Off To Rockaway – Full Speed Ahead

May 8, 2024 – 9:53 am

May 7
Seven months in New York
Like a marooned sailor
Like Richard Burton
The Nile explorer
On the beach in Trieste
Ships sailing away on the Adriatic
Burton going nowhere
Like me.

But
Today I stand on

A Wall Street Wharf
Not a hint of winter on the river
Spring
75
Sunny
I am
Catching the 12:17
To Rockaway.
Not many passengers aboard.
The ferry pulls out
Into the East River
On time.
12:17
Diesel engines reverse on the slack tide.

Full speed ahead
Past the tip of Battery Park
Across the Inner Harbor
Past the Statue of Liberty
Coasting between Brooklyn
And Staten Island
Under the Vertanzano Bridge
Into the Outer Harbor.
Calm waters
Barely a ripple.
Escape
Full speed ahead.

To the south
Between Breezy Point and Sandy Hook
The open ocean
The Atlantic spanning the horizon
Almost rising as a cliff
At the end of the world.
Calling me
Calling my blood
A siren song in my marrow. My family once sailors and whalers
Now landlubbers
I fell the pull
Down to the sea. Full speed ahead.

The ferry turns away from the ocean.
Into Jamaica Channel
Calm water
No escape.

Only one person on the beach
A few boaters fishing the tide.
Beneath the Gil Hodges Bridge.

My soul sings an ancient sea song.
The words lost three generations ago
My soul hums the shanty melody
We are meeting an old friend.

Not seen in seven months.
The Atlantic.

The captain slows the ferry
Docks without a bump
Smooth waters
Two score passengers off load
Some walk to the beach
I catch a bus to Riis Park
The nude beach.

Few people on the beach
I
Lie
Naked on the sand
The sun on my skin.

An ocean breeze off the shore break
Filling my lungs with longing
To be one with the sea
To float beyond the waves
To drift toward Montauk
Maine
Gaspe
Like someone from the Titanic
Arctic bound.
I get up
Walk into the shallow eddies
The sea North Atlantic cold

Waves
The music of the ocean
So good to hear
Rockaway Beach
The Ramones loved it here.
The Atlantic calls
From all points of eternity.

Seven months since my last swim In this sea
At this beach
Late October
Here
I strip nekkid
Stride into the sea.
Up to my ankles
Up to my knees
Up to my thighs
Brrrr
A wave licks at my groin
XXX cold.
The Atlantic wants me
Mermaid sirens sing
Be one on the current
Is the call of the wild.

I go no farther.
A man.
Alone is no match for the sea.
Even if your blood comes from the sea
A landlubber I be
For today
Tomorrow maybe not
The sea was is will always be there
Full speed ahead.

By Peter | Posted in Poetry, sea | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Roma – Winter – 1985

May 5, 2024 – 12:38 pm

In the winter of 1985 Tanino Liberatore and I traveled in his Fiat from Paris over the Alps into Italy. He was the famed cartoonist of RanXerox a powerful android robot, the love slave of the underage Lubna.

We had collaborated on a graphic comic aor bain-dessine and were bound to the Eternal City to pick up money from the Italian publishers. We rolled into Rome at night. The city slept under siege from the Red Brigades. Tanino sought out whores on the Via Veneto. They were not scared of un-toting Revolutionaries, having Albanian pimps.

Parking his Fiat Tanino went off into the bushes, while I sat guard in the car. After we went to a bar to score coke, then later crashed at his friends’ apartment to watch EVIL DEAD high on blow. That movie scared me straight.

The next day I wandered through Rome; the Vatican buying a stiletto, lunch at Mario’s by the Coliseum, then through the Senate ruins. Sunset up the Spanish Steps to the Hotel Farber for drinks, then back to party with Tanino.

The next day we drove to Pescara on the Adriatic to see his parents. We went to a freezing theater to watch porno.

We were monsters, but we were wicked when wicked meant something

By Peter | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

May 5, 1978 – East Village – Journal

May 5, 2024 – 9:54 am

Kim, her sister Kyle, and I walked from their apartment on Bleecker Street in a heavy evening rain. The gutters swiftly swelled with the run-off. At Broadway Kim announced that she is having her first period after her abortion. The cramps are killing her, but she said, “I’ll feel better after a drink.”

We carried a pint bottle of vodka to avoid paying for drinks at CBGBs.

I saw a young man on the sidewalk. He was soaked to the bone and I recognized Kim’s admirer. Barry Miller, an actor from SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. His character jumped off the Verrazano Bridge. He was hopelessly in love with Kim, who ignored him, until he said, “You should kidnap me, the MGM will pay the ransom.”

“Only if I get to beat you up. It has to look real.” I was annoyed at his joining us and Kyle said, “Yeah, maybe we could get $20,000 for you.”

“I’m worth more than that.”

You’re no John Travolta.” Kim loved the star of the disco movie. “Plus kidnappers always get caught.”

“How much money you have on you, Barry?”

“A couple of hundred.”

“Perfect, then you can finance the kidnapping.”

Kim, Kyle, and I discussed leaving cryptic notes telling the studio how we were torturing their ‘star’.

“We can cut off an ear lobe.” Just like the Italian gang did to Jean Paul Getty’s grandson.

“I’m not paying you to cut off my ear.”

“It’s just an left lobe. It’s not like you wear earrings.”

“You’re all crazy.” He flagged down a taxi. He was off to the Plaza. Alone. Maybe someone would recognize him there.

We reached CBGBs and sat against the wall. Kim poured drinks underneath the table. The Ramones came on last. They were great. I got a little drunk and we decided to not kidnap Barry.

“Not a chance,” protested Kim. “I could stand him for more than a few minutes.”

“So it’s off.”

“Maybe.”

All of us like maybes.

Especially at CBGBs.
LATER

Alice told me about a date.

“You went out with someone else?”

“You said you didn’t want to go to the David Bowie Concert and someone invited me.”

“Who?”

“That guy we were walking with the other night.”

I recalled a roundish young man with a hooked nose, who had defended Bowie.

No competition, but she broke off the conversation to be at a function for a goodbye to her senior year away from Ohio.


LATER


Walking etiquette.

I hate people with umbrellas. They’re always trying to poke out your eyes, as they blindly strolled down the sidewalk. I was walking with Bruce down Christopher Street. He had come down from Boston for a weekend of sin on the Hudson docks. I shoved one man out of the way.

“I can’t take this. Someone is going to blind me. In feudal days the right of way was determined by might. Everyone got out of the path of a King. The Aztec monarch Montezuma’s servants cleared the ground of any stones whenever he alit from his litter. Cortez was impressed by this.”

“So impressed that he destroyed the Aztec empire.”

“Back then people respected their betters and did so until the revolution of the last few centuries. Now everyone thinks they’re just as good as anyone else. There are no rules. It’s a democratic free-for-all of the masses.”

“So you’re better than everyone elseThe only time they stand aside is if your big or mean.”

“I step aside for cripples and women, but sometimes for men too and I curse myself for that and the next time a man tries to get into my space I will become an unmovable object.”

“Yes, Mr. Nice Guy.”


LATER

The letters to Libby have returned without any forwarding address. The blonde has vanished into New York or elsewhere. We only fucked twice in Boston. Neither of us knew the other.


LATER


I have a sharp pain in my side. So bad it doubles me over.


LATER


Alice feels nice to sleep with. I will miss her, when she returns to Ohio for graduation, and told her that with tears in my eyes. Alice said, “I feel so helpless when you cry.”

I said nothing about myemotions, but she sometimes feels, as if she’s being tested and unfairly by me. Maybe it’s better to let her go into the theater world to a future she knows is see coming, but why would I want to leave someone I love.

Because I’m fucked up.


FOR FREEDOM

The Rolling Stones are almost 40
Russia is stagnant
America repressed
The Beatles are dead
So is Hitler
But I am alive
Running for shelter is useless
Nuclear bombs destroy everything
And death comes so fast.
A flash.
Before you hear
Before you see
Before you feel
Ending the Atomic Age
And I couldn’t care less,
Because all I want is a white-on-white Cadillac before I go.

By Peter | Posted in East Village, fame, journal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Cinco De Mayo

May 5, 2024 – 9:02 am

Fifteen years ago my brother-in-law and I left the cabin on Watchic Pond. My sister remained in the kitchen prepping for lunch. The bright spring sun had heated the morning and the thermometer nailed to a tall pine read 72F. Our task, putting in the dock in the lake in early May. The water temperature hovered around 62 and the sunny air was a warm 72 for Southern Maine. David and I waddled into the water with trepidation, but it wasn’t so bad once we passed our waists.

Coming out both of us shook from the long immersion in the cold water. My sister ordered us to take hot showers and we obeyed her command. When we returned to the kitchen two margaritas were waiting on the table.

“Happy Cinco de Mayo.” My sister was a big believer in national and international holidays.

“Viva Juarez.” I raised my salt-rimmed glass to clink a toast.

“Why Juarez?” My brother-in-law smacked his lips. The rims of margaritas were tangy with lemon.

“Juarez led a revolt against the Catholic conservatives and in 1861 declared a moratorium on debt payments to Britain, Spain, and France, which had supposedly loaned the previous government over $52 million, but actually only had issued $1.2 million in actual money. Juarez protested that firstly the loan was made to a deposed government and secondly that the amount had been infaltion by surious interest. The family of the French Emperor owned the paper on this debt and Napoleon III convinced England and Spain to defend its claims.”

“How do you know this?” David was always suspect of my stories.

“I was a history minor in college.” Those courses had been my only As.

“Sounds like that could happen to America now.” My sister taught finance at a college in Boston. Sovereign debt was crushing countries across Europe and her students were buried under credit card bills and student loans.

“England tried to force Iceland to pay the debt of its banks and the Icelanders kicked out the government. The banks punished Iceland by closing all the McDonalds. In 1862 France sent an invading army and installed a Habsburg emperor. The imperial army Juarez forces toward Mexico City. On May 5th the Mexicans stopped running at Puebla and fought French troops twice their size under the command of their 33-year-old Mexican Commander General, Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin. They achieved a great victory and thereafter have celebrated Cinco de Mayo.”

“Let me guess.” David was enjoying his margarita. “The French sought revenge for this defeat.”

“How well you know the French.”

“Second guess. It ended badly.”

“After several defeats, the French deserted Mexico. Maximilian I was offered exile, but he wanted to be emperor and loved Mexico. He executed by Juarez, ending the foreign intervention and Cinco de Mayo was important to the USA, since the Mexicans stopped the French from supplying the Confederates with arms.”

“Cinco de Mayo.” We clinked glasses again and my sister began to fix another batch of drinks.

I liked mine with salt.

We weren’t going anywhere.

“E me gusto en ninguna parte.”

By Peter | Posted in 19th Century, history, Liberty, War | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Pollice Verso by Jean-Leon Gerome

May 5, 2024 – 2:24 am

“He vows to endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword.” Petronius (Satyricon, 117)

By Peter | Posted in Art, history, War | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)