Tag Archives: Lying Meat

Aug 19 2014
Activism, Books, Excerpt, literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Protest

Anger

They’re shipping knock-offs to Haiti.
(They forgot to send me.)

Somewhere across the ankles of the Atlantic beneath a sign for second-floor SUVs and torn up pink-slips, un-housed and dispossessed eyes peer through the gates that protect the imposter goods.
Officials cringe
when the boys
eyeball
the sneakers
that fell from their boxes like frozen feet that had been cut off and tossed out the back of the truck, sprinkling the broken boulevard like raindrops on an ice cream cone.
A cop lobs fake Nikes at a pensive boy with a Veteran’s limp and oversized coat. He laughs as the boy hops home with two left shoes and the cluster of police cruisers split into a compass of blazing sirens
each car
thinking he was the
North Star.

A red scarf emerged from the dispersing crowd.

This crimson-caped man’s
mad-dog
hands
clutched the air around him in freak-spasm night.
He lost his shoulder and dropped his jaw foaming at the mouth:
And a sound fell like a flame that had been fanned from the deep well of an executioner’s oven.

Ship.
Me.
To.
Haiti.

And the
blisters on the balls
of his feet
cut through the thick rubbers he wore and eventually rooted him into an eternity far beyond slums or beaten down blocks or inner city apathy.

Ship.
Me.
Or.
Shoot.
Me.

His fingers crawled like worms sprouting over a dead soldier’s bayonet. His scarlet fever snapping in the breeze like a matador. He waited to rotate in the barrels of the city’s finest. He just hoped their bullets would be as bright as he was.
An old woman shook her head and said to her husband, “That boy is crazy. Too much anger. Ain’t gonna bring em nothing. Bad for the heart”, she said.
He blew a kiss as they whisked by into their steeple.
He’d never be this again: a tsunami in the drone of the limping ghetto night.

For blood
is less likely
to boil
as we
get older.

…So I ask you have we truly hit the end, the rusted sediments, the ancient depositories of whales long dead and barnacles who swamped and sucked to stay alive?
Just a school of fish trembling, tremoring, and trying maybe that’s all we are: A school of fish, doomed.

Maybe we’re all madmen in scarlet scarves
knowing that shadows don’t lurk or loom
they simply stop being,
cease to follow
when there is nothing but stagnant air and a muffled heartbeat that barely brushes against the skin.
Deep schadenfreude
high as the cotton of a Mississippi nightmare

Ever seen a house on fire in the distance?
You know what every man is thinking?

“How beautiful that fire burns.
I’m just glad it’s not my house.”

(c) 2009, 2010 – from “Lying Meat & other poems beneath the Oil” by Dennis Leroy Kangalee

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Jan 29 2014
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Activism, Animal Rights, Essay, Film, Journalism & Documentary, Protest, Video

Cows Don’t Choose Their Butchers: Profiling Shaun Monson

Earthlings was narrated by Joaquin Phoenix

Earthlings was narrated by Joaquin Phoenix

“There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil…”
— Walter Lippman

Art/activism has no teeth. We don’t bite into people’s souls or brains. And we need to.

Shaun Monson, director of the documentary film Earthlings is an excellent example of this as far as journalism is concerned and, frankly, in terms of art as a revolutionary force. He seems to be a genuine, no-holds-barred social explorer who has revealed something so horrible, so vile that he makes dramatic filmmakers who supposedly explore “dangerous” and “taboo” subjects in their narrative movies — seem tame, perfunctory, and stale. Earthlings’ ugliness invites your soul in…and it makes one confront himself. It forces man to look at himself, it holds a true mirror up to nature and reveals every scabrous sore, boil, and blemish our soul contains. Earthlings not only depicts the horror human beings inflict on animals (food industry, circus’, clothing, etc.) — it is a grossly disturbing portrait of who WE are. It is the real Picture of Dorian Gray pulled out of the wardrobe and held under the sun. The terrifying footage collated here rivals anything by Chris Marker in its political urgency and is more intense and searing than anything Oliver Stone or Darren Aronofsky could have produced. But this film is even simpler than that: it is a humane movie with a humane purpose. Anyone who eats commercially produced meat from slaughterhouses after this needs to not get their heads checked…but their soul.

Earthlings makes Michael Moore’s “political documentaries” look like what they are: ironic, safe-distant, finger pointing cartoons. Jokes.

He is a man of commerce. Monson is a man of passion.

Earthlings is like an Animal Rights’ Native Son, in the sense that it seeks to destroy preconceptions, fantasies, and false views. (Read Richard Wright‘s introductory note on the writing of Native Son — his intention was to make racists fall to their feet, choke themselves — if not the book itself. He failed. He didn’t want his book to be “liked,” he wanted the proponents of racism to be stunned into having a soul…) Earthlings attempts to do this – resulting in its status as possibly the hardest film anyone will ever have the privilege of watching. And it is done with the fervor, insistence, and hope that Sue Coe imbues her paintings and illustrations of animal abuse and human depravity. Coe wants to reach out and bend your spleen. So does Monson’s documentary. And we need this now more than ever.

I don’t know of many contemporary popular films or works of music that do this. Poetry, although no longer even published on the underground as it was 40 years ago, still does it. Painting, too. Because of their personal approaches, but film and drama has no rancor or liberating spirit. Because it wants too many awards.

May our teeth be steely and vigilant in the shallow flesh of man’s brain! And may the artist/truth seeker take center stage again in our culture’s exploration of itself. We are there, folks, underneath your blankets.
We live with you, we know how far the shadows stretch and it is our mission to not only measure the crawling darkness across the floor, but the growing shallow end of the pool marked “humanity.”
It was just 6 centuries ago when the water fell…
The sadism reared it’s ugly head for a great big bite with the decimation of the Indian and its folly fell into blinding glee with the last days of chattel slavery.

But it still exists as the lynch-pin and the base of all our constructions.

And I myself, ignorant and complicit, am guilty of contributing to its tower. But wake-up calls are not about making one feel guilty, they are much worse: they are about making one change one’s life.

You must ask yourself: What do you eat? Why do you eat it? Where does your food come from? And how can we allow the suffering and torture of millions of living creatures to go on so that we can “eat”? Call it muckracking, revolutionary art, propaganda, Hippie-agitation, Vegan-psychosis, whatever the hell you want to label Earthlings and the energy it will, inevitably, bring up. But one thing for sure is this: there is not one person on the planet who can or should turn a blind eye to what we are doing to the animals of our planet, the environment, and ourselves.

Take it from me, folks. There’s no proselytizer like a convert. As a former meat-eater, I can admit and understand the unwillingness to look at what we are actually doing to animals. I lied about it for many years. It wasn’t until I wrote and released “Lying Meat,” a collection of poems and meditations on the nature of man’s cruelty and hypocrisy (including my own) that I was able to fully develop and allow my consciousness to expand: I had to point the finger at myself. Man lies to himself every day, in fact — he must, to a certain degree. If he didn’t he’d never have the ability to function past twelve o’clock noon. But to continue this charade is to perpetuate the system of torture and mind-control that institutions forcibly instill. How many white people knew very well what was still happening to blacks in the United States in 1950 but did nothing about it? How many white people knew about lynchings that were being committed against other human beings and did nothing? How many blacks did nothing? How many men know about rape but cease to take action and confront the perpetrators or at least try to be more responsible and try to evoke a more progressive outlook in their son’s eyes by? This would at least help fight some of the misogyny in our life, no?

Well, I urge every meat eater alone — just the meat eaters — to take a step back and watch this film. We need to start somewhere, but don’t you, dear reader, feel as if man is doomed to always having to “re-invent the wheel?” What is wrong with us?

I don’t write this as an insistence to be angry. I write this as an insistence to be sad. Very very sad. Mourn not for what we may do to the animals on this planet, but what we do to our own innate sense of right and wrong. Because while man has found its way, very conveniently, to try to justify such an abomination such as slavery or genocide — we know seek to spit and chew on the remains of our corrupted human soul by applying these pathological defenses to everything: supporting politicians, war, drones, insurance companies, bank bailouts, racism, sexism. Even child abuse. So I urge you to mourn for the human spirit that may never be what we want it to be. Be honest with yourself so you can be honest with your world. Earthlings has reminded me of this. It is a true “soul” film — as in a movie that has soul and encourages the inner reflections of a writhing soul.

As we have a tremendous catalog of “soul music”, perhaps we need “soul cinema” (regardless of religion or political affiliation — which is all a mirage at the end of the day, a convenient way for man to delude himself and NOT take responsibility). True expressions of the soul is what art is anyway Whatever makes us feel and reflect has soul. True journalism and activism makes us act. And while action will only take place when a boiling point has been reached, it can never occur unless the soul has been awakened. That is why revolutions shock — because they are the results of the spirit finally breaking free. The people in power don’t believe that “the people” are actually in touch with…themselves. They are shocked when they “feel” their oppression. This is implicit in our society, our phony intellectual NY Times East Coast Liberal Arts Collegiate bullshit. They preach: sympathy, but not empathy. They encourage “thinking” but not “feeling” — making the dangerous assumption that they are not one and the same.

I applaud Shaun Monson. I admire his talent, but it was his unfettered ability to see this project through. And it is the un-popular underdog who often has the biggest impact. Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, John Brown, Thoreau, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman — these are just a small handful of names of Americans who have taken risks to bring truth and justice and humanity to light. With the death of Pete Seeger and Amiri Baraka within the first month of 2014, Monson has reminded me that truth and creativity and determination are not dead, are not museum pieces — but living breathing concepts in the air. But it ain’t easy. And it is getting harder and harder to connect to people, to engage in dialogue, to engage in dialectics, to even…cut through our own sheer stupidity.

Monson’s film is hard-hitting and not easy to take. But “no pain, no gain” — that applies to art as well as athletics. Frederick Douglass said if there’s no struggle then there is no progress. Well at this moment we must struggle within ourselves and at ourselves — without a vanity mirror. We can learn a lot about our savagery by watching Earthlings. More importantly, if you are still able to feel or think in this 21st Century Circus, Earthlings will encourage you to never give in to apathy or vulgar commercialism and sadistic violence. Three things the corporations of the world and our own United States Government want us to not only accept — but believe in.

Shame on us all.

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Sep 19 2013
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Books, Poetry

I Wasn’t Shocked When I Heard The Congresswoman Had Been Shot

I don’t know why but my heart sank when I read he’d used the term Ad Hominem.

On the bus, in the grave, below a lunchroom doorway or within the scheme of park — a part of me rustled. I watched his face on the screens above the mildew & steam rising from the machines, I missed the rinse cycle but didn’t care & my eyes were hurt and glossed and I couldn’t make out the fuzzy framed picture on the TV.

All I could do
was fold
& smooth
the edges of
my underwear,
smell the fabric of the toothen-caved-towel
& just mumble to myself that it’s all going to pass
cause it always does
But a part of me felt a little like a cheat,
a doused bunny who’d gotten away,
a mouse in a big house,
a tangle cherry-tree
still standing after the storm.

A part of me felt for him in a way I probably shouldn’t and I wondered what I would have done had I really known him, had I been his friend once or his enemy, his neighbor, or his bandmate, his dealer, his girlfriend, his mother, his father.
And I recalled my own self-important blues and irritating holler of my twenties, my unhinged moments of lucidity, my righteous breakdowns, my challenge of truth, my call to arms…But I was certain my shrill-shrill call was no false alarm, my anger not bitter hatred, my contempt not imaginary — but valid.

“He’d read Orwell & Huxley.”
Who hadn’t?
He was just probably the only one who understood it.

He read Mein Kampf.
Not David Lerner’s poem, but the book by the man who came to be known as the face & name of the twentieth century, the man single-handedly credited for inciting the zeitgeist, the man who made pop culture.

“There isn’t one brilliant mind on this planet who hasn’t read that book,” a college professor explained. “No one cared enough to help this lad as he was making his way down the crooked stairwell of sanity…everyone apparently was aware of his psychological demise or his mental sickness – “

Was it because they smelled just as bad?
If you’re both wearing the same cologne, how can you tell who’s sweat is filling the air?

Rhetoric doesn’t kill.
Apathy does.
And if betrayal is a mother fucker,
Denial is an assassin who will work for deferred pay –
But when he collects it is not currency he will want,
It is complicitness.

I have just one idea, let’s play a game:
Lets play the numbers game – I’m getting into that one now, I’m an American after all.
Nine years old? She was just nine years old?

I got you beat by 2 years just some months before: she was 7 years old murdered by police.
Who mourns for Aiyana Jones?

*

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Sep 14 2013
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Books, literature, Poetry

A Loser Can Surely Find Time For Love

Poison 42 - A Loser Can Surely Find Time For Love (Dennis Leroy Kangalee) by Nina Fleck
Before that I thought I was just another waking asphalt animal perched on his shaky brick-limb trying to do what it is that rats do to stay alive.

The rats are the true underground.

Hamptons in Harlem.
Condos creeping.
My belly is torn asunder.

They’ve pulled apart the letters of alphabet city.
Don’t mind me–it’s just my feet are getting wet and I never realized I could swim. The Mets are Citibank pets in steel cages.
Plastic surgeons from the west coast have brought their palm trees with them, they’ll be importing the rest of the emptiness later.
They’re sending me to the outbacks, the caves in the dunes where books meet man and clean hands are an ideal to achieve.


Losers
Like Loners
Make the
Best
Lovers.
They have so much to give.

They don’t need me here. Give me my apocalypse and ship me out soon.

I am not sure how long I can carry this battery.

*
originally published in the Lower East Side BOOG City poetry journal, Summer 2012
& included in the chapbook “Lying Meat”

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Sep 12 2013
1 Comment
Books, Excerpt, Fiction, literature, Poetry Quote

Lying Meat


There is a risk
in knowing
trusting
and believing
the eyes in your head
and the voice in your heart…

…The feeling
that crawls
along the wall of your
spleen
underway
inside your mind
the decay
of a possibility.…

that lying meat is proven right with each and every passing day their structures stand and balance the board of the hollow man’s wet-dream
A scoreboard for the insurance man
A loose noose so the stock trader can’t hang himself
(Not that he’d want to/No he’s made the bet against the hands that tied the mesh together/In fact he owns the machine)
All hail the robotic father and forsaken son beaten into the sand of the King Tut exhibition where they’ll teach you to walk like an Egyptian for a special price but think like an Angry Saxon on his way home from the yards teeth tongue and dripping waiting in the mouth
Below there are about a million suckers who’ve reached the end of their lollipop
Each of them a Joe Stack in between the sheets of their mind sheets of the sound sheets of a lonely woolen brain tired of trying and nervous about what it all meant
Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide,
but sheep know when it is time to raise the b-b-b-baahh…

Not sure where that leaves us

Do we have hope?
(What’s hope – but nope with more hair!)
Hope has been AWOL since 1492 and returned briefly somewhere in between the Beatles and Martin Luther King
NY and Alabama
A porter’s camera and freshly painted theater that still smelled like a barn and had a few drops of sweat left behind by Max Roach or a sari that had just been ripped and was struggling to break free of its curry and dog eared ruffles

O-bomb-a reappraised hope and made off with a hefty sum
Not sure where it exactly got him
But i know for a fact that he sleeps well at night

Glad somebody does


There’s a bleeding termite inside
each of us
what was once sawdust
is now
the backbone
of an African chief
a winded Viking
an Indian sermon
once gazed upon
before the dollar made its move.

*
— from the 2011 chapbook, “Lying Meat & Other Poems Beneath the Oil”

Lying Meat

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Aug 16 2013
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Entertainment, Humor, literature, NYC, Poetry, satire, spoken word, Story, Theater & Performance, War

All The Smart People I Know Don’t Have Children

villagedamned[1]

What would they do with them?

Happily murder and warp and pervert them into three legged jungle gym monsters, putrid little hyenas on hind legs with credit cards and shoot em up with knowledge of stocks and bonds and baseball averages and when to say which curse word & when not to?

Who has time for this?

Even scarier: Who wants time for this?

Can’t we fix the crooked sign above the altar first?  Clean up some shop a bit, kick a little ass & get the crooked rooked regogos out first??

Can’t we at least let all the children who are children be children first & let them grow up before we implore & ingratiate this planet with more fucking kids??

Can’t we give it a rest, just sterilize maybe two or three billion males for a generation or so.  Wouldn’t you want to be able to make love & not worry?  Don’t you miss sexual abandon?  Wouldn’t it be nice to not care?  You could feed the starving babies & we could all take time to get to know one another…That’s a lot of work, isn’t it?

Or are you that egotistical that you need to spill your own seed?

(“It’s not that I dislike children – it’s what they might become. If I had to bear witness to my child’s lack of success I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it. I barely handle my own.”)

*

My greatest fear would be to have to explain to my child how to lie.  I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it.  I mastered it early, by observing the sweltering pain & bile festering in my parents’ eyes.

And now children take to these masks like an inchworm making its way across the Last Leaf.

Birth.

Money.

Talk.

Money.

Family.

Money.

Walk.

Money.

School.

Pool.

Summer camp.

Satan, Santa

Blue Jean crews.

High School.

College.

MONEY.

MONEY.

MONEY.

Madness. Sheer madness. That’s all it is…I sometimes wake up from a deep-sleep & ask myself “Is this all worth it?” Then I ask “What the hell IS this?” And I can’t make sense of the sloppy eyes & dumb mouths carving out slings to wear upon their hearts

& all I think is “There were no slings for hearts when hearts beat & bled or bowed & stood” And I ask the College boy who just got home last summer–I ask him when I pass him and his girlfriend on the stoop: “You ready, College boy?” “For what?” “For all THIS.  You ready?” And he doesn’t answer. And my heart (which never had an aspirin nonetheless a sling) twists for this kid and his doe-eyed girlfriend tugs at him begging for an answer

& I try to send a message but my lashes aren’t long enough & she mistakes my popping sockets for some wild-eye battle cry

& now I have to break the cool & say straight out (cause no one knows how to READ anybody anymore): “He’s got time to answer.  And when he can’t–he’ll figure it out.  Just don’t beat him up about it.  Learn the word ‘Tragedy’ first, and understand that we’re just here to be abused. Walk in the direction of oncoming traffic & always be kind to a lame horse.  For if you’re as sensitive as he is–they’ll get rid of you, too…it just may not be as quick. If it is–they will not forgive the man who’s quick to dis-assemble.”

She shies me away, He doesn’t look in my eye–so he missed it when I rubbed out all the pennies declared and the sleep that will not go away.  “This is important,” she says, and she turns up the volume on their computer screen to watch the latest News Crawl…

“No need for drugs anymore. All you have to do is turn on the TV.   Although I doubt you’ll learn as much about yourself.”

In truth, I didn’t know what to say.  She was cute & reminded me of my first crush, he was lanky and awkward and prettier version of how I might have looked at eighteen with a Caesar and basketball hands.  He was being sent to Tennessee in two days.  From there, he’d go into Iraq.  He was old enough to be my son.  Once he even tried to act like one – he knocked on the door & asked my Lady if he could ask me some questions about Shakespeare since I “speak so good,” & could I help him with his term paper?

My Lady was right not to tear out his delusion from such watery eyes & she said of course I’d help & I’d be only a few minutes & she coerced me into spilling my guts to the kid about crying havoc & letting slip the dogs of war – without mentioning of course that I was unemployed, non-degreed, &  increasingly un-published.  “But you write a mean business letter,” she teased, “and it’s not that no one will publish you – it’s that no one knows what to do with you”.

She definitely knows how to get me moving, that’s for sure.

I helped the kid with his paper – it was on Lear, not ancient Rome, but it didn’t matter – his future was so far off & away from our water-damaged ceilings and tiny kitchen, it wouldn’t have made a difference how many fancy metaphors or how colorful my language was in expounding on Shakespeare’s tragedies.   This sorrow was much greater & deeper & stranger.

“Mr. Kangaleri,” he said – as if I was some Italian Indian who could not speak English – “Mr. Kangaleri, I want you to know I appreciate your help…You…you do a lot…for me.”  He paused more than Brando & for a moment I thought this kid’s got something.  He’s got something.  But whatever he had…he was going to spill out over Iraq.  I wondered about his parents.

His mother was a sexy thing – her black-gray hair reminded me of a vanilla-chocolate swirl on an ice cream cone & I always smiled dumbly when I saw her.  My Lady & her traded secrets & beauty tips & sometimes Astrology books.  She dated a lot and eventually settled on some jerk who told the kid he had two choices: “Eat or be eaten.”

I would have told him he had at least three: “You can be in the fight.  Watch the fight.  Or produce the fight.”     I was still trying to figure out which hole I was in, sometimes it was all three.  But at least it meant I was alive, no? Then it dawned on me: no, the only options are the ones you make for yourself.  You didn’t have to join or fight anyone’s battle – your life itself is a battle.  You don’t need to look for a ring to get into, you are a ring!

I assured the boy he could be whatever he wanted as long as he had some passion.  As long as he had a yearning to be free.

That word fell out of my mouth so many times that morning my Lady started to get suspicious.  “Stop it, “ I assured her.  “Freedom is all we got locked deep down inside of us,” I explained to him,” it’s right there next to love, hate, & fear. And you can get thrown out into the field with the scent of one of them and that will determine who follows you, which hellhound will be blazing your trail.”

This scared him.  Although I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that, in the end, freedom was an abstraction.  And none of us knew it cause none of us ever had it.   “Your grandparents understand freedom.   Cause they remember what it was like when they still had to fight for it.  The more aware you are of what you can’t do and the more outraged you become – the clearer freedom is.”

*

The next day his mother’s boyfriend stepped to me & he made it clear my “terrorism” was not appreciated.

He handed me back the books I gave to the boy for his graduation – a well thumbed 1983 edition of Brave New World – which he held out like a bug infested mattress – and the Encyclopaedia Africana – which he said was too heavy for a boy to lug around & anything he needed to know he could look up online & besides he was “Puerto Rican” and “not Black” & he didn’t want to confuse the kid any more than he was.    He leered at me sideways & then said, almost proudly, “that’s the book that kid read before he shot the Congresswoman in Arizona.  I don’t want my kid carryin’ that shit, you know I’m sayin?  That’s like Hitler or something right?”

I had no clue what this man was talking about.  And when I closed the door I realized how sad it was that all the smart people I know don’t have children.  But who could blame them?  How could you compete with these creatures taking over.  It was men like him you’d have to contend with at PTA meetings or baseball games or god forbid if your kids got into a fight.

*

Frederico died eighteen months later.  He was blown apart in Iraq.  Accidentally killed by his own unit.  His body was shipped back to Washington Heights where his mother used all his medals as icons to decorate her front door.  Stupid woman.

My Lady showed me a letter Frederico had written for my birthday, shortly before he was killed:

Dear Mr. Kangeleri,

Hope you & Mrs. Kangaleri are doing well.  Happy Birthday to you!  I took your advice and have begun laughing whenever I say Happy Birthday!  You’re right – it makes it easier to swallow, less silly if you just laugh it out and celebrate yourself or your friends by yelling “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” 

My birthday was last month and my two best friends, both pilots as well, agreed with me that we could do just about anything if we’d stop accepting and questioned the bigger picture.  But I’ll be honest, I have no regrets joining the Army but I do concede that it’s showed me that there’s more to life than picking up a gun or attaining a medal or getting promoted or defending a flag.  And the name itself “Armed Forces,” implies a shortsighted, almost limp explanation of what and who we are. 

I want to help.  Not be an armed force.

They keep reminding me that I’m not here to enhance my understanding of Ethics, but when you are flying over a holy city and all you hear are the sound of a million plus voices chanting & praying to their God, you know that there is something deeper.  You told me once you were a failed artist and that you could not give me sound advice cause you had no money and not attained much – but do you remember what you said before I left for basic training?  You said you were so far of the radar, that no critics would even review your work cause you had no demographics.  And you said you were a writer, not a Newsman, and that half your success as an individual was knowing this.  The other half was meeting a woman and falling in love with such a beautiful entity as your wife.   You said Mrs Kangaleri was your Pulitzer.  Well, for several days, even weeks – I mulled that over in my head, and I let your words wash over my brain. 

Flying over those souls as they lay in devotion to a God I’ll never see or understand made me realize what you meant when you first told me to read Shakespeare and Neruda and Langston Hughes or Kafka and then fall in love.  You told me a Man should have the experience of having the hairs on the back of his neck stand and a soft ache in his heart at the same time.  You said a man sees clearer when this happens, you mentioned freedom, and perception…You made me laugh cause you said these experiences were rare – like getting a woman to reach orgasm or making the perfect cup of coffee or creeping up behind cat without them noticing you or just observing the splendor and pride in the early morning sun.   I remembered all these things you said.  Well, I did not find my Mrs Kangeleri (yet!) but I am hoping I have time.  You told me I should not even think about marriage until I was at least 40.

But I did attain one portion of your assignment:

I felt the hairs on my neck stand…and I understood the promise and the pain of all that a writer struggles to express.  And I got that flying over Cairo.   In some way, it was like coming home. 

I am not sure where this war will lead or how it will end.  I am no longer angry for joining, yet I am ashamed at how ignorant I was before.  Is it wrong to feel that these people here or more my own people than my family or friends in New York or in the United States? 

I think I’m going to be a writer.   Aren’t there a bunch of writers who started off in the military? 

(Hey it could be worse: I could have become a police officer!)

Enjoy your birthday old man!

Frederico Luanta

I cried like a baby when I read this letter.  One night I came home late and ran into Frederico’s mother’s asshole-boyfriend.  He couldn’t look me in the eye and a part of me was waiting to see if he’d say anything cause I was looking for a fight.  The landlord fucked me on the heat, our bathroom still had molding and water leaking from the ceiling, the kitchen sink still overflowed when these spoiled brats upstairs decided to play Suburbs and use a washing machine IN THEIR KITCHEN.

Yeah, I was already on edge & looking for a fight, a razzled-dazzled gleaming bird of steel and blood was lurking in my chest, for several weeks my Lady was calling me “Jekyll AND Hyde” literally…I was on the move and I felt like the incredible Hulk when this sorry piece of human flesh slimed right by me.  I wanted to show the ingrate the letter his woman’s son wrote to me, I wanted to show him how beautiful and soulful this young warrior truly was, but I didn’t say a word.  “Lady Kangaleri” would have been proud, she told me later I had to stop wasting my energy on those types of people.  Frederico’s mother was not so hot anymore herself.

Her looks had left – I mean fled, and her capacity to talk and think and maneuver seemed greatly diminished.

*

When her boy died, she kicked out her Romeo and flew back to Puerto Rico.  Rumor had it that she had killed herself. I would have if I were her.  On second thought, I would have killed that jerk she was fucking for the past 5 years – that sorry sad demon who screwed up her son – and then I would have killed myself.

But she didn’t.  After 6 months in the Caribbean, she came back rested, warmer, 13 pounds lighter, and looked a day older.  She had a nine-year old brat with her who never ever once looked up to say hello when she passed.

When I asked her who the kid was, she said she was her “heart.”  (“she’s my heart, my new duende – isn’t she beautiful?  I told my brother let me bring her to New York for a minute and see if she could do some modelling.  She’s like Julia Roberts!”)

She then said she was going to open a Tarot Reading business.  She said she got a message from Frederico telling her to do this for America.

This is why all the smart people I know don’t have children.

Who would they play with?

 

 

A slightly different version was originally published in Lying Meat & Other Poems Beneath the Oil (2011)

 

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Aug 15 2013
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