Shari lived on Greenwich Street, back in the 80s, across from what had once been a garage for the garbage trucks that clanked and stank throughout the night collecting the city’s refuse.  August was an either or of a Hobsons’ choice – heat or stink. 

Max would pick her up most Sundays 2 am when work tapered off and take her across Manhattan to the ‘selka or Kiev on the East Side.  Usually the Kiev, where that cute Ukrainian girl always served him and would stare daggers at Shari sharper than her Slavic cheeks and bones.  Perhaps the waitress dreamed of green card fields or maybe she was just hard – hard as some other eastern European girls Shari knew.  But Max never noticed that, of course.  The ‘selka girl was nice to him and he always left a nice fat tip and then watched her walk away in her black leggings and short skirt which made him think of pierogi and sour cream. 

Sometimes Max would pick up a fare when they crossed on Houston or 14th and Shari got to see parts of New York she never otherwise would – Roosevelt Island like a cement mausoleum slick and clean from rain; new-sprung industrial mushrooms.  She went there later on a lift like the sky ride at Six Flags and found it cramped and dry and dirty, pedestrians and sunlight and paper churning in the wind, stripping it of the midnight mystery.  

The garbage place departed that summer for Hoboken or some less expensive clime across the Hudson gulf.  A beat-down of gentrification, replaced by a new hot spot, the kind that had the lifespan of a mayday fly before the bridge and tunnel people brought their filthy lucre kiss of death.  The smell was now an OD of perfume at night, a bare step up from the pungent rot before, while the windows rattled with dance bass instead of truck tires on brick streets.

Sunday 2 am and Max double parked and blew the horn, the new club also killing local parking like a baby seal on ice.  Shari double checked the front door, crossed the hood and slide in shotgun, but Max’s vision was attuned to certain movements that locked his eyes like eagle’s across the naked purple fields of avenues – the raising of a arm.

“Let’s just eat, honey” as Shari followed his gaze to a fake leopard skin wrap.  One last fare might pay for dinner and couldn’t hurt and Max imagined himself a noble public servant for three lost souls that staggered across the street, desperate for a ride as only party people could.  They might tip well, or not.  Max was hopeful but a realist; still every fare was now profit.  The leopard bitch wobbled between a stick man and stacked brick brunette underneath a pill box hat, all three dressed like refugees from the fashion police.  They were drunk, but not puking drunk, if Max was any judge.  You learned pretty fast after one or two fares mistook the cab for a vomitorium.

“But its Sandra Bernhard” and he unlocked the doors and all three got in the back.  They headed east to a club not yet marked on Jersey maps, hidden treasure where the cool or famous could congregate like koi without the hassle of the hoi-polio.  Sandra talked all the way as they turned right on King and then the dog-leg on to Houston.  She went on like a high school girl about this and that and then a rant about Heart’s “Barracuda” she recorded w/ a band but the label wouldn’t release it since it was “too controversial.”  Shari later asked an ex at Alternative Tentacles and he said it was so bad they had to can it.  By the time Sandra finished her story they were there but the brunette didn’t want to go and Sandra pleaded while the boyfriend/slash/manager looked lost upon the curb.  The girls talked like fares do when the meters running on time, not mileage, which made Max no money as he was want to say if  fares took too long with their goodbyes; he was Woody Allen’s shark, he had to move to live.  This time he stayed quiet with Sandra half in, half out, leaning into the cab.  Shari poked him in the ribs impatient   He watched it all in the mirror, except for Slash, whom he could see out of the corner of his eye.  Finally it was finished but Sandra still lingered, hand upon the open door, blurting out loud enough so everyone in line or half a block away could hear, “goodbye Madonna, later Madonna, see you Madonna,” liberally sprinkled amongst the kissy-kisses.

It was Madonna and she asked for 64th and Park where Shari read she sued the condo to get in and Page 6 talked about her brown-dye job for mother-fucking Mamet and “Speed the Plow.”  Shari had been Madonna’s roommate when she first moved to the City up on Riverside in a brownstone share.  Shari had stories about the boys Madonna brought back home and screams like from some cheap porno would filter around the strategically-cracked bedroom door.  She must have always needed an audience.  When roommate Heidi suggested Madonna bring home toilet paper, she flipped over her shoulder as she left, “Use your hand.”  And when Madonna moved out she took something from all the other girls and even sold Heidi a chest of drawers that Heidi re-finished, only to find out it was the landlord’s.  Madonna did forget a pair of jeans that Shari snagged and sometimes still wore since Sotheby’s would never take her word for it.  It was a good conversation piece and Max got to brag he had been in Madonna’s jeans. 

Madonna sat brown and small and quiet in the rear, stiff and uncomfortable that her cover had been blown.  Madonna didn’t recognize Shari, why should she?  Instead, she assumed the thousand yard stare the famous do when they’re in public – yes, I am who I am now leave me the fuck alone.  Max had pulled up next to Woody Allen once on Hudson and he gave him that look.  Max was freaked not by seeing Woody Allen but that he was driving – “Annie Hall” was one of his favorite movies.  The looks and blasé staredown is the price of fame but Max and Shari let Madonna be and talked small talk as they turned on 14th Street and headed back west.  On 6th Ave Max turned right, hit a pothole and the driver’s window he kept cracked jumped off the inside rail. He pulled next to a hydrant to put it back and Madonna spoke again.  “We’ll miss the lights.” Max jerked the window back in place like a finger into joint, saw the lights all turning green and knew they were synchronized up to Central Park.  “Don’t worry,” and he floored the old Caprice.  He hit sixty easy on the empty avenue, which as always needed some repair.  He kept one eye out for any red light running drunks or lurking cops.  The other he kept glued to the rearview where Madonna flew up with every pot hole, smacking her head into the fabric of the roof.  The lights streamed green, the needle steady as they covered a rough mile per minute.

And they were there.  Madonna took it well, adjusting her hat as she stepped out.  She gave Max a twenty and waved the change before the doorman in monkey green opened the big glass doors.  Seven seventy-six was enough for one at the Kiev, if Max didn’t over tip.  Of course he did, it was his “girl friend,” and then dropped Shari off at her place.  And Max went back out, a shark among shallows, hoping for a four-am fare or two once the bars closed down.  Maybe one to Brooklyn?  While he prowled the empty streets he wondered if having Madonna in his cab was his 15 minutes of fame or just a brush back pitch of same.  Until he went back to home, where Shari was asleep on the couch but had slipped into Madonna’s jeans.





Garbage Mafia

A little bit of everything is a lot
like green lights forever 
and foot to the pedal
or change in the weather.

Kick off them covers
the rain and tin rooftop 
singing together    
like a couple of old lovers,

laughing like drunks
when we found Pound
in Dallas not Paris.
Just you and me hieratic, laughing at lunch, 		

and down on the Brazos 
with all of the others 
driving the washboard, God but
we were young and beautiful once.

singing like gods
singing with Thor
who’s in the rear stomping,
stomping out rhythm,

knees in the mirror 
bouncing
“Sweet Virginia!”
“You can feel the heroin dripping,”

and the speed washing clean
in a teaspoon of water,
pure as the cold
of a spring-fed river 

feeding an iced-over barrel
up in the Sangre de Cristo,  
blood of Christ it was heartstopping, 
coming out dipping, eyes big as a heifer’s.

Singing like gods
as good as it gets 
Knees in the rearview
Sweet Virginia!     (etc.)


As good as it gets

Got up at 2 am to put the turkey on.
Got up at 2 am to put the turkey on.
Lit that smoker up then back to sleep ‘til dawn

Cranberry, mashed potato, salad and some rolls;
Cranberry, mashed potato, salad and some butter rolls;
drippings for the dressing and a great big ole green bean casserole. 

The pumpkin pie is all et up, the turkey stripped down to bone. 
The pumpkin pie is all et up, that turkey stripped down to bone.
Now there’s nothing left to do but watch the Cowboys lose.

I got a lot to be thankful for, life is good with the Tryptophan blues.
I got a lot to be thankful for, life is good with the Tryptophan blues.
Loosen up your belt and kick off them meeting shoes.

The bottle’s on the table and it’s getting kind of low,
The bottle’s on the table but it’s getting kind of low,
and the weather’s getting worse with all the ice and all of the snow.

The dishes they all are done, So much to be thankful for.
Moma did the dishes and you got so much to be thankful for.
Daddy’s on the couch and he is just now starting to snore.

So I’ll just sit here longer, if it ain’t no kind of crime.
So I’ll just sit here longer, if it ain’t no capitol crime.
And keep on looking at you baby since it is almost beddy-bye time.

I got a lot to be thankful for, life is good with the Tryptophan blues.
I got a lot to be thankful for, life is good with the Tryptophan blues.
Loosen up your belt as I kick off my high-heeled shoes




Tryptophane Blues

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!


In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves; 
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


Kubla Khan

Alone with Alone 2 A 4 M&M mix

Max would buy mint tea at an Arab place on Atlantic, outside Borough Hall, right over the East River.  There was a long slog down toward the Promenade, only to turn left and find a way over the BQE.  Because he lived in Red Hook, where no one lived, except for junkies and bums.  Still, scattered among the burnt-out buildings on that first block of Columbia St. was the Latin American Longshoremen Club, a magic wholesaler and Accardi Hardware.   Max’s apartment was above Accardi’s, where Dave charged him $50 a month for hot water while he kept the thieves out.  He would have had a million-dollar view of the Twin Towers if the rear windows hadn’t been cinder-blocked up.

The tea came whole-stem, crystallized all over with sugar and mint so that it glistened like pudenda in the morning.  Max had to strip the leaves and wrap them in a paper towel to use in the old percolator his mom had given him when he moved to New York.  It was straight out of the fifties, all shiny UFO aluminum and wheezed and burbled like Darth Vader with hay fever on a spring day.  But it made fine coffee and a most excellent iced tea – coffee hot and sweet and tea sweet and cold, which is just how God intended it.  Iced tea was something Yankees seemed congenitally incapable of making.  Sweet tea in New York City was three ice cubes in a brown plastic glass with a side of sugar.  The outside of the glass never sweated and the sugar never melted in the tan tepid water, grains congealing like crystal gravy at the bottom of the glass no matter how hard you stirred. 

Columbia Street ran along the waterfront where Max carried the tea in a brown paper grocery bag with the tips parading out of the top.  And that made him think of Jimmy and the Michoacán.  Jimmy was a ginger and a con, ex, who got fished out of the Rio Grand w/ fifty key of dirtweed that was hardly worth the stint in Leavenworth, or so he claimed.  Anyway, now he was back home with his wife, who was Max’s mom hairdresser.  That’s how Max met Jimmy, who still knew a guy and Max and Mike knew certain parties and they helped put the high in high school. Because Jimmy’s buddy had moved on from dirtweed while he was inside.  Instead, good Michoacán, the whole fucking plant, stem and all.  And it came in brown paper grocery bags with the longer bits sticking out the top, just like the tea.  
 
That Michoacán was primo, even when stripped down into something potable, losing half its weight.  Because it was the first good shit anybody from school had ever had.  A light head high at first … nothing for the body, but soon you were floating.  The Bermuda grass between the car and apartment pool that summer looked like little palm trees etched out individually as they soared above them, while the music turned all finely textured; a soft fur cilia covering Led Zeppelin – and Tangerine Dream once Max saw Friedkin’s “Sorcerer.”  That Michoacán snuck up on you and then you were too stunned to do much of anything, even talk, even if there had been anything to say.  The sun shone, the vinyl rubbed its fur and they lay like seals by the water, clubbed into submission.  It was a fun way to waste the summer.


Jimmy had bought an old police car, white and square with a spotlight that swiveled on the driver’s side.  “Put the scare on them,” he said whenever he drove.  But he never delivered.  Jimmy wasn’t stupid.  Instead, it was Max and Mike, just summer visiting friends and where the parties be.  








Undercover police 1 C Mix

The mind is the subtlest beast,
soft as the spot on a new baby’s head 
where the hole closes up  
like legs intertwined in bed.  

Full moon, a fall planting 
for putting in the ground naked, 
her kindness a human milk
soon forsaken.    

Cause the water gets no fresher
no matter how long she lets it run,
a monkey with a hand grenade 
when all is said and done.

Strip mall sophistication 
an abattoir of good taste;
her wasp-belly iridescence 
genuflects much too much in haste. 

The spoon’s on the napkin,
a glass on the table,
dead finch in the freezer 
and a jar with no label.

He talked to the dog
and not to his wife
until he got hoarse
and she divorced;

Still her smell lingers on the bath towel 
like something old, something new.
Tell me you love me
and I’ll say thank you.


Milton's daughter  zeta

More of a collective than a band, Mary Hestand, Sue Norman and Alan Tubbs were the spine of Rm101 and before that in NYC as Christ & the mermaid '69. Since Dickey Johnson started playing guitar with them, the music has taken a harder, rockier turn, even as more acoustic tracks have been worked up.  So, a new name for a new band -  a pleasure dome

Others help in various recordings:  
Mary Guthrie - bass, acoustic and BV
Lisa Sue Warner - VO
Stephen Potter - real drums and perc

a pleasure dome

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