Part III of Anonymously Displaced: PUBLICATION

So the Editor says:


Rufus,
Thank you for agreeing to have your name printed beneath the letter. I know it can't have been an easy decision for you and I appreciate that you'd do it in order for us to present a view that counters what's been written previously about this issue. Even though my journalistic sensibilities require me to let everyone have their say, something inside me still rebels against publishing letters like the one that refers to the displaced population as "bums" and I always hope that the more compassionate and understanding members of our community will speak up just as loudly.
So, with that in mind, I'll do my part to make sure your voice is heard by printing your letter. Thanks again for your cooperation and God bless.
(NAME REMOVED FOR LEGAL PURPOSES)

Part II of Anonymously Displaced

The editors retort:

AD,
Thanks for submitting a letter to the editor. It's an excellent letter and I really would love to publish it as a response to what's been written so far, but unfortunately it's our policy not to publish anonymous letters. I can, of course, understand why you wouldn't want to sign the letter, but I'm just not able to print it without a name.
Thanks.
Sincerely,
(NAME REMOVED FOR LEGAL PURPOSES), Editor
Southern Dutchess News

In which Anonymously Displaced said:

(NAME REMOVED FOR LEGAL PURPOSES),
Thank you for getting back to me. Obviously my computer use is slim, I know some very kind folks who allow me to log in every now and then...
I understand completely though about why you can't publish without a name. Well since no one in this area knows me by my name, my real name that is, I suppose for the first time in twenty years I can use my real name, if it means my voice can possibly be heard...
My birth name is Rufus King.
Maybe my family might see this and know I'm out there somewhere.
Just seeing my name in print sends an existential sting down my spine.
Thank you for listening.
Sincerely,
Rufus

On the Bum Crisis in Beacon, NY as dictated by Anonymously Displaced

In regards to the “Bum Problem” in Beacon and the letters to the editor concerning said matter:

You might say I am a resident of Beacon. Although some decide to throw the flagrant word “bum” around I prefer “residentially displaced.” Understandably, no one wants a vagrant breaking into his or her vehicle or home. This type of behavior is not condoned by most of my residentially displaced “community.” Since the streets and forests here in Beacon, (and the World) are a revolving door of lonely drifters, forgotten fathers and sons, disenchanted daughters, and melancholic mothers, it is hard to pin the blame on just one of us, so it is easy to make it seem like every poor man and woman, aimlessly leaning on the side of the road, is a culprit. Some of us beg, others don’t. Some of us will make eye contact, others refuse. We all have varying levels of pride and humility.
But you people, with your warm homes, your peaceful weekends, and your flat screen TV’s, you are the true cause to our effect. You preach the Green life from your righteous pulpit while you guzzle gas and throw your fast food bags to the side of the road. Just as you complain about the deer you hit with your car that was picking at your garbage on the side of the road, you complain about us. We clean up after you. We truly live the green life and we deserve an apology. Here we are living off the fat of the land and all we get are dirty looks and angry letters asking the mayor to sweep us under the rug of Beacon. Can we not co-exist? Without us how would you know how low you can go? You need us to gauge your success. Of course those who break the law should be handled judiciously. But the rest of us, welcome us into your Churches, your backyards, your storefronts, and your forests. We only want to mourn and rejoice the good and the bad beside you as Humans, not as the grime you see us as.
I’m very proud of my green ways, and how I am giving back to the community. What I take I only give back. I eat a half eaten apple, and then I plant the seeds so by next season I will have a tree, correction… so the community will have a tree. My friends and I are a contribution not a crisis. We are just like you, and in some aspects better. We are the ones who will reverse global warming and save this planet from the unfortunate excess most of you have succumbed to.
Next time you see a residentially displaced person on the street, if they ask for change whether or not you give it to them is a strong moral question. Know this though, they/we are only testing you. All we do is donate that money once you are out of sight. We donate all the change we find to different foundations. Should that not be your obligation as well?
If you want to save the world and ensure your children a safe and opportunistic future change your ways and adopt in your heart a new love for us men and women struggling on the street, suffering for your sins, and cleaning up after you.
Both of our communities have their problems, their people who we would like to ignore, which give everybody else a bad name. So please forgive the few of us that break the law, just as some of you do, and let’s move harmoniously into the future and make this a better world, starting in Beacon, the epicenter of Change.

Sincerely,
Anonymously Displaced

The Temple of Doom

Says the congregation:

"He's tearing the synagogue apart... when he stands and holds the Torah, people want to throw up."

This in response to one of Bernie Madoff's henchman becoming chairman of the "Temple of Doom," AKA the Fifth Avenue Synagogue which I believe is below the Starbucks next to Bergdorf Goodman across the street from the Mac store.
And really... The Temple of Doom? Is this the new Indiana Jewnes?
I wish I had my Bar Mitzvah at The Temple of Doom.

On The Inter-Breeding of Shrimp & What Got Pete "Ponytail" Maloney Banned For Life From AquaticplantCentral.com's Shrimp and Other Invertebrates Forum

And someone asks...
Will Tiger Shrimp and Crystal Shrimp mate?

Yes, they will. If you leave them in a small tank overnight, dim the lights, and sprinkle wild algae in they will definitely breed. I have a few Crystal Tiger Shrimp, and they are just beautiful.
They shimmer like the Crystals but have this amazing almost ultraviolet stripe that the Tigers have. It's a real genetic miracle. Not all shrimp will mate with just any, and the other shrimp in the tank might begin to segregate between the half-bloods.
So it truly comes down to if you're willing to have a segregated aquarium or not.
Installing a coral for the Crystal Tigers to use so they wouldn't occupy either the Tiger coral or the Crystal coral is most certainly a good decision.
In literature I've read that inter-breeding shrimp is a forced venture, much like rape, I understand this may be a moral dilemma, but if you are serious about showing your Shrimp, as I am, and placing them in competitions, as I do, then you should definitely let the Tiger Shrimp rape the Crystal Shrimp, because my Crystal Tigers are as elegant as Grace Kelly.
Any other questions just ask.
I'll upload my pics of these special little guys so you can see for yourself.
Happy Shrimping pal!

On S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (Shrimp Cell Infusion of the Extraordinarily Natural Crustacean Engagement) As Per My Aquatic Alter Ego: Pete "Ponytail" Maloney...

In response to my friend Henry's banishment from the Fish Olympics...

That is un-unprecedented! No man or aqua life form should be banished from Fish-lympics EVER!
I will consult the ISCA and get a pardon. I see you are a passionate person. You should never be turned away.
I will bring you in as a full fledged team member. You'll get your own hat, jump suit, with our official emblem on it (A Ghost Shrimp doing martial arts on a piece of wood sticking out of the sand at a beach). And this will allow you to eventually branch off and get Shrimp Kombat out of the home tank and into the World Arena.
Start to register your team now, so we can get the ball rolling.
I'd like to give you a tour of my shrimp farm though and help you get started and if you'd like to buy some ghosts by all means let's transact.
The pain one must feel, home alone, while ones friends are off basking in the smell and sun of Fish-Lympics is welling me up.
Excuse me I have to go get a tissue...

We can do this Hen! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!
Change will come to this years fish-lympics by the hand of almighty justice delivered to us by the ISCA!
I'm honored to help a fellow coach. A fellow humanitarian. A Philanthropist of the Aquatics! Like me.
You remind me of me years ago.
I just wish I had someone like me forty years ago to do for me what I had to bleed and sweat for.
Don't expect this to be easy boy, not in the slightest!
We will turn the competition into popcorn shrimp!
And I know I can trust you with my developments in S.C.I.E.N.C.E
Shrimp Cell Infusion of the Extraordinarily Natural Crustacean Engagement.
I am on the cusp of re-animating ghosts after battles, and infusing the bodies of the dead with those of the living.
It's like armor.
Also, I'm feeding them HGH.
Tally Ho Hen!
By next year we'll be on top of the world!
I won't die until I'm the John Madden of Shrimp Battles. Shrimp Battle '09. Shrimp Battle '10.
The video game will capture the excitement of the training and the brutality of the fight.

On Getting To Register Your Shrimp For Battle @ The Shrimp Olympics As Per My Aquatic Alter Ego: Pete "Ponytail" Maloney AKA Jumbo Ghost Pt. III

Well you gotta start somewhere champ, and I'm definitely the guy to steer you in the right direction.
We all want our competitions to be safe and fair. Definitely not like the Eel Slapping charades that sparked up so much controversy in the late '90's. It was very disrespectful to the art of what we as Shrimp Fighter's have crafted over the years. Especially after they found the heavy weight champion of last years Eel Slap-orama in a porn he had been used in early on. And of course the entire aquatic community took some major back lash for it.
Before I get into the registering aspect, I'd like to direct your attention to, www.ShrimpOlympics2010.com
It's a petition page us Shrimp-heads have started to try and get our sport at Sea World's annual fish-lympics. We feel Shrimp battling should be on the bill along with, Bob for blow fish, sea lion wrestling, and everyone's favorite, Dolphin wet T-Shirt contests. You haven't lived until you've seen a dolphin in a white T, they paint nipples on, and it's just, it's exhilarating.
So go sign that petition Henry! You'll be glad you did when we're sitting in Florida next year watching our Shrimp go toe to toe in the whale tank. Flip flops and the smell of fish!
Of course the whales will be parading outside, strapped vertical on flat bed trucks, with the hoses on them, as Sea World plays America the Beautiful over the loudspeakers.
Now for registering your shrimp, you don't have to travel at all!
Great right?
All the ISCA (International Shrimp Competitors of America) needs is the weight, DOB, kill count (if any), fighting colors, and a $15 deposit for each one.
It's super simple, go to www.ISCA.com and fill out the forms and lean back, coach, and battle.
You're a great candidate for the ISCA, and since I'm a twenty year member, and I'm very charitable to them as well, so I'm sure a recommendation from me will go a very long way for you.
You'll be great kid.
Once your in, with colors, and endorsements, I can see this market getting gobbled up by ESPN.

On Selling Ghost Shrimp For Battle As Per My Aquatic Alter Ego: Pete "Ponytail" Maloney AKA Jumbo Ghost Pt. II

From one enthusiast to another it's a great time to be getting into ghost shrimp battling and thanks for your inquiry.
Let me break down the prices.
The prices vary from shrimp to shrimp, not by size but by kill count.
My father, who since he lost his arm, sits at home and watches television all day, told me that my shrimp are like Highlanders, this movie where people with accents from another world cut off the heads of people to gain immortality.
So I've taken that into account since my father is a very smart man.
My prized Ghost has thirty kills under his belt and more to come for sure.
He started off just two years ago and is five inches long, and weighs one pound.
His has a red tint transparency, most likely due to his thirst for blood.
He is very kind and respectful to other lifeforms in the aquarium, so no need to switch aquariums of your other pets. Although I do recommend battling in another tank.
Die to his kill rate he goes for $150... $30/kill.
He is the most expensive and my best friend.
After that the prices vary from $5-$50.
No tax, and shipping is an extra $10 to cover the travel safe tank for the ghost fighter.
These are not only great pets but fantastic friends. They clean up after they kill, and enjoy a very harmonious and quiet life.
I strongly urge you if you are serious to consider buying young to train them yourself for the sheer satisfaction.
If you'd like to buy my prized fighter than I will arrange a meeting either via the world wide web or in person. I recommend in person to fully appreciate the size and ferocity of the ghost, as well as how compassionate he can be.
I guarantee you're going to like the way the ghosts I give you fight.

On Battling Ghost Shrimp As Per My Aquatic Alter Ego: Pete "Ponytail" Maloney AKA Jumbo Ghost Pt. 1

Hi All,
Nice to meet you. I'm new here but old to the game of Shrimp...Ghost Shrimp especially. There's a certain solace involved with raising and maintaining a proper Ghost Shrimp aquarium. Lowers the blood pressure for sure...
I have been training my ghost shrimp for around thirty years now to swim laps in my Olympic sized pool. Due to their diet of shark gills, baby squid brain, and each other, some of my older champions have grown to six inches. Six inches ladies and gents!
So now I'm in the business to battle. If you have also been training your shrimp I'd like to meet them and pit them against my soldiers.
They can swim a lap in the Olympic sized pool in 13 seconds flat.. and when I turn the strobe lights on they begin to eat eachother, victor wears the head of the dead.
What is more magical than shrimp eating shrimp?
I look forward to meeting you all.
Here's to Ghosts eating Ghosts!

On Photographing Ghost Shrimp As Per My Aquatic Alter Ego: Pete "Ponytail" Maloney AKA Jumbo Ghost

I've designed a great Nikon with the absolute best lens for capturing up-close and beautiful shots of your shrimp.
I'll upload my most recent picture once I get the prints out of the red room.
The focus is explicitly good, and the shutter speed fast for capturing amazing stills of shrimp feeding, mating, walking, floating, swimming, standing still, and all the other great things they do.
I'm excited to show you what this lens can do.
As for the intimate act of photographing I'd say set up a camera that you can let run on time-lapse with a slow strobe light in the corner of the room, and watch as the shrimp explore their aqaurium in an almost cosmic universe.
I highly recomend a slow strobe because I have found that a high speed has induced cannibalism.

How I Managed The Skeleton From A Blue Whale

I found him,
One morning slowly pushed to shore
With a buoyant heart collapsed within his corpse,
This sagging mouth hung, like the beaten tongue of an old shoe.
Slack jawed, stretched, eighty feet, from tail to tooth.
And how the sea level must have plunged,
As does a glass of water without ice cubes,
When that creature was plucked from the glory of the deep, the sanctity of the ancients.
This monster of unfathomable fathoms,
Asleep on the edge of town.
Beside him my existence shrunk,
Flush in his rot,
The smell of gulls collecting interest,
Circling, thrashing, at these two sad eyes, reluctant,
Open and dismal.
His sheer abundance,
Supernatural in the Sea,
Bankrupt on land,
Consumed by the same gravity as me.
Oh how things this massive can really happen.
Worlds folded into worlds, celestial both up and down.

Up onto that colossus I ascended.
With two knives, I dug my way up into his side,
Stood in soft decomposition,
Dilapidated, absorbed of the entire Pacific, he felt like a sponge.
In the blowhole gnats swarmed,
Like eagles at the mountaintop,
An almost victory, but I still mourned.
Defeat would be to not have preserved that Beast’s legacy,
And remove from him his bones, this porcelain offering beneath.

Later machines arrived to harvest what I could not,
As did a crowd who at the sight of him prayed to God.
There was nothing sadder than to witness a great Beast die,
Bones tied to a flatbed truck, that skulking skull, lay like an airplane,
Ribs jutting, clutched, interweaving together like a fist, larger than any on this planet,
And scientists wiped the blood from their glasses,
While I stayed, in that sacrificial heat,
Rightfully burying below red sand his leftover meat.
Back into the Crust of the Earth, oh if I hadn’t found him already deceased.

The Matter of Time

Remember this house as I have,
Emerging from the hillside,
As any boulder would, assumed here by glaciers years ago, that ancient ice white Thumbed out by this wilderness and its deepest greens.
Infant toothpick trees stand at finite attention,
While their mothers and fathers slightly bend toward the sun,
Yawning Carbon, begging to be climbed.
Their long arms, calculating-room for solitary birds,
Until the ground begs for their tough skin, to slowly consume their absurd age,
And in the quiet shade of night, worms will hole through these collapsed grandparents,
Futilely engaged in damp fertile decay.

Mornings I’d cut loose the dogs,
Safely knowing they’d run not far, toward the limestone graves,
Of all my old friends that they have replaced.
I’m sure of their ghosts, and other nameless ghosts,
Who wander these lonely wooded archives, calmly following winds,
Passing through them, through us,
Distinguishing life from death.

Stone after precious stone, lying across the edge of the yard,
Each older than myself,
Like Earth against the galaxy,
I once stood bold, atop them all,
Imagining myself the combined hero of every war fought,
In the great shadow of the house.
For entire summers, before lunch, out of boredom,
I captured the redcoats and the confederates together,
The ninjas, and the Nazis,
I was God in the pasture my television.
Sticking my tongue down the throats,
Of all the beautiful girls rescued.

The bottomless lakes, my only neighbors,
Reptilian community of sunbathing snakes,
Stretched out on their private rocks,
Like pin-ups asleep on the beach. Fanged lushes segregating beauty, drunk off heat.
We only share the unkempt grass growing abundant from the water to my porch. Thankfully, the mower is rusted and brown where it should be red,
And I won’t have to struggle with it up the steep yard today,
To give it a haircut, like I used to, in fear that it might lift, fall back and devour me, Sucked in then out, head to toe,
Gravity passing through a wormhole,
Made mulch, much like the sound of twigs through its blades,
But right now I miss the beautiful smell of a freshly scored lawn.

Bird songs compete over a choir of insects, my dog’s listen, ears perked,
Intent as me.

In tall grass I wait for the next breeze.
To sweep away my halo of bees and gnats,
Circling like bloodthirsty vultures.
I consider my childhood into one long day,
As I’m sure I’ll eventually think of today and all the ones after as part of the same.
Antique with this lovely yard, I float, one of the ghosts, in the matter of Time,
Enjoying the slowest day.

Time With My Dogs (In Conjunction with The Matter of Time)

I’m sitting in the lawn of the house I grew up in. Belongs to West Point, but since I lived here all my life I feel like it belongs to me. The grass is uncut, a little longer than it should be, dandelions throughout, and I can see off to the side of the house the lawn mower my Dad said was broken last summer. It still looks rusted and outdated, brown where it should be red. I used to want one of those lawn mowers you can ride on, but right now, the weather is so nice, I’d be just fine pushing a lawn mower back and forth across the yard, even the steep hill on the side, that when I always push the mower up it feels as if I might fall backwards at any moment, due to the steepness, and the mower would devour me. Head to toe like passing through a wormhole. That happened to a kid I knew in High School. Lost a whole hand to a mower. The sound of a twig passing through the blades, the smell of fresh cut grass. The birds are singing, competing songs, with the insects.
The sun is as bright as I remember it being when I am in this yard. The grass is the deepest green I’ve ever seen. A solitary bird sings on a tree, about to blossom, standing ominously behind my house, higher than the unused antennae. The boulders that line my parent’s house are the same boulders I played on as a kid. Standing on those boulders in the past felt like I was standing on top of a mountain, maybe even Earth. I was the best robot-cowboy-space-ninja around. That’s also because I had no neighbors, no competition, but that could also be because everyone knew I was the best robot-cowboy-space-ninja in town. I saved the world everyday back then, with just some frog armies, pockets full of stones, a sturdy twig or two, ancient bullet shells I found in the woods from the Revolutionary and Civil war, some bad words I heard my parents use, my imaginary skeleton horse, the box cutters I stole from the barn, oh and this great blowtorch kit… what I was bored… don’t judge me. So what if I fought off the redcoats and the confederates, and Super Shredder, and the Stay Puff man, and the evil ghosts of dead horses, and Nazis, Nazi Aliens, and Nazi Zombies, (I only went to Synagogue to kiss the rabbis daughter and watch MTV, and sneak some wine in), ok, you’re all safe now. If only you met me when I was a young Michael Jordan with rejuvenating laser basketballs, that could blow up entire planets…
My old dogs, an iguana, turtles, a snake, horses, and cats, are buried across the road, next to the stream. I let my dogs out of the house now and they always run over to the Pet Sematary, (just how Stephen King spells it) and sniff and pee on the old graves, the new dogs always pee on the graves of the dogs they replaced. They’re real assholes like that. It’s kind of a dick move, but that patch of limestone graves, is the most fertile piece of land with the greenest grass. I planted a bamboo tree over my Rottweiler just last spring, and it’s grown substantially since.
Down the road are bottomless lakes through the trees, with turtles sunbathing in them, like pin-up girls in one-pieces, blinded by aluminum sun catchers. Pin-up girls who soak in the rays like that will probably grow up, or have grown up, crawling out from the beach, with leathery skin, brown and tough, just like the turtles. I should introduce the two.
I hope when I’m gone someone else will appreciate this house just as I have, but the other half of me wants to buy it from West Point and keep it for myself, an impossible deal, so the other part of me would have to burn it down, but then yet another part needs to know it will always be occupied because it very well might jump right out of the Earth and retreat deeper into the woods, where it belongs, a stronghold or some citadel. And occupied by generals of course. It emerges from the hillside like any other boulder would, like it was assumed here by glaciers all those years ago. The sky is it’s biggest here. Fertile and blue.
This will always be my favorite place, more so even than an empty beach, or General Kosciuszko’s Garden in West Point, that even all the cadets have forgotten about, and I’m always the only person there, built in 1779. Sometimes I’ll compare my age with a rock, or the Civil War, or a fallen tree, I’ll count it’s rings, even though I didn’t pay attention in Environmental Class, I’m probably counting wrong, so lets just say everything’s an approximation.
Since I can’t cut the grass, and I just remembered I need a haircut, I’d like very much to build a rock wall. It has a particular meditating quality to it, which not many other things can bring me. I can’t say exactly how many I’ve built in my lifetime, but an approximation would be upwards in the 30’s. That spans many sizes and lengths of walls. I’ve made some only one foot high and three feet across, others five feet high, and fifty feet long. The kind of rock walls you could fight Civil Wars and Revolutionary Wars behind. Single shot rifles, heavy 1867 wood, the smell of gun powder, stale rations, my horse has been wounded by the enemy, how many have I killed, this rock wall is damp, and in it’s shade I’ll wait for my men, or whatever is left of them… Custer died, alongside his entire command. He’s buried further down the road.
Bugs are getting in my ears and hair. Just like they always do. I need a fucking haircut. To my left and to my right used to be two very large, very old trees, Both cut down by West Point, because they could’ve collapsed onto the house. They say it’s a Historical Landmark, and it is. With the trees gone, feels like I’ve lost both arms. I can’t say really how many times I’ve climbed each, or pretended each was a villain, or swung from a crude rope swing on them, but it’s probably a billion. Yea, definitely a billion. I’m rounding down too, to the most logical number I can think of. Benedict Arnold, a real motherfucker, spent a night in this house, so says the town Historian, through his coke bottle glasses, it was also part of the underground railroad, and there is a room, a room above the master bedroom, that in the 25 years my family has lived here, no one has ever been able to get into. Whatever passageway kept a secret, has been either completely forgotten, or sealed up. I once lassoed the chimney, to climb up to the windows of the secret room to look in, I almost fell at the sight of the ghostly vacancy within.
There are many ghosts here. Animal and human. They’ve all been really nice though, only scaring strangers. Guard Ghosts or Ghost Guards? It’s Guard Dog, not Dog Guard… A single strand of spider web has fallen across my brow. Now it’s attached to my hand. Now my shoe. When it rains a large face appears on the stone façade of the house. It looks most like Mickey Mouse’s silhouette, but giant, and judging. Nazi Mickey? Walt you bastard. Well there is no solid evidence saying you were a Nazi, but the face on the side of my parent’s house looks like the Mickey Mouse in the episode "The Wayward Canary," that used a cigarette lighter with a swastika on the side.
I have a halo of gnats and bees and the blades of grass begin to itch the bottom of my feet. I remember my childhood as one long day, and I’m sure I’ll eventually think of this day and the ones after it as part of that same day. In this immense seclusion, in this old lovely yard, I feel like one of the ghosts, letting the wind pass through me, my cavernous thoughts whistling onto the page. I should start to write this into some form that hopefully resembles what my teacher and class defines as a poem now, so I can hang out before class with my dogs.

The Historic Return of Announcer George Withermane

The customary walking of the track before a race at sunrise
Floods my reluctant homesickness.
Stale coffee and polished leather secretes from the surrounding stables
And the visiting big rigs spew out hallucinogenic fumes.
Fresh horseshit wakes me up like nothing else though. Reminds me I’m alive.
I remember these days, when all my friends were Mexicans, my women too.
Sinking into day from night and back, never quite brushing the tequila
From our yellowing teeth.
Fat owners stuffed inside their box seats dreaming of being richer, aged bourbon,
Leggy Mares, and violent Stallions, while their frumpy wives who sip dry martinis under
Hats shaped like umbrellas in the shade of the grandstands ominous awning.
Their spoiled grandkids leaning over the rails, ice cream stuffed fists,
Inhaling Lemonade to make sour faces at the horses.
I sit down at my old chair and microphone, binoculars around my neck. I can see it all.
The racehorses. The horserace.

Well friends I’m honored to be back in the box. It’s been a long twelve years.
As you are all aware we’re here for charity today so get out there and bet on the horse
That’ll best feed the children or cure cancer. Do some continent some good.
It’s a beauty of a day, God is with us, and I wonder who He’s picked to win.
Ok, here they come and here we go,
With a full field of thirteen,
Welcome to the Hambletonian at the Meadowlands.
2.5 Million dollars at stake here beneath a lucky blue sky, see those horses trot.

People are you with me now; all drivers are lined up at the starting gate,
And they’re off!
Samurai Surprise snatches the lead from the get-go.
Mad Dash rounds out second with Doctor
Diabolical trailing one and a half lengths behind.
Challenging third is Cash Money Messiah and Eternal Talent, toe to toe here and Mad Dash makes his move for first, on the outside leaving Samurai Surprise close behind.
Locked in last is Total Testimony huffing dust and not too far
In front of him is Life is Long struggling for the eleventh spot with Governor Flash.
Look at this! Look at this! Approaching third is El Presidente
With a tremendous trot and here they come passing the grandstands for the first time,
A blur of thunder!
El Presidente pining for the lead now, with a crack of the whip from the driver,
And he assumes first, ladies and gentlemen, and Samurai Surprise is off stride,
Off stride and slowing down, finally letting Grand Inquisitor move in to the mix, with Mr. Profits Prophet trailing behind.
What a wicked display by El Presidente.
Making the turn into the third quarter of this mile is El Presidente and coming up through The inside is Eternal Talent, whoa, whoa, Eternal Talent is making a run for first, shaking Cash Money Messiah out of the running
As he falls back in fifth now behind Poncho Pilot.
Here they come, once more flying past the grandstands.
A violent rumbling stampede!
El Presidente, Eternal Talent gnashing at the bit, necks stretched out toward the finish Line and by god it appears El Presidente and Eternal Talent’s wheels are stuck,
One horse dragging the other toward the finish line
With the pack chasing about two lengths behind.
They don’t seem to be able to separate themselves from one another,
Eternal Talent’s left wheel is stuck on El Presidente’s right.
Someone must slow down for Christ’s sake!
We have the ambulance and Veterinarian trackside for such emergencies.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to… and El Presidente and Eternal Talent
Cross the finish line tantamount.
In third is Mad Dash. Fourth Governor Flash.
Judges say El Presidente wins by a chin hair!
The Camera does not lie!
El Presidente takes home the pot!

I drop my binoculars and jump down to the winner’s circle.
El Presidente’s grandfather took the pot for me when I was just starting out,
Boy, and from those loins I reap pay again.
The blood in him is the blood that was in the very first standardbred in the American Circuit back in ‘78, 1878, the horse this race is named after.
Hambletonian’s trotting in his grave.
Sun spilling on glistening horses, wet from exhaustion.
Driver’s in purple and yellow and green and white, line up and smile,
I smile; dull false teeth from the time that horse got me in the mouth,
Never stand behind one, spooky bastards.
Eyes on either side of their face, scared of a fly, these damn animals.
The wind knocks my hat off,
Carried in the wind toward the grandstands. It’s some prize today,
I squint and make out my family.
My wife, a raisin from years of sun, tugs at my grandchildren,
Leaning over the fence making faces at the horses.
My smile thins and falls to a frown. Festive fists loosen.
I just remembered this is for charity.

Third Day of Work

It was explained to me today as I officiated a wake
Why it is in Florida we bury our dead
Not as simply as they do in New York.

“A shovel’s job, in this soft soil,” my partner Marv said
“Wasn’t enough anymore to keep the dead where we left them.
Storm floods floated caskets back up to the surface.
This was years ago, just before Evelyn passed.”

His voice oscillates, like an old engine hiccupping up hill
Then opens his wallet like a tiny bible, its sacred contents shook in arthritic fingers
He thumbs a lady’s faded picture out from behind laminate, hair mahogany red
Perfectly circular eyes green as cucumber slices.
Atlantic City Honeymooners. They met at Bingo night. Seaside casino dreams.
His crooked black cummerbund sat well with his piano key smile,
Says he lost both teeth on Ike’s beach.

I hear air
Whistle through the empty spaces
Where his teeth would have been.
“She hadn’t been buried a month when the hurricane hit.
Floods so high they pulled spines and jaws and jewelry down from the trees.
We found her nine plots over,
Swimming in the water spilling from the birdbath,
Scavengers had made nest of her, I only found one eye,
Floating like an olive in the mud.”

The shovels now collect rust while gravediggers rush to operate tractors,
And bless bulldozed holes with cement, to lock our skeletons in place,
One final position.
With the dead paved down, no amount of rain could exhume Evelyn again.

First Day of Work

1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, 827,060 tons of toxic embalming fluid, 90,000 tons of steel (from caskets), and 30 million tons of hardwood board each year are buried in the United States.


Beverly made last night’s meatloaf for lunch and I brought home flowers.
We eat at the small table beneath the kitchen television,
I can see myself in the linoleum.
The remote control buttons all stick with age,
Batteries changed maybe three times since the late eighties
So I sit up, stretch, to raise the volume.
She glows like she did the day I met her as the refrigerator hums behind us.
The time on the microwave
Is faster than the clock on the stove and my watch has stopped altogether.
Her bright crimson lipstick collects bits of food like a neon flytrap.
She asks how my first day out of retirement went.
I’m too tired to talk, bow at my plate, push food aimlessly with my knife, nod, sigh and say,
You know, it went.

Either it was Walter or Wallace; I couldn’t seem to read my own writing.
It took six of us to lift him in his coffin and fill the hearse.
If we were younger four would have been enough.
Our bones creaked beneath the weight of the deceased
I felt no less significant as I did beneath the burden of a two-man bazooka
Korea bound beside an army of Sherman’s.
Legends upon legends surrendered to the generations we fashioned after ourselves.
I’ll bury mine and they’ll bury theirs.

The hearse handled well, soft casket interior.
Although he is more cargo than passenger I’ll say it anyway,
My passenger made a better backseat driver than my wife.
I drove toward the dull yoke sun out from behind the funeral home.
The owner of the establishment, my boss, a wiry middle-aged man,
Younger than my son, swam in a badly fit business suit and told me earlier while on the Grand tour
Through the ceremonial loading dock
That it was an old plantation estate.
On the front porch, I saw myself ages ago asking Bev’s father for her hand in marriage, before the war.
He said no, because I rode fast bikes through town,
Racing over mounds of dirt that would become the Brooklyn Bridge.
When I came back alive we married.

I looked back at Walter in the rear view;
He’s but a giant husk of oak, with a nice clear finish.
We buried a young guy this morning with his cell phone in a walnut stain on pine.
A girl yesterday I hear took down with her a music player.
Beverly and I opted for a mausoleum, inexpensive at knee level.

The cemetery stretched beyond measure
Highways upon highways of lonely stone stamped and dated.
An address for the abandoned.
Pray the kids can afford to keep the crematorium lit,
So they may all spread themselves, once the earth is less land than grave,
After the last gravedigger pours himself into one final plot, like musical chairs.

Family and friends lowered Walter slowly.
I stood as tall as I could beside another fresh grave.
While our heads hung in respect, I found a few white roses lying
On the over-turned dirt,
I kneeled down, used the carved stone as a balance,
Then behind my back pushed them up my sleeve.

I drove home for lunch; the hearse’s shadow fills the driveway.
What food I don’t finish she’s packed for lunch tomorrow.
Slip my shoes back on as Beverly fills the vase.
By the time they brown, I’ll borrow more.

In Boca (In Conjunction with At The Pointe of No Return)

Five women in one-piece suits perform water aerobics graceful
As children taking their first steps while their husbands debate Guantanamo Bay
And blood pressure beneath the awning at the side of the pool.

This, the consortium of the retired, the disabled, the diabetic,
The diapered idealists, and full time vacationers, part-time sunbathers.
Some of us can hardly walk
From the kitchen to the car to the pool, and we don’t mind. Others of us squat,
Like lobsters in the Jacuzzi, squinting in the sun.

For vacation I have eaten like them, talked like them, waited,
Impatient for TV programs like them, and didn’t have sex like them.
Here, there is a thin line between Purgatory and Paradise.
We stumble through the days, through the thick,
Swampy everglade air panting like dogs, waiting for the crocodiles to leave the lakes,
In our backyards so we can throw another sirloin on the grill.

I get the urge to drive down Atlantic Boulevard
In a leisure suit and sit at the slots blowing my social security
At the casino across from the noody bar.
The contagious conduct of geriatrics.

These sexless clusters of cul-de-sacs are as beautiful and uniform
As the cemeteries evenly distributed between each gated neighborhood

Days pass.

Back at the side of the pool is the same old choir of comedians, with their wives
Who chirp in the water, their quaffed hair reminds me of Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
Dry as desert rock. Bronze lips. Leather alligator skin.
At the sight of a young girl taut beneath her bikini,
The men refrain from whistling
But don’t hesitate to ask for her age and grade.
Grandpas to some are the dirty old men to others.
A lone woman does backstrokes like a beetle fighting for its life
Its legs kicking up at the sky.

In contrast, they guilt me into flaunting my youth.