Playing Trumpets in Your Head

Monday I woke up feeling better.

The pain was actually gone from Friday. It took three days to recover from that walk. I'm not the young kid that I used to be. That's right, I have gray hairs! Now I can bitch about growing old. I clean dishes, make breakfast, or is it lunch for someone who only sleeps in small bits throughout the night? It certainly isn't a traditional breakfast. Potatoes, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, and a rare steak. So rare that it bled blood and when I poked it with a fork, it kicked at me. I need the meat and the blood because I'm a carnivore, and my body, and muscles need the death and the life that was in that damn animal before it was slaughtered for my benefit.

Meat, like anything else, fruits, vegetables, even vitamins, if you cook them too much, you'll bleed out all of the nutrients. I sit down on the edge of my bed and feed like a vampire. I also read emails. Then I go through my online poetry to take out enough to read at Oz's show in Battery Park. I have been asked to read selected poems to the New Yorkers and tourists passing by. Oz, James and their band, Deep Intent, are going to play with other artists. I'm going to introduce the show with my reading. Whatever. I've read in the open before. It's not fun, but I can do it. I can't find anything to read from my new poems, so I take my books with my old works and head out.

I'm supposed to be there before 2:00PM but the trains just don't agree with me. I get there at 2:00 and the streets are mayhem. I have a google map printed out with the location marked with a google arrow. Oz indicated the location to be on the intersection of State Street and Battery Place. It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings and when I enter the intersection all I see is traffic. There are also two parks. A big one and a smaller one across the street. Which one is Battery Park? Obviously the bigger one you so-called Native New Yorker! I head into the park and walk down the promenade and stop and nearly shit myself.

Rising up before me like a bronze and black fist, in the middle of a garden, is the sculpture that was in the plaza between the Twin Towers. It was bashed and battered, broken and busted but still standing. My fucking heart stopped. I remember when I worked just across the street from the impressive buildings. I would ride the subway under them and take escalators up into them, and out the exit to cross the street to my job every night near midnight. Once I got into the datacenter, I relieved two of my co-workers and I would head back out with them, crossing the street again and going to the plaza in the dead of the night and sit on the benches around this great orb and smoke and bullshit. It was almost a nightly ritual. It was really eerie when the full moon came out and rested on the top of this bronze artwork.

All of these memories came flooding back upon me as I continued into the park and looked around for Oz and his band. They were going to set up by 1:15 PM so they should have been here. I walk around the park but find no one but hundreds of tourists. The only upside of this entire march in the heat was the plumage. There was a lot of it. I'm just about to give up. It's obvious that I'm not going to find these guys. It was way after 2:00 and I was to start my reading at 2:07. I turn to head back to the intersection outside of the park and a single figure in the distance, amongst hundreds, caught my eye. It was Oz.

He was standing at the subway exit with his guitar case in one hand and pulling an amp and a carrier for his foot pedals with the other. He stood in the shade, on his cell calling James. I get caught up with the events. Basically Oz just got here. James, the bassist- Jesse, and the sound man- Rick drove their car here with the equipment but the park rangers would not let them drive the considerable distance into the park to drop off their shit. So Rick dumped James and Jesse and a ton of hardware on the sidewalk and drove off to park the car. Oz and I went on a search for these two, and ran into Oz's flutist. A diminutive Asian girl with a big smile. The three of us finally found James, and we hoofed all of that fucking equipment into the park. I got the opportunity to push a big, heavy-assed generator. My legs and back were protesting all the way in. It seemed like the second I touched the damn thing my body started screaming out in pain.

Shit, I'm getting old. I sat on the grass, in the shade, under a tree, as these guys began setting up in the sun. We were way later than 2:00 when they were ready. In fact, although the schedule said 2-4PM, it was close to 3:00 before they were ready. Now after they are almost together, here comes two park rangers. A White man and a Black woman. They march up to the little Asian girl and ask for our permits. She takes them to one of the speakers and taped to the side of the device is the paperwork. They examine it and then shake their heads. The Asian girl calls James over and he gathers a fist-full of wrinkled papers and addresses the two park rangers. He hands over the paperwork and both rangers examine it.

I watch carefully. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm a racist or anything like that. I just know what I see. If I saw a flying saucer I would definitely profess that they are real. If I see it, I say it. So, now I'm going to say something and you can take it at face value but it's just one of my many fucking observations. Black people, when you give them a little power, are harder on other Black people than White people. I tell you, if I ever get into trouble or need the approval of someone in power, I pray that it's a White person. Black people obviously have an example to set, and they make fellow Black people that example. White people, they'll cut them slack, Black people, they'll give grief.

Hey, this is just a time tested obser- vation. Like the fucking time I went to the DMV for an ID last year. The Blacks in the department kept turning me down, while all of the White's kept overruling them. Thank god that White people were the ultimate authority or I would definitely be without an ID now. So, suffice it to say, here is another real-time example of my theory about Blacks in power. I stretch out my legs on the grass, lean back and watch with a cheese eating grin. All I need now is popcorn and soda.

The White Ranger takes one page from the many, scans it, hands it back to James, nods and walks off to talk to a group of park maintenance people in the distance. The Black Chick Ranger takes the paper from James and stands there concentrating with her little mouse brain, and failed junior high school education on the papers in her hand. James stands near her impatiently. She stands there for ten minutes, studying the papers with her fucking misshapened body. Her belt cinching her waist while her fat spilled over and under it like the separation between a sausage link. Even the White Ranger grew impatient and returned to her to see what the problem was. Probably thinking that she found a word in the permit that she couldn't read.

She points to the paperwork and tells James that the permit only allows them to play out in the sidewalk, outside of the park. James frowns and shakes his head. The permit says in front of the Clinton Castle National Monument, which is exactly were they had set up, a bit on its promenade, and a bit on the grass of a garden behind them where I was stretched across. Oz sees the dispute and goes to James' aid, addressing the woman. She snaps at Oz: "I was talking to him sir, not you!" Pointing to James. I have to say, you could see the restraint in Oz's features. I was certain that he was going to boot her balloon body over the fucking monument.

The White Ranger has had enough and walks off for the final time, leaving miss Nazi there to turn back to James. "This is MY park," she says, "and this is MY grass that you are on. I'll let you stay here but you have to take your stuff off the lawn." I was going to tell her that there were a group of White people further up, on the grass with ice chests and shit on the lawn, but like I said, Black people only harass Black people. But James takes it all in stride and they remove everything from the grass, other than me. If she came to me, I was going to tell her that I'm not with the musicians and that I wanted to speak with her supervisor. That's the only way you can get these type of imperious Blacks off your ass. Go to their White bosses.

In minutes, James introduces me, and I walk up to the mike and I introduce myself, the band and the the event, which is Make Music New York! Some tourists and New Yorkers slow down as they walk by, and even fewer stop. I start reading my poetry. I don't give a shit. I picked all of my sedate works, because profanity is not allowed in the public. My non-profane stuff is digestible, but not much fun. James kept keeping me before the audience while they finished setting up, so I had to come up with more and more material. I had my three books, but I felt that I was losing the audience because, frankly, I'm a fucking poet. I have to speak my mind, and many times that means profanity to get my point and my poem across.

I smile at my bored audience, look to the left and then to the right. I tell the audience that I'm looking for the Rangers or the Cops because I want to read something more to my liking. Then I pick a moderately saucy poem. It just uses words like damn, and bastard, but you really aren't supposed to use anything like that. But it was fun and it got a few chuckles. James then jumped in, and read a few of his poems, probably believing that I was about to go off the chain. Then singers went on, and the band went on, and I relaxed on the grass, in the shade, under the tree.

Now these guys were supposed to be off at 4:00 for the next band, but since they were late, they went overtime. The next band began to arrive with their instruments. A bunch of young, starry eyed kids. Not one of them over 20 years old. They stared at Oz's band quizzically. They were supposed to have the area at 4:00 and it was well past that now. James informed them that they started late, so they were going to end late. To which they did. At around 4:30 Oz and James band wrapped it up, but they could not wrap it all up because the agreement with the music coordinators was that Oz and James were to supply the sound equipment....Mikes, mike stands, generator, power speakers, amps and all that shit for the next band, the kids.

So Oz and James and Jesse and Rick had to hang around until the kids finished their set. Rick was ready to go home. There was a lot of equipment to pack up and get gone. He told the kids that they only had four songs. After that, he was going to kill the power. The kids were stunned to say the least. They probably believed that they would have tons of time, but alas Rick was having a fit, pacing back and forth, counting the songs. Actually Oz and James didn't really give a shit. Let the kids play, but then again, it was Rick's equipment so he had the final say.

The kids were pretty slick. They played four songs, but told Rick it was only three. He huffed and puffed and told them they had one more. I smiled, then I looked about for Aunt Jemimah, the Texas Ranger. She was nowhere to be seen. Did these cute little White kids have to produce their permits to play here? I guess not. Nasty bitch never came by. Of course. As soon as the kids finished, Rick embarrassed us all by marching over to the generator and turning it off. Their hardware went dead, the mikes choking off the kids goodbye and thanks to their listeners.

At that moment, everyone, the kids, James and Oz started breaking down the hardware and putting away their instru- ments. From somewhere a guy with a guitar ran up to James, informing him that he was next and needed the sound equipment. James looked at him like he was smoking crack. The agreement with the music coordinators was to only support the kid band and no one else. The guitarist was left standing in the middle of the commotion, stupefied. I felt bad for him. He looked like he was about to burst into tears.

Again, I was enlisted as a roadie and we all trudged the equipment out of the park and to the sidewalk where the car could be loaded. It took Rick some time to get the car from where he parked it, but it was soon loaded and we said our goodbyes. I headed downtown to the 1 train and went home. Walking through the door, every muscle in my ass was killing me. I can't keep this shit up. I'm an old fucking man. I have gray hairs!! I popped painkillers, and crawled into bed and ached my way to oblivion.

I would only sleep for two hours before waking and writing emails. And then when the sun rose, go to sleep for two hours more. But at least I wasn't in pain.

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