IN TEARS ACROSS THE DECADES
I just saw Patrick Ewing – Shaquille O’Neal
(For Ted Manger)
I am sitting here in this little room
watching Shaquille talk about Pat Ewing,
crying my ass off.
I don’t even know why I am crying my ass off.
And Shaq is crying too.
He’s on the video crying
Saying:
I just saw Patrick Ewing
and it’s all 1991 Brooklyn John Starks Spike Lee MSG.
All that shit and I am in tears across the decades
like there is some kind of playground that I could find
that would make my mind right, with the bent rims,
and I never even played basketball, ever,
but there was a vibe, you know, in NY,
Mars Blackmon and Max Fish and Pat.
That’s all you needed back then.
I am sitting here with a broken hip and netless knee in tears
listening to Reggie Miller say:
Ewing was the force and he’s crying too and Ernie Johnson and Mark Jackson,
they are all in tears talking about Cambridge Rindge and Latin Sir Ewing,
slapping and slamming saying:
he was the moment, he was a man, he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet.
And it’s all sentimental sneakers sliding across the gym floor
but it’s all true, the dude never won a championship
and he was the center of New York and all those kids in Stuyvesant Town and Canarsie
and East New York and Spanish Harlem, and Scarsdale and Yonkers, all of them,
every single one of them wanted to be Pat,
he sitting there on the bench, sweating, dying inside,
screaming at Starks to chill the fuck out against the Bulls,
being so alone.
You could feel how alone he was.
You could feel his solitude
and I am sitting here crying my face off because it’s beautiful how basketball
is such a team sport
and 1991 is so far away
but you can still feel him, Patrick Ewing, the moment,
sliding through the paint and stuffing your shit
as you came through the lane for the layup
that you could never make when he was there
all butterfly and brick
waving his pointer finger in your face, saying
No no no, not this time young fella, this is my house.
DISORGANIZATIONS OF THE HEART
There are all these crackles in the LP.
It’s a used LP. Travels.
Some skips. Pat Metheny.
How long did it take to make them?
I missed them.
That’s why I started listening to albums again. And birds.
For the scratches and hiccups inside the acetate, inside the music.
I have always believed that if I were around at The Big Bang,
this is how it would sound
even if there is no sound in space
because there is no air in space.
I imagine Extradition into As Falls Wichita Falls, side 3 of the record,
with all the blips and cracks as the mess of the universe was born.
That was a good mess, still is,
not like the mess of the man hitting the woman at the bus stop
or the army bulldozing a village
or the woman cheating on the man at the bus stop.
Not those ugly disorganizations of the heart.
It’s the mess of the swamp between the end of the backyard
and the beginning of the woods that can teach us something;
the chaos of meteors and burning stars that could wipe us out in milliseconds;
even the mess of love between two people
who love each other
but can’t live together
making pasta and paying bills
anymore.
It’s the mess of the jump of the stylus in the middle of Metheny’s guitar solo
and Nana Vasconselos’ percussion on Goin’ Ahead
that I want, that started this all,
at that first moment before we were born
and then born again–
the mess of the birth of the universe,
all that blood and placenta and mucous, gasses, masses,
and heavenly bodies
strewn across the sullied bedroom of the sky.
