A Door in the Sky

He was already halfway into the Christmas vodka by the time I walked through the door. 'Go get yourself a glass and sit down' he barked. 'I always told myself that one day you and I were going have a drink of vadker and I was going to tell you some things'.

I had heard the stories from my Mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I had seen the old yellow newspaper from his hometown with his picture on the front page. A 24 year old steel eyed soldier posed behind a machine gun and a waist high stack of Nazi soldier helmets. The family always spoke with glowing reverence of his single handed obliteration of a platoon of German soldiers that had planned a surprise midnight attack on the American troops.

'We're so proud of him. Your Dad is a hero. He saved the lives of all his men.'

Sergeant First Class George B. Grimm received the highest honor that can be awarded for heroism in battle without dying. I still have his silver star medal in my top dresser drawer along with the swastika and iron cross he took off a dead soldier. When we were in depositions and negotiations for his medical malpractice and wrongful death law suit, I secretly carried his silver star in my pocket. 

'First of all' he said, 'your daddy was a damn good soldier. I did what I was told. I did what I had to do.' 

He stood at his position while on solitary night watch while the rest of the troops slept. Somehow he became aware of an immediately impending attack by a German platoon. He sequestered himself beneath a bridge with as many machine guns and armaments as he could quickly gather. When the enemy forces stormed over the bridge, he let fly with a flurry and hail of gunfire unleashing a storm of blood rain upon himself from the fresh corpses of soldiers above. 

He killed every last single Nazi son of a bitch in sight all by his lonesome damn self.

Part of him never emerged from beneath that bridge, never stopped hearing echos of gunfire, never came clean from the bloodshed, never awoke from the night terror. 

Nearly four decades after that night, as we pounded down shot upon shot of vodka, he finished telling me his story. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. I tried to put my arm around him but he told me to sit back down. We sat across the table for what seemed forever while he repeated 'your daddy was a good soldier, your daddy was a good soldier, your daddy was a good soldier......'

A Door in the Sky

The fragility of children 

transcends space and time

trickles through pores

on the surface

of the grid work of his skin

surrounding his face. 

Immemorial legions of bastards 

drawn to his bedside

to bask in the sun

as his father

calls him back home. 

The light of his day

was preceded with glory. 

His family sat round

trading stories over coffee

cakes and regressions

led to tears

soaking the bread of communion

shared at his dining room table. 

The lamp overhead

was the only light artificial

in this room full of angels

ancestors and souls

of those he had loved

and loved him in return. 

The lives he took

on the battlefield returned

and offered forgiveness

for his unchosen tasks. 

The light overhead came closer. 

We witnessed stillness and haste

in its approach. 

Then God as a man

rose up and proclaimed

his innocence had returned 

and he shared it with those

present and otherwise. 

He kissed us goodbye

one final time

as he ascended and climbed

through a door in the sky. 

All my love always,

Max

PS. If I have one prayer right now, it is that Dad is looking over my shoulder as I write this and saying 'You told it right, kid. You told it right.'

Christmas Prayer 2011

This is Christmas. Hopefully we've all got turkeys to stuff and presents to unwrap, so let's get right to the goddamn point. 

Jesus

is a metaphor

for compassion

Ignorance

is a sin 

against God 

Intolerance

is the spear

that impaled him

Stigmata

is the tears

of  a lynched niggers

bashed faggots

exterminated Jews

burned witches

flogged Christians

family

The tree

of crucifixion

coarse rope

and duct tape

binding and silencing

forever the others

will be the scourge

of this earth

and death 

beyond

reincarnation 

vortex

of our species

The fence

upon which Matthew

was tortured

left to die

is the cross

all Faggot

Nigger

X-tian

Jew

Kike

Heathen

Mohammedan 

cocksucking

towel heads

like us

must bear

when evil

is left

unattended

and ignorance

uneducated

Buddha

is a homily

for what we must strive

against

and aspire to be

Hate

is our cancer

Compassion

our scalpel

Choose ye well

and teach your children

accordingly

This is my prayer.

Fuck your parades. This is Christmas. There is no time left to lose. 

Peace,

Max

Miami Poems Part II (Irresponsible Sex Acts)

The politics of sex can evoke a battle of biblical proportion. It is as old and eternal as the sky. If we are to survive, the precoitial wranglings seem to be a necessary evil for some star crossed lovers. What brings us to a conjunction of bliss can be preceded and followed by tangles of bargaining and negotiations like so many lawyers enmeshed in the art of war, haggling over who gets the larger share of mother's ashes. 

In my formative years, we were an uninformed and reckless bunch of idiots. Hobbling around with pants around our ankles, schtupping in the back seats of cars, fire escapes, forests, movie theatres, back booths of night clubs and the occasional bed. 

We had never heard of HIV and only occasionally used protection. It was, after all, Miami Florida in the 1970s. Cocaine was thought to be as harmless and addictive as beer and possession of some exponentially increased your chances of being on the receiving end of oral sex.  

We danced and drank vodka gimlets, scoping each other out across the mirror balled, strobe lit expanses. Swaggering and swishing, acting uninterested and pantomiming alpha sexual superiority. While concealing secretly moistened panties and insecurities temporarily abated by tattooing another conquest onto our genitals. Sometimes never knowing their name and not caring about anything but the cycles of the game. Stalk, chase, kill, run, stalk, chase, kill, run, stalk, chase, kill, run from one bed to the next to the next to the next. 

This poem is called...

Kisses Drop Like Diamonds...

Last Friday night

was a total disgrace

with my freshly tanned ass

and the egg on my face

Rubber hoses on my thighs

left a horrible sight

and those hip boots

were sadomasachistically tight

All the running and screaming

were to no avail

when that silver studded porcupine

crawled up my wanton tail

Without a stiff drink

or so much as a whisper

all his passion was hung

from her creamy dripping lipstick

at the click of a half cocked gun

The police and guards

decided not to dance

at the apostolic wonder

instead to boil at the lance

My prissy hearted missy

took it up the big wazoo

when the primal hearted preacher

refused to acknowledge

how much he liked it too

Suffering cats in champagne vats

are soused up to their whiskers

so my pretty pussy took a holiday

to reconvene with all her sisters

They’re scheming and plotting

those harpy bitch-like shrews

sequestered and sharpening their heels

and think we haven’t got a clue

But I know their evil plan

I’ve got wind of their wicked scheme

It was scrawled upon the men’s’ room wall

in the toilet of my dream

It said we must die slowly

but it doesn’t tell how long

the raven will be descending

with the furor of King Kong

It’s got the face of Elizabeth Taylor

but with Bela Lagosi’s bite

and it comes to direct from hell

starting next Friday night

It will claim to be a lover

but all it does is fight

this screaming senorita

with much panache and class

I spy from the corner of my eye

and slap a padlock on my ass

because I know the heat she’s packing

and she’s not seeing mine

until kisses drop like diamonds

into the lipstick of my wine.

and so it was,

Max

PS. I'm not a damn bit proud of this part of my history. I'm also certainly not ashamed either. My footsteps, no matter how foolish have led me to where I am today. I have, as the song says 'looked at life from both sides now'. At this point in my life, I thank God constantly for my wife. I prayed every day for the love of my life to appear. Twenty four years and two beautiful children later, they are still here with me. At the risk of redundancy, I'll say again, the right prayers get answered. Time is a wonderful thing. It makes me realize what is of true value and what is a bunch of bullshit, how short is our allotment of life and the eternality of the human spirit when conjoined with true love. The combination of the two make our species invincible. Whether we have ever met or not, I wish no less for you. Life is too short to not know love. It is what makes us human. It is what makes us divine. From my lips to God's ear. Amen.

All my love, always and forever.

Max

The Miami Poems

Make no mistake, Lucy was not to be fucked with. It made no difference that she was barely five feet tall, skinny as a pipe cleaner, a small parrot constantly perched on her shoulder, sweet faced young Latina behind the counter of the store where I used to pick up my nightly pack of cigarettes. God help you if you got on the bad side of this woman. You would be on the bitch slap end of a front snap kick to the the ball sack and an elbow strike to the thorax. While you lay on the ground sputtering, gurgling and wondering what the fuck just happened, Lucy would be strapping on her golf cleats, preparing to climb up your ass to do a Mexican hat dance all around the inside of your rectum. Thus it was too bad for the unaware big stupid oaf wearing a Megadeth T shirt and executioners hood, carrying a machete who tried to rob the store during Lucy's shift. 'I got in that motherfucker's face and told him to get the fuck out of my store before I fucked his fat ass up!' Apparently, the boy wised up and did just that. 

That was classic Lucy and God, I loved her. She was one of my favorite characters from that distant time and place. One of an array of personalities colorful and divergent as a rainbow in the middle of a typhoon at midnight while a whole city burns to the fucking ground. There is no place on earth like the perverse stage where people parade around in full lunatic regalia like Miami, Florida. 

For better and worse, I spent 28 years living in a place that has been described by journalist, novelist and screen writer Carl Hiaasen as a '24 hour freak show' and once was voted 'Rudest City in America'. I was raised, went to school, came of age, got married and had our first child in that hallucinogenic fever dream of a city. I was there for the Haitian boat lifts, the McDuffie riots, the cocaine cowboys, the plight and futile anger of Cuban refugees, any amount of crackpot politicians, serial killers, gay bashing street punks and ethnic gang wars, the murder of Gianni Versace and Hurricane Andrew, oh sweet suffering Jesus Christ almighty, Hurricane fucking Andrew. 

There are some dark corners beneath that tropical paradise festooned with beautifully vapid swimsuit models that house and nurture horribly violent crime and unspeakable evil perpetrated by sadly twisted sacks of humanity who leave a trail of atrocity and abomination in their wake.

All of this however makes for wonderful fuel and fodder for a writer.

In perusing all my years of journals full of poetry, I have found numerous pieces that could be grouped into a category called 'The Miami Poems'. The piece that follows is one of them. It is a composite poem based on the following two people, the first of which is someone who worked at the same store as my brass balled friend and sometimes object of lust Lucy.  

1. I never did catch his name but I knew him as the fellow with a near obsession with the band Joy Division and haunted by the suicide of their lead singer Ian Curtis. He would be playing a cassette of the (to me, annoying piece of monotone whiny 80s euro-pop crapola) song 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' incessantly from his boom box behind the counter. He would passionately talk to me about the band and how forlorn he was at the loss of their singer. He said, with jagged electric static timbre in his voice 'man, their music talks about my life, man'. He was always happy to see me, I suppose because I would listen to him and stay with his protracted conversations even though it got uncomfortable as hell sometimes.  

One night, while making my usual stop to offer alms at the altar of the great God nicotine, I found the store surrounded by yellow police tape and many squad cars with flashing blue beacons forming a barricade in the parking lot surrounding many dozens of uniformed officers scurrying about. 

The next night, all was quiet. I went in and asked the owner what had happened on the previous evening. It seems my nameless friend had earlier in the day before, stabbed his grandmother and four year old brother to death with a screwdriver and fled to the store to hide in the back room. 

A post script to this story; I've long since quit smoking.

2. He was a burglar alarm installer, part time gun merchant, bottle of scotch a day drinker, night club hypnotist, survivalist who liked to be called 'Big Bad John' and he was for a short time, my boss. In his living room sat five loaded AK-47s by the front door, many pistols on his coffee table, stacks of cases containing canned food, water and toilet paper along the walls, behind the sofa, on the book shelves and around the TV. He often said 'When the state of anarchy breaks out, I want to be prepared'. He offered us other pearls of wisdom such as, 'Screw the government every chance you get' and 'I don't need to give you a retirement account. You need to invest part of your paycheck in lottery tickets'. I came to discover he was being watched by the feds as well as the local po-po. At which point, joblessness looked pretty damn sweet.

I have to hand it to these two guys. Because If anything can be learned from Jim Carrey's performance in 'Ace Ventura, Pet Detective' (coincidentally, filmed in Miami) if you're going to go bat shit crazy, don't be half assed about it. 

This poem is called '....all I’m saying....'

The depth of this hill

is as steep as its climb

In the silence of sex

lies the stillness of time

While lusting for death

seductions of crime

danced on the brain

and chewed at the liver

clouding the eyes

and made the corpse quiver

Ink spots that fell

on the carpet remain

her precious boy’s blood

would rush down the drain

‘Policemen are fools

who ransack and rape’ 

he said at confession

that was recorded on tape

The news would proclaim

‘This boy had gone mad

a quick lustful fix

killed the chances he had’

White trash from Florida

is invading our city

it’s an abortion our taxes

must pay for this pity

I’ll lock up my daughter

I’ll chain up my wife

I’ll shoot the son of a bitch

who tries to fuck up my life

In my fort of canned goods

toilet paper and ammo

we’ll be safe as the God

that sits up on high

while the rest of you cannibals

eat shit and die

The streets are not safe

for folk like me 

and you don’t watch your step

I’ll go hide in a tree

and hose your ass off

with an Uzi

if you step in my yard

because I watch the news

and it scares me

to know there are people out there

like that and like you

who threaten my world

my church and my life

and if you think I’m paranoid

thank my fourth wife

She’s under the floor boards

in plastic and mud

if you pigs want more evidence

go wade through the crud

The last time I killed her

was the last time I saw her

and that’s all I’m saying

until I speak to my lawyer.

Stay safe kids, all my love,

Max

Soft Armored Angel

In a dream, three days after she passed away was the last time I saw her. 

We lay in my childhood bed. She complained to me about the cold metal table and the cramped conditions of the box prior to incineration. As usual, I offered a half hearted, weary apology for my woefully inadequate attempts to further the progression of our lives. 

Then I awoke.

What happened after the gas valve was opened and the flint sparked, I have no idea. My prayer is that it led her to a place where she could find some measure of peace and glimmers of happiness. Such were unfamiliar components in her life, at least for as long as our association lasted. 

I recall photographs of her as a young girl in a wild summer garden with her silken soft golden dog, both smiling amidst hibiscus and jasmine, the eyes of both innocents wide portals cast open, unaware of the devil that had already entered and young war torn love letters to the soldier she sometimes wished she never had married and echos of the mistake they wished never to have committed that January night in the embittered cold that demanded an embrace from those ensconced by tatters of broken illusions. Years forward unfolding into screams of 'I wish I never had you!' responded with 'Too bad you never learned how to use a condom!'

To those of me who remain, these razors may recede, but do not die, unlike us to each other, leaving the still earthbound to untangle and decipher the bramble of briars that was supposed to be our life. Fingers enmeshed as one, our emissaries and us crossing the highway. After the fact realizing that they were as blind as we, the only difference being the compassion that cruelty instilled. 

Who desecrated your grave

before we ever laid you down

spray-painting atrocities

upturning swastikas

arsonized your home 

vandalized your sonnets 

with obscenities

and fucked you senseless

without mercy?

Never will I find them

I can provide no justice 

for your battered legacy

No lyrics adequate

to replace 

that which was smudged 

from your diary

no caress could shelter you

from the truancy 

of your guardian angel

who fell asleep 

beneath the tree

where you were hanged

A life that stank

of endless artic night

vipers beneath the snow

snapping at your heels.

No sun above your head

to illume your halo

or defrost your wings.

No water clear enough

to wash your soiled robes.

I love you

in spite of your hatred.

The distant shore 

on which you now stand

I imagine sparkles

with a sand of diamonds

kissed by an ocean 

of sapphires

and a grand ruby 

implanted in the center 

of your hollowed heart.

My soft armored angel,

St Francis brings you now 

lions who purr 

at your touch

while sandalwood breezes

untangle the mandala

of your tortured hair.

Particles of carbon

that once passed 

through your tear ducts

create now reflecting pools  

evoking the shadows

I found in the closet

wherein I was punished

and would hide

grinding the salt and water

out of my eyes

attempting to understand

the bed where you flailed

and were raped

the tightropes 

and eggshell land mines

upon which you walked

the hours and minutes 

days and lifetimes 

you spent slaughtering

your faith in me

all that surrounded us

and every offering of peace

I ever extended to you.

Except at the end

when I laid you down 

upon my childhood bed

and you said

'I lay on that floor 

all night

praying for angel 

to help me get up

and it was you 

that walked in'

With all my love,

Max