Sunday, October 4, 2009
Colombia
This is a little bit of my photography from a 2007-08 (spent New Years there) trip to Colombia. Enjoy!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Eli & Indira
I decided to go to Spanish Harlem..my mother thought it was Far Rockaway
"Make sure you're back by sundown" she shouted
The yenta coalition met downstairs daily in their sun chairs
"Far Rockaway? You'll schvitz like there was no tomorrow"
But I didn't stick around for that
Took the train uptown...El Barrio...got my bodega fix.
Ramon the owner gave me two quarter waters gratis.
The old men in pea caps outside looked at me like some tourist pendejo.
Not knowing I'd rather dish in their bullshit over the yentas at my building anyday
Watched as the clothed children smiled and screamed
Taunting the fire hydrant's muscle per cubic inch
Growing stronger each minute
A seeming ritual since time immemorial
The stoop where I drank my wine on was the makeshift wall in my old room
I could have closed my eyes all day and thought of her
Mi tesoro Indira... her hair of raven and mestizo eyes
As the boleros continued at fever- pitch
The ones where the singer cries at the end
I heard the door-open
record scratch
Dulce Restrepo came out in curlers
Yelling at her children in Spanish
To clear away from the hydrant and come in for lunch
Before it's gone
Bistec en cazuela
You want to take a picture
Of the hydrant and the kids
the girls hanging out by the snowcone truck
or the dominoe tournament by the park
Because by 6pm they become
the somber faces of your relatives
as you sit down and prepare for the enthralling
weekly ritual known as
shabbos dinner
"Make sure you're back by sundown" she shouted
The yenta coalition met downstairs daily in their sun chairs
"Far Rockaway? You'll schvitz like there was no tomorrow"
But I didn't stick around for that
Took the train uptown...El Barrio...got my bodega fix.
Ramon the owner gave me two quarter waters gratis.
The old men in pea caps outside looked at me like some tourist pendejo.
Not knowing I'd rather dish in their bullshit over the yentas at my building anyday
Watched as the clothed children smiled and screamed
Taunting the fire hydrant's muscle per cubic inch
Growing stronger each minute
A seeming ritual since time immemorial
The stoop where I drank my wine on was the makeshift wall in my old room
I could have closed my eyes all day and thought of her
Mi tesoro Indira... her hair of raven and mestizo eyes
As the boleros continued at fever- pitch
The ones where the singer cries at the end
I heard the door-open
record scratch
Dulce Restrepo came out in curlers
Yelling at her children in Spanish
To clear away from the hydrant and come in for lunch
Before it's gone
Bistec en cazuela
You want to take a picture
Of the hydrant and the kids
the girls hanging out by the snowcone truck
or the dominoe tournament by the park
Because by 6pm they become
the somber faces of your relatives
as you sit down and prepare for the enthralling
weekly ritual known as
shabbos dinner
Friday, June 19, 2009
I should of had Tony chop your head off one year ago!!
Walking down Flatbush, on a Sunday morning..to the corner bodega..to get your cheap ass casa del toro...sitting on the stoop outside..thumps of Rad-Z..though in your mind you really want to hear timba or something. Here comes a Chassid with some sort of oversized package which to him weighs heavily....no one briefed you on the gabardine convention. This ruins the mood. You thought to hell you'd never miss Miami..and then you get engaged in this mindfuck.....you need to find a timba song yet there's no internet at home.....the music store sells reggae in your segregated jamaican neighborhood. You want to do like Robert Deniro and aim your 12-gage at the TV when Fox news and the asshole suits come on..just for spite...punk-asses.
You catch the Kings Hwy bus back home....fuckin' guido panguini won't shut up about the Mets....and macanudos. You hope they switch the garlic for arsenic when he seasons his pizza
You stagger inside..yenta-bitch is asleep....then you realize she finished off your scholl's and hope she dry heaves for the balance of her hangover....just for spite, ahh..swore you'd never be a professional jew and yet "just for spite" bounces off your tongue like ..the beat of salsa... SHIT NIGGA...now you need "calle luna calle sol" or some shit like desperately...your bitch stole your IPOD after the fight..the radio is kool-aid on ice these days....all that's left is the record player...and a handful of albums....you thumb through them..MEL TORME? KEELY SMITH? oh shit......why don't you just sprinkle the whole room with fairy-dust..makes me want to break one of those vinyls over a barista's head....and as for you it makes a shit's bit of difference whether it was the early 60's or now.....you're still an overpowering despot who tries to play the victim/schizophrenic angle when someone takes it upon themselves to hand your ass back to you..that's why your fucking husband left you and your geriatric neighbors don't include you in the canasta tournament....
Well, all these ideas and more weigh oh so heavily on you..the critical mass to bring a skyscraper down. And no inherent let-up beckons unto you from around any corner within near reach. A death knell pierces through the alleys. Piercingly louder, shriller; you entertain the notion of wriggling...ahhh..but instead you see "Our day will come" by Ruby and the Romantics...KAPP records...pressed in 1963...a year that only exists in your mind. You never heard the birds chirp, the cars whizz by, or the delivery trucks with the freshly baked bread for that matter. You can imagine the smell of the yeast, perhaps even the stagnant heatwave casting its albacore around your neck...but it's not a piece of your life you can cross-reference in the face of an otherwordly experience. There is a static crackling..but you stand shackled to the others in the throes..of a cosmic let-down...not able to be suckered in by "nostalgia".
Nostalgia is nothing but a cleverly concocted cover story for the quiet desperation and painful yearning in us all.
You catch the Kings Hwy bus back home....fuckin' guido panguini won't shut up about the Mets....and macanudos. You hope they switch the garlic for arsenic when he seasons his pizza
You stagger inside..yenta-bitch is asleep....then you realize she finished off your scholl's and hope she dry heaves for the balance of her hangover....just for spite, ahh..swore you'd never be a professional jew and yet "just for spite" bounces off your tongue like ..the beat of salsa... SHIT NIGGA...now you need "calle luna calle sol" or some shit like desperately...your bitch stole your IPOD after the fight..the radio is kool-aid on ice these days....all that's left is the record player...and a handful of albums....you thumb through them..MEL TORME? KEELY SMITH? oh shit......why don't you just sprinkle the whole room with fairy-dust..makes me want to break one of those vinyls over a barista's head....and as for you it makes a shit's bit of difference whether it was the early 60's or now.....you're still an overpowering despot who tries to play the victim/schizophrenic angle when someone takes it upon themselves to hand your ass back to you..that's why your fucking husband left you and your geriatric neighbors don't include you in the canasta tournament....
Well, all these ideas and more weigh oh so heavily on you..the critical mass to bring a skyscraper down. And no inherent let-up beckons unto you from around any corner within near reach. A death knell pierces through the alleys. Piercingly louder, shriller; you entertain the notion of wriggling...ahhh..but instead you see "Our day will come" by Ruby and the Romantics...KAPP records...pressed in 1963...a year that only exists in your mind. You never heard the birds chirp, the cars whizz by, or the delivery trucks with the freshly baked bread for that matter. You can imagine the smell of the yeast, perhaps even the stagnant heatwave casting its albacore around your neck...but it's not a piece of your life you can cross-reference in the face of an otherwordly experience. There is a static crackling..but you stand shackled to the others in the throes..of a cosmic let-down...not able to be suckered in by "nostalgia".
Nostalgia is nothing but a cleverly concocted cover story for the quiet desperation and painful yearning in us all.
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