialization is at its prime.

There is a beautiful time of day when the clothes people wear change from outfits to costumes, and it usually coincides with the popping of a second cork - a harbinger of an imminent nap, and still no playmate.

One of my biggest regrets is not being able to see myself as others see me.

My eyes must be ravenous.

Every person that passes me by looks back as though I just unbuckled my belt ... or theirs.

Some smile.

Most don't.

One of these days I am going to dance on the subway when the mariachi duo strikes up a tune.

If the refrain is easy, I may even sing along.

For now, I will continue to sip on brioche bubbles and stare into the face of New York with a shit-eating grin on mine.

I get this city.

I get this afternoon.

I get it.

Now, to be had.

A minor tirade

Milk carton runaways were my make-believe friends. I knew them by their names and secretly, I knew where they were hiding. Moreover, I knew what they were hiding from. I wasn't so much hiding from it, but rather attempting to rationalize the hatred and fear that surrounded me.

Reading what I wrote when I was younger makes me realize why kids today end their lives so early. I should have had a mentor, a coach, a friend who taught me wisecracks, comebacks, or the power of enlightened silence. Thankfully, I learned all those tools myself. It drips from my writing: the incessant need for tools, weapons, implements, an arsenal, and love.

We need to show our children that awkward happens forever, not just between the ages of 9-14. What was once pimples and unibrows eventually becomes obsessing over text message innuendo and anonymous sex just to feel something. It is our uneasiness toward our own adulthood that should appeal to the next generation. Facebook stalking happens at all ages. Hopefully, the stakes are lower when you're 12, but from the nature of periodical evidence it's entirely plausible they're pretty damn close.

Off to Grey Dog

Sweating icicle daggers onto the sidewalk below me, with each step another casualty.
My tardiness is deadly for the daydreamers on 16th Street.
For them, time moves as snails over nasturtium petals, a slothful eclipse of orange and grey.
My heart, however, beats three paces ahead of my gait and my body is a shaky steering wheel in a foreign car.
The skin on my lips begins to peel from backpedaling into forward-thinking stratagems of how to abscond my vanity.
It really takes a 14-hour work day with a 37-minute break split into two followed by three hours of binge drinking with strangers and a six-hour nap on the train to look this disheveled.
I don't believe in outsourcing.

Flavor

The harpies of the MTA are at it again,
hooting and hollering about the misappropriation of express and local stops.

Even the advertisements, unable to speak, bellow racist propaganda of impoverished cell phone plans and divorce law only available in the depressed foreign language of the train's respective denizens.

Push out push marketing, and pull in my belly because we're in Chelsea now and shit is starting to get real.

And by real, I mean real fake and diluted, making a reality no amount of metabolism can maintain beyond age 43.

PowerBars and power lunches where neither are eaten, but both have their place.

If I wanted a caste, I'd move to New Delhi.

And if I want to be cast, I will eat that cobb salad with the man old enough to be my father, tell him it's delicious, and pretend to enjoy something so foul as Diet Coke.

I will never like "diet" anything as long as it continues to deny me the flavor real life has to offer.

Stop lying to yourself: IT DOES TASTE DIFFERENT!

Epoisses smacks of a life I aspire to lead.

I will eat this beet and rejoice in the heat of freshly grated horseradish stinging my tongue.

I am more alive than these Grecian specimen wandering 8th Avenue because I am proud to say who I am:

I am Nathan's cheddar cheese and bacon french fries on the boardwalk of Coney Island, filling up on saturated fat and remorse for the freak who just moved to New York from Algeria and allows pimply-faced Jersey children to shoot at him with a paintball gun.

I am crushed by my desire to be the wax curling the mustache of the sideshow host's face, crippled by the prospect of him running his rough fingers over me.

And for all that vulnerability I am never going to give in to soy milk.

I like my milk whole.

Like me.

A Prayer to the Saints

Etta James, you come to me as a dream.
You more than have a hold on me, you recite my thoughts before they've even made it to the page.

Otis Redding, you haunt my reverie.
I think of you as cool water running over my sunburnt skin, forming perfect little orbs along my forearms.

Odetta, you are Appalachia and I, your weary son.
In thinking of you I smell fields of tobacco and bourbon stills, my periphery vision holds tinctures on wooden shelves.

David Bowie, you reside in my loins.
Every time I lick my lips I think of you, and remember the difference between sensual and sexual.

Tom Waits, you slick bastard.
If I am doomed to never find love it is because you set the bar just too far out of reach.

Amen.

August Tomatoes

His lips smacked of goldenrod and dandelions.

They were gritty as the crevasses of a chanterelle that you just can't clean the depth of, but at the same time don't want to.

The dirt from his lips found its way under my fingernails and as I bit them down I was reminded of the salt he replenished in me.

He was butter, and I was spread.

I confused his arms for beet greens and when they touched me I knew them to be red ribbon sorrel, the citrus etching itself into my skin.

His eyes were nectarines into which mine ravenously stared until I could see the stones at their very core.

If toes he had, they were Umbrian truffles. Dank and grainy, unctuous and alluring.

When we laid down together, we were a delicacy.

We were simple tomatoes, reclined in an oven of our own design.

We awoke just as our flesh began to pucker and bubble.

We had the good salt.

We were perfectly seasoned.

I'm No Batman

Upon leaving my apartment this morning, I was immediately met with a band of children roughly six to eight years of age. They were a bicycle gang, very much unlike the kind you find in Cambridge or Brooklyn where seven-year olds already have decals depicting their cousin’s band and “Life is Good” stickers adoring their bikes. This is Harlem, and these bikes are hand-me-downs and yard sale purchases – some are even dumpster diving acquisitions.

But I’ve never been one for material things. I had a rather large comic book collection and I gave it away for gin and poutine (I was hot and starving). Mine has, and always will be, the language of events. A boy of maybe eight was perched atop the garden wall in front of my building, a young black Moses calling edicts down from Sinai to his brethren below as they toiled helplessly with the bicycle in question. When I appeared, his voice that had been shrill and scolding of his peers became soft and articulated. He turned to me from atop the parapet:

“Mister, do you have a screwdriver?”

“I’m so sorry, no,” I replied.

Then, the world’s greatest, most innocent non sequitur:

“Hey, mister, are you single?” he asked lightly.

I am single, I thought, but how the hell did this kid know that? The sheer fear and awe in my face had to have been so clearly visible because even I could see it without even looking at myself. Consequently, this is when I began to run.
These schoolyard mystics had divined my secret and all I could do to stand up to their inquisition was run. Sensing my discomfort, the questioning then grew malicious.

“Hey, mister, are you gay? Mister! Are you gay and single?”

I didn’t stick around long enough to answer, mostly because I was terrified if I did how they might respond. In my heart of hearts, I hoped that if I responded “yes” to both they would accept me into their fold and I, being the only one with an allowance, would have gladly gone to the hardware store for them, purchased a screwdriver and even tried my abysmally feeble hand at fixing the communal bicycle. They would have lauded me as a demigod and continued their line of questioning, only this time the question would be:

“Hey, mister, why are you single?” Their shock and disbelief underscoring my own at how this could be. How could anyone “cool” enough to buy some street kids a screwdriver be single? My sentiments exactly.

By the time I realized I hadn’t actually gone and bought the screwdriver like I thought I had in my waking daydream, I found myself on the A train. Still single. Still gay. And, still without a clue as to how these babies could so easily cut me to the quick. I guess people in relationships carry utility belts, like Batman. Now partnered, they have tools that us single people don’t, such as confidence and duct tape. If I were to fashion my own single’s utility belt its contents would be as follows:

-wine key
-pepper spray
-an umbrella
-comfortable shoes to change into
-a Michael McDonald album
-and a vintage copy of “Honcho”

So I’m no Batman, and much less do I have a Robin of my own. What troubles me most, however, is the idea that I was tortured by the innocent ramblings of some sniveling children. It was in processing my emotions in and around this event that I came to realize that religion will always exist. Prayer preys, and it most often preys on the weak. And in a week, I hope to not be so weak as to let a happening as this catch me off guard.

My Hipster Jesus

Give me that god damn tambourine!

Give it here, right now.

You can keep your jumper on, as long as you agree to take off that ridiculously cool "Reading Rainbow" t-shirt that you're far too young to even remember.

Bring me, Barrabas! Bring me, Sufjan Stevens! Bring me, Edward Sharpe!

Just bring me a shuttle bus with properly functioning A/C so the smell of Bushwick doesn't linger on my clothes all night while I've serving lobster and rack of lamb, only to remind me that I don't belong here.

Hijack the taco truck on 14th Street, and let's leave the twinks of Chelsea in our wake.

If 8th Avenue where self-esteem it wouldn't make it to midtown.

The only HERO I've met since moving to New York takes place on Sundays in the basement of the Maritime Hotel and costs $10 to get inside for the right to feel inadequate and unshapely.

I write in pen, on paper, because AT&T never drops my pen.

I always get service, even if I forget to pay my bill.

To the subject of hospitality, bill me for my laughter, bill me for my beer, bill me for the sheep that flock to me, their shepherd.

I will pay with my EBT card, my cut-off shorts and fixed speed bicycle, my in-between MTA and sidewalk sweat, and I'll put my dignity on layaway if you can still do that these days.

Here is my decree:

I will never stop loving Tom Waits.

I will always say "yes" to another if the conversation is flowing like white zinfindel from a spigot.

I will not apologize for putting a shower off one more day.

Give me that tambourine!

I have a truck to catch.

Train Rides and Foot Travels

When you're truly happy, there is a certain Taoist principle that applies involving not actually verbalizing your joy. It is implied. The people closest to you recognize it immediately as genuine and there is no need to ask niceties such as "How are you?"

Of late, I've been pondering moments in my recent history that literally my heart sing. These are events that have occurred where my generally garrulous tongue finds itself without words. Instances where upon having another similar experience the sheer body memory of euphoria brings you immediately back to the last time you felt this way. Here's a short list of moments that have produced a wide grin across my face that make me feel as though a happy bout of Bell's Palsy may be at work:

- Being at a bar in Chelsea and having the entire place sing "His Eyes Are on the Sparrow" from the Sister Act 2 soundtrack.
- The final encore of the Crooked Still concert at Sanders Theater involves a call-and-response rendition of "Shady Grove."
- Bringing down the house with a rollicking version of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon at a karaoke bar full of strangers in the Lower East Side.
- Getting up in front a bevy of Brooklyn hipsters in Bushwick and reading a piece that I wrote about voyeurism in the city and how it specifically reminds me of watching Adult Swim when I had a television.
- Going to the Bowery Ballroom and hearing "Modal Combat" perform their Super Nintendo set while swilling PBR cans and attempting to quell church laughter.
- Hearing my mother retell the story of how she lost my brother's dog and dejectedly plopped down on the lawn and sulked when she couldn't find him, "Pup-eroni" in one hand and dignity just out of grasp of the other.

Then, in thinking about what scares me, I believe the most frightening event that could ever happen to me would involve an inability to communicate. There are days where the only sustenance I have is conversation, and I eat it with relish.

And the truth is some days we eat better than others. Clearly, the gentleman across from me on the train the other morning were starving for conversation. They were reciting, one for one, their Netflix queues. This is not even to say a discussion of cinema, but rather a pissing contest of who's list is longer. I have an idea, boys: whip'em out, and let's all see who's is longer. I could already tell that the bespectacled fellow's leans a little to the left, and includes far more Indie and Foreign selections.

If such dialogue ever becomes the best I can muster I sincerely hope someone takes me out back and finishes me, Old Yeller-style. PUT. ME. DOWN.

Then, there's little lyric I wrote the other morning:

toes number a total of ten,
and i'm totally reticent to count more.
if feet could talk mind a dirge would sing,
for they know, for them, what's in store.

Death by Elevator Muzak

I hope I never have one of those voices on the train that no one wants to listen to. You know exactly the cacophony I'm talking about. it's roughly three hours since you magicianed your way into bed but by the grace of God and a Jamaican cabbie named Francois, and now you're turning around with bloodshot eyes still smelling smoke in your hair and whiskey between your unshowered, sandaled toes. And then, after an arduous white-knuckled battle to make it to the train, you secure a seat and are immediately rendered helpless by the go-getter, Southern-drawled miscreant across from you on the already over-crowded train. Unwillingly, you are resigned to listen to her outline the details of her eggshell wedding dress and commiserate over the glory days of her Cotillion dress that she'll never fit into ever again.

This is not hell, exactly, but it's a pretty good approximation.

This babbling Southern belle has even her best friend staring down the walls of the train in search of the emergency brake, valiantly trying to obscure her yawning into the sleeve of her dress while feigning interest in yet another in a series of mind-blowingly banal recollections of the latest meeting with the wedding caterer and another lament over how this brat's fiance will simply never understand the importance of a well-thought out seating chart.

Little does this halfwit know that her "best friend" is dying inside because she slept with said fiance after a wild night in college where she let her hair down and karaoked "Mustang Sally" at full tilt at a Hooters in Indiana. For as much as said friend has tried to eat her way to bottom of a bucket of buffalo wings and swilled countless Genny Lights in an attempt to ease the pain of potentially hurting her friend, she secretly eats and drinks to rationalize why this twerp gets to get married while she's stuck at her administrative desk sneaking peeks at who recently viewed her online dating profile. Sorry, JockJammer39, she may be desperate, but not that desperate.

The only thing that can possibly increase the heat on this inferno in which you find yourself is when some mongoloid tourist even more touched than this girl makes their way onto the train and recognizes that shrill accent as "home" and asks for directions. From one fanny pack to another, an interrogation that should have lasted 30 seconds is now the soundtrack from Harlem to Brooklyn. Death by elevator muzak would be sweeter.

Where is Francois? Sweet, sweet Francois? Apathetic, muted, silent Francois!

Thinking about a friend

Just a little piece that I wrote in six minutes while waiting on my best friend to find me in the Village the other day.

I’m going to meet Lindsay right now. I don’t understand why I love her so much. I guess I envy her. I imagine I look at her and think, “What was I doing at 23?” To be working in arguably the best restaurant in the country with such minimal experience, a raspy voice, and a steady rotation of two dresses, one pair of ripped leggings, and a giant seahorse tattoo on her arm is truly something to be marveled. Her energy and lust for, as she puts it, “people to show up and not suck” is contagious. Around her, I never want “to suck.” I aspire to be at the top of my game socially – witty, charming, intelligent, open to any and all prospects that could result in “AMAZING.”

With her, I feel outside my own mind. It’s as though we were little children speaking some language we invented ourselves to avoid adults that would chastise us for being lewd, crude, and lascivious. Our pig-Latin sonata heralds arias on pickled ramps and quail eggs done to perfection, grits not being gritty enough and settling for hominy, and that bar that was just a step up from the diviest place we’ve ever encountered to elevate us to sheer ecstasy. I love our language, and I love our song. The soundtrack of our friendship brings a shit-eating grin to my face. Memories of my shoebox apartment in Somerville, MA: waking up with no shirts on, swilling Jameson and dancing on my futon to “Kansas City” and “New Violence” while laughing until our throats were dry and hoarse, in desperate need for another Jameson to quell our drought.

I hate that this is starting to read like an epithet, but ours is the kind of flame that burns so hard and fierce that it comes with the mystery of the Maccabees how it is able to sustain such warmth for so long.

I'll Get to You When I Get to You

This came to me while riding the A train on the one of the hottest days of the summer. It's short because so was my trip. Only had to go three stops, but I've stopped a few more times to read through it. Thank you to Harlem for being a constant source of amazement.


I'll get to you when I get to you.

Right now, I'm with him, and he's a swimming pool in a gated community in New Jersey on August 13th.

He is the aluminum hotel pans my neighbors fill with macaroni and cheese, collards, and buttermilk fried chicken.

I'll get to you when I get to you, but right now, I'm with him.

He is the open fire hydrant on my street where children wade and waddle with new feet, making like Sisyphus against the pressure of his outpouring.

I, too, attempt to reach the source. I come so close, then assuage myself with having at the very least been cooled by his touch as the sun burns the asphalt around me.

I'll get to you when I get to you, but right now, I'm happy he's with me.
7-27-10

Surprises Still Happen

It's been a while since I've been caught me off guard. I'm usually pretty tuned in to my surroundings and life's general order of events. However, moving to New York and ingratiating myself with several new people has afforded me several opportunities to be surprised. This is one of the first poems I've written in years, and while it began as prose I quickly began to realize that often the beauty of poetry is that is encourages the space between words so much more than any other form of writing. It appreciates the "beat." So here's a little "beat" in my life that continues to resonate with me long after it actually happened.

Surprises Still Happen - 7/15/10

Love hit me hard in my stomach on McKibbin Street,

My body taut with sweetbreads and baconaise, lubricated with cava.

He was squat, and squatting.

We had been both praising and agonizing the gentrification of Brooklyn when suddenly, he stopped.

In a basement apartment of “the dorms,” there was a merry band of hipsters playing Fleet Foxes on their couch with the windows to the street flung open, 40 ounce Budweiser bottles strewn around the room like Santeria.

And from the street, he harmonized with them.

He broke their spell.

They heard him.

It was beautiful.

They heard one another.

And while they sang, I was the only one who heard them. And I was lucky.

And then, it was over.

Music, in my life, often functions as a bookmark to dogear moments I want never to forget. As my memory deteriorates and the pages of my thoughts begin to yellow and dry out, there are songs that breathe color back into my reverie.

I see that night not as black, but rather Chartreuse, not simply because we drank, but because we were it.

We were Carthusian monks, each of us filled with half the recipe of a dish neither of us had ever prepared.

And that night, we feasted.

And that night, we sang.

And that night, we were sated.

Welcome to Crumb X Crumb

I guess this has been long overdue. To be perfectly honest, I don't really understand the purpose of a blog other than to provide an arena for the entire world to critique you. Ideally, Crumb X Crumb will function more to allow me an opportunity to catalog my foibles and adventures as I embark on this new series of truths in my life. I hope you enjoy it, whomever "you" may be.