Bleecker Street: A Cobblestones Throw

 

Greasy slurry seeps out and onto this spit and piss asphalt.

 

Asphalt - that hides ancient cobblestones. Cobblestones, worn with fish juice, puke, spoilt milk, blood, rat s**t, dog s**t, human s**t and envy; that heavy rains can never wash clean; those stains of its solemn purgatory.

Oh, but when it does rain, how sweet those counterfeit images appear. Wet bricks of rich reds, brown, pinks, beiges, ruby red, blood red, dragon red, fire red; all created in order to frame the black high gloss stretch that is, Bleecker.

I could live here among these friendly strangers, Dylan’s vagabonds, (Bob not Thomas) these fine animals who tear and eat at souls’ flesh on this night of all hallows �" these outsiders who live inside out.

Taking pictures of a skinny building squeezed into the corner of Lafayette �" Discovering a book left abandoned or forgotten, Sri Iso-panisad, his divine grace A.C. Bhak-ti-ve-danta Swami Prab-hupada founder of Acarya of the international society for Krishna consciousness.

Was it planted there for me? Did my soul bring it forth? The only knowledge I have of Krishna is the Hare Krishna that used to engulf airports adorned in robes and tambourines; and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”

Maybe it’s a sign, as I lifted it off a news rack and stuffed it in my sack.

Passed Two Boots for a slice then onward to the Yippie number 9, oh how fitting I thought. Here shall I tread my soul’s refrain to songs of breath, tea and sympathy. Here can I smell harmony and spice.

Here, Hearing poetry - reading poetry - feeling poetry �" eating poetry; occasionally it all seems like s**t anyway, I digest.

Until she came on, with her finger drum or whatever you call it.

I, an alien, unaccustomed to pretending literacy in such regions; but it was from Zimbabwe, this I remember; because she said it.

She was from the earth. Her feet were familiar and secure with the ground. Her thighs, hips, breasts and shoulders sway to the rhythms of her own sound. That sound, she graciously offered, became my own.

Her eyes were from Lourdes, her smile from a poem conceived upon the River Jordan by a great poet who drowned and whose spirit dwells within me, within her.

Her eyes; dancing eyes that see, eyes that see through to the marrow of nature’s own self. Eyes which; if looked upon too long could reveal my own turpitude.

A crisp smile, crisp as linen sheets strung over clothes-lined laced tenements; absorbing fresh sunshine, clean, genuine, likened to sails on a ship, holding no lies neither past nor present.

I did not dare approach as she spoke to the bearded man; he showed her his instrument, a large bow-stringed apparatus sounding rather like a Jew’s harp.

I decided to lie to her by pretending she wasn’t there.

She sat down nearer to me, not a word was spoken between us; but a conversation took place nevertheless; one far greater than the one previously held by the bearded man.

Traversing again that lineage called Bleecker. Cobblestone warriors in tents of cardboard, come to this place.

Oh that which is the cruel randomness of existence begs the questions of who begat who.

The clear deep and cool waters calling me forth; the soggy bogs from whence my foot stays. Desperate urges from another place, another time, far in the distance of an ancestral mind.

Have I forgotten how to sleep? Or was I never awakened? I, in a state of glory walking past the myriad carnivals and side shows here; the showmen and show girls. I see them unhidden and naked to their world.

Where discontented bullshit artists prey. Where the Pharisees, the has-beens, the what-nots and the washed-ups and rebels stand yearning for their own kind of justice, their own kind of cause, the triumphant public masturbators.

We are not liars; for we embrace our lies, we recognize our lies, we live them.

It ain’t easy exploring and exposing truths here on Bleecker Street.

 

By William Teague, © 10/31/2011

Author's Note

Wow. I've been away for so long. Miss you all.

Reviews

[roarke]

yep, this thing goes like a scalded dog. When you chase it, it's like trying to catch jello, but you never catch it because it keeps moving ahead of you, taunting you to write more, spill more, shake the tree for more fruit to drop and split and rot and bare it's black seeds. Yep, let it run and run and ..... someone will run into it, to be sure.