shift dance

clear child

marvelous

Eagle Rock was about as far as I could go but yet it felt far enough. Different enough for now, until I step off even further and change my world. Don’t know where that might be at the moment, or how it might be. I have ideas, who knows? So for now, Eagle Rock will do. Beautiful lights from a hilltop that could slide at any moment from a ripple underneath. City engineers and all concerned. Talk of elevations, excavations and evacuation that I simply won’t hear. I’m staying. No I won’t be caught be on the TV because my wife will see and come after me…with a cleaver. No I do not exist, not up here. That’s just not my life. I’m a renter. A subhuman sub-leaser. A transient. A strange dude passing through. If I have to and it all slides, I guess I’ll go‘long for the ride. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Like those poor folks in the south. Victims of cold fate and worse weather.

You can see The Rock across the sweep of hilltops from the termite-riddley deck, three hills over where  someday the freeway cuts through. There she is. Morning sun cresting over the face. Is it 9:30? Must be close…the eagle emerges from the stone. No, not as defined as she once was, weathering away eventually to featureless, but not gone yet. A beautiful morning to catch the Eagle in the shadows. Soon enough she’d be a bleached out ghost of herself, but this morning she soared from the stone face.

So why does the phone ring? WHY now? And who? It will wait. I slide the glass slider behind me to block the beckoning peal which reminds me, “Isn’t  Sutton pitching today?” 
It’s a day game, Business-Man’s Special. (It was a different time. Sexist? You bet. Old boy? Manly? You betcha.) Businessmen from the valleys and the south bay and oc met downtown and procured hooch and cooch in Chinatown, in dead daytime neon hotels baking in the mid day sun, windows open thin drape stand unstirred behind while couples stir behind those, Hot August with the Cubs in town. Now into the seventh inning their frisky business giving new meaning to the stretch. Catching the play-by-play on an RCA while rolling in the hay with some China babe, in case the wife should inquire about the botched double play in the bottom of the eighth when Lopes threw the ball away, beating the traffic to the 5 and clear sailing on out to Pacoima by dinner. “So how was the game?”

Great, except for a play in the bottom of the eighth blew the game

(in the midst of a blow job).

“The Lopes throwing error…”

“Is this my Mom’s gravy?” I say.

The phone again and I can not stay away:

“Marvy’s” gone missing.” Brubeck played in her background. I had no words, so I listened briefly, then she sobbed and brought me back to life and it’s eternal humbling . “A big gadgetron demo on the Miracle Mile…a comeback of sorts…but there is no gadgetron…never was.”

He probably got lost coming home, Netty.

 Never GOT there. Damnit! Hear me? Never got to sell what he didn’t have in the first place and never showed up where he was never scheduled to show up to display. Ask questions. Take some notes. He is missing believe me.

How’s his health? Med’s? Disortentation? Anything? …maybe Blackouts?

He is fit enough with the head and the heart to take public transit clear down to Marine World last month. The bones are bad, so he rides. Otherwise…? She shrugged, “He’d walk.”

Net’ I believe Marvy went to the day game at the Ravine. He’s a mingler and maybe he thought he could drum up some business. Allowing for transfers and all – a good hour and half to the stadium from the Westside. Bet that’s what’s up.”

If not, then Marvelous Marvin (MARVY MARV) man of a thousand gimmicks and gadgets was gone.

Netty’s big break in life (and it sure as hell wasn’t in my employ) was meeting Marvy. Marvy was the king of sling and he sure could sling it. Netty had stayed late one night at her humdrum job and took a dangerous stroll over to the Pantry for a late supper. Marvy had just left his Chevy in a lot down by the Coliseum, closing at ten as it did every night. Kismet, they met, two stools apart at the counter. He convince her she shouldn't be waiting for the bus at this hour, and she was charmed by his gentlemanly manner. He drove her home in the shiny new exec Impala, which tickled her fancy and curled her toes. I lost her that night, best secretary I ever had, but she was eternally happy until this moment, then she sobbed,

“He left the piece behind.” And she didn’t mean a pistola. Marvy was famous for his bad rugs. He figured he didn’t fool a soul so why spend ridiculous money and pretend, when he could go cheap and share the laugh and save the cash. He never left the piece behind. Never. I could now comprehend her concern. May Ling would have to wait.

ngl-cty-dst

Angel  (city)  Dust

Dry heat

 blown from desert crust

by santana’s  torrid gusts

stirs

noxious envy &ozoneanger

anxious rashlibido&inner (city) lust

the empty siren wails

 blows through windows

 curtains trail

flap like cattails

dusting decorator walls

from echoes canyon deep

like a victim’s final weep

down dark gilded halls

carpets seep

while the wealthy sleep

in luxury's keep

The devil’s menace slip and creep

No gravel’s crush

Nor  floorboard creak

But there the same.

……some bitchmother’s

Murderous freak…

with butcherous lust the blood he seeks

On …..Angel

City

dust.

beyond Jimmy-town

I ventured outside. It was gloomy. The sky the color of ashes. The light stifled like windows caked with soot.

“Don’t know if there will be a breakthrough today, so keep your wits about you and your mittens too”, mother chided just as I closed the door.

“I will, Mum,” I called back half up the walk, “I will!”

It was cold but I’d felt worse in my first decade, feeling so worldly and tempered by age. This was after all, my tenth winter, and those included two bad blizzards to boot. I knew what I was in for, I reckoned.

Buckroot waited down by the ferry dock. With the river now froze over, there’d be no ferry running though we could easily walk across to Jamison, but don’t tell, because Mum would never accept the notion. She was always 'fraid the ice would break and the cold river swallow us up like so many before. It was true, poor lads, but I had Buck and he could read the snap and crackle of the ice bed. I’m sorry those that perished did not.

Buck greeted me with a thump on the chest, which caused me to wheeze slightly, and him to laugh. “You ready for this journey?” he said in the deep tremolo of his native tongue.

“Have you ever known me not to be ready, Bucko?” I mocked him, and shot an elbow to his thigh, which might as well have been a birch for the hurt it inflicted me skinny arm.

“How’s the arm, then? Want to go back in, to Mum?”

I stopped rubbing, and locked at him cross. “The arm is fine, I just struck a bone.”

“Yeah, the funny bone…”

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Cause it made me laugh. Maybe you should arm wrestle.

Wazzat?

Men play it…boys too.”
“Men play a boys’ game?”

“Perhaps it’s the boys playing the men’s…”

“Men don’t play games. Men go on adventure and wars.”

“Men play a myriad of games, Nico. Some deadly, like war.”

“Why do you try to frighten me?”

“Simple truth. Fair warning. If the thought of that frightens you, Mum has a nice toasty fire a burnin’ and some warm shortbread, I’d wager.”

“Get on with it. We don’t got all day.”

“Who says? I say we got a lifetime of adventure ahead. Want to step out on the ice?”

“I thought you were leading this expedition!”

“Not  into oblivion, I ain’t. Too many boys gone under. I’ll stand here and watch you trek over to yonder shore.”

“Well, why not join Mum, in that case, and watch from yonder window, near the fireplace, while eatin’ me shortbread? Serve ya’ right, if I fall through.  You can tell Mum all about your big plans for adventure then. I bet she’ll be pleased.”

“You’d have me do that to yer Mum?”

“What kind of guide, sits back and watches?”

“An alive guide. Conversely, What sort of fool would wander where a guide would not?”

“A brave one!”

“The brave fool. You are right. Do you hear the sense in that title?”
“I do.”

“Fine. The bridge is only a short trudge up the creek, then it’s a safe walk over to Jimmy-town and what lies beyond.”

“You really thinking we’ll keep going?”

“We might.”

“Beyond Jimmy-town?!”

“We might. But not if we stand here discussing…be careful the banks are slick. Go slow…steady…do not rush the a journey, but partake in it instead. Step-by step. One wrong step the journey ends...”