>
Rudy died of cancer. He came into the bar and we spoke about the doctor’s appointment,
When his fate was revealed to him. His former girlfriend was there with him.
Rudy turned to her and said, “I had a good run.”
At 51, he said he would live to be a hundred, “Just to piss ‘em off.”
It didn’t work out that way. I thought he knew everything knowable.
Death usually proves people wrong.
Rudy said a man lives the first fifty years in experimentation,
the second fifty in assimilation,
and after that he’s a human being, wholly formed,
capable of sound decisions.
He talked about the pueblos, about how until recently
his people lived for hundreds of years,
like in the Bible.
They must not have had cancer.
He gave me his knife, a two-bladed Case pocketknife,
sharp as hell, and Rudy showed me how to hold it,
in the fist, shiny steel on either side, and deadly.
I got drunk in celebration, showing it off and bragging
to the routine bar punks,
and Rudy took it away from me, while I wasn’t looking.
He also stole hash from me once.
Rudy told me a story about how he was taught to give gifts,
in his village, walking a long way until his auntie was home,
at the right time, not taking anything in return, and
so on.
I always felt like I didn’t know much about the basics.
Turns out I knew more than I thought I did, but I was given
the rare opportunity to learn more than one way.
On this blue moon, I am beset by these ghosts,
like Scrooge, like George Bailey.
The Gramercy Hotel documentary on Sundance is the right movie,
and maybe Manhattan is the right city.
I fled New York City for Santa Fe in the 80s,
escaped Bernie GETTZ and the GRUFFITI,
the 10 year-old panhandlers, and the piss stench.
It took 25 years of flirtations and interludes to fall in love with the City.
The turning point was the post-9/11 trip, when I applied to Yale MFA.
I visited Central Park and drew a massive woven form in the sand
of the baseball diamond, a bouquet of love, of grief.
I also answered the President’s corrupt call,
and spent money.
I entertained an art dealer in my suite at the Hyatt Grand,
held my own private art fair, ate at Frank, Nectarine,
visited Dumbo, which wasn’t much in the middle of the Chelsea exodus.
Wait.
I think I’m confusing several trips. It’s a problem with editing.
Rudy made me write this down: “I just heard on the news today
there are five billion people on the planet, now. Can you believe that?
Five billion people! You know what that means? For one thing,
your people don’t reproduce fast enough. The oppressed people
of the earth are fighting their oppressors, by reproducing faster
than their oppressors can kill them off. But think of it! Five billion!
Think of the possibilities for each man, the choices for each human being!
It boggles the mind.”
Now, according to the Census, world POP is 6,793,625,822
03:46 UTC (EST+5) Jan 01, 2010
… A New Year, and last night, Jesse the Body Ventura
uncovered the plot of the Super Class to reduce that population
to a measly 500,000,000. Well, that’s quite a DROP.
>
Now, I can see why someone would think the Transthesis is mad,
just another conspiracy theory… The Body & I agree on the eugenics trajectory
& the source of the conspiracy, more or less. But Marcel and Colors were the first
to hand me the Bircher book and the one about the Kennedy assassination.
What’s a kid supposed to do with that data?
They called Marcy “Kid” when he was a Hopi cop, or so he said. Marcy,
all those stories, once the whiskey started to flow on those flooded days,
like the one when Freddy blew a dart at the Carriage Trade to see if the dart gun
really worked, and it stuck in the wall just above some citizen’s head,
pfftt/boing, like a cartoon, and Marcel trying not to shit himself, or
the one when somebody paid a debt with a two-gallon gas drum
filled with hash oil, and we dipped our smokes in it - just the tips -
to throw off the narcs, hid in the mix to put some dummy away…
What was I supposed to do with Kenny Hilton’s .22? While my Python sat
in the safe, for the holster that never materialized? The spring-loaded holster
I designed for a shoulder quick-draw, that inspired Asher to name me “Killer,”
though I never killed no body…
Kenny’s gun was haunted, so I gave it back to Marcy, who expressed
disappointment, since another heir dropped out, like I guess he did,
but what do I know? When Dad came to town, long after Marcel had run
the check on him, to make sure I was legit, and we all gathered round
the table for a meal [was it the Ore House, too, or that French place?]
From one Green Beret to another, they paid their respects, though I never got
none of that til I sobered up, and even after there was the problem of
mistakes, and Frances was the worst, as go lost opportunities in the heir
business…
The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Tibetan one, one book
after another, filled with ghosts, shades of memories and memories,
all come true, now. Joan Suval put it best, when she salved my conscience,
explaining away my survivor’s remorse: “Don’t you see how proud they are
of you?” I waited til later, but I wept, which will probably dampen the ladies’
drawers, but WGAF! On a night like tonight, it don’t mean a thing.
Like the nights Marcy and I watched Full Metal Jacket and Platoon, and he laughed
in all the wrong places. Later that evening, with my back to his back, he drank
Herra Dura and cried. “There are at least five guys in here who will kill me,
if they can. You don’t move. You don’t take a piss. When I’m done, you drive me
home.” I couldn’t tell for sure who was who, and Marcy was too busy drinking and
crying to finger any of his enemies. He drove himself home, after we closed the
Pink Adobe down.
Marcy had a Grand Trine, and silver eyes, when he got pissed, which wasn’t all
that often, although you wouldn’t know it. He flashed me those eyes a few times,
I suppose, but he knew I loved him. He was a friend. After I sobered up, I would
drop by to see him now and then. Once he asked why I didn’t just knock him down
and take him with me to sobriety. I shook my head, and said, because the last time
four or five guys came into the shop to take him someplace he didn’t want to go,
they left on stretchers, or so the story goes. Eventually, death came, first.
I don’t know if this is a poem anymore. It was probably a last will and testament
to start with. No, I thought these guys were the coolest in the world. What did
I know? Now I don’t know that I was wrong.
