Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Monday, November 25, 2013
Welcome home
A Mural For Myself
Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying and other undying music
seemed to take me by the hand to Camelot after injuries caused loss of
memories.
When I was a first grader, I was let out early from school
with other children that ran into the arms of parents with solemn faces. With
no one to pick me up, I quickly learned independence. I walked alongside the
quiet freedom of Saint Mary’s Park, the former estate of The Founding Father
who came up with We, The People. There were no sweet bird songs, no roar of
planes from Idlewood Airport and skies were battleship gray.
With my beloved books, I walked long steps of our home and
past the milk box next to our apartment next to the door of a white –haired
woman, all I had in the way of a doting grandmother. In the living room, I saw
Uncle Walter. He took off his glasses to look back at a clock and marked the
passing of the country’s first TV president in The Space Age.
Super Man died again with a bullet to his head.
In crowds of disbelief and swelling grief, John John
saluted, as did I and other kids. We put up a brave front. It’s what heroes do.
Later on, the better angels of our nature had a dream for the city that never
sleeps and beyond borders like that mechanical wing and a prayer called Voyager
bringing the blues to the universe. “God bless every one of you on the good
green Earth,” said an astronaut after reading the first chapter of Genesis.
“And his mother cried,” softly sang The King over a sick baby born in the
ghetto.
Live long and prosper, Elvis.
You are so cool an American next to John F Kennedy and John
Glenn. The coolest that made the boy I was dance to The Jailhouse Rock in The
South Bronx of America.
It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.
This is for my mother, who worked in a pen & pencil
factory.
She drew me my first smile.
This is for my English teacher who believed I would write
The Next Great American Novel. Just write what you know, she encouraged a six
grader in The Wonder Years.
Easy as ABC and, “3…2…1--- liftoff of Apollo 13!”
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Hey, Americans, give me citizenship and I give you my version of From Russia With Love
Life After Media by Danny A Aponte
When I was a child, media was my first drug of choice in The
South Bronx of America.
Then one day, I OD when the better angel of my nature went
to Google Heaven
And now The Dream Police by Cheap Trick plays LOUD inside my
brain!!!
AIEEEEE! I’m having a better time than I ever did in the
real world!!!
Life movies on…
http://dannydope.blogspot.com
Mommy, what's the true meaning of Black Friday?
Life After Media by Danny A Aponte
When I was a child, media was my first drug of choice in The
South Bronx of America.
Then one day, I OD when the better angel of my nature went
to Googleheaven
And now The Dream Police by Cheap Trick plays LOUD inside my
brain!!!
AIEEEEE! I’m having a better time than I ever did in the
real world!!!
Life movies on…
Life After Media by Danny A Aponte
When I was a child, media was my first drug of choice in The
South Bronx of America.
Then one day, I OD when the better angel of my nature went
to Googleheaven
And now The Dream Police by Cheap Trick plays LOUD inside my
brain!!!
AIEEEEE! I’m having a better time than I ever did in the
real world!!!
Life movies on…
Friday, November 22, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
I used to be a delivery boy in The Village of the 1970s.
Among many interesting customers, I brought groceries to the
first members of Saturday Night Live and the 1% that lived in townhouses and
penthouses.
Writing on Win98, I can deliver the goods but it wouldn’t be
good enough for me. In the so-called media capitol of the world, I can deliver
something great for DreamWorks.
I Delivered Turkeys To The Stars by Danny Aponte of Public
School 161.
Chapter One: It was a dark and stormy night in The South
Bronx.
Now you’re off and running like The Health Care website.
And no laugh track need apply
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Nature Of The Blog
The ‘Tomb Raider’ you see is Terry.
Terry worked at The Agency.
Terry’s dead.
I’m next.
LOL.
My name is Blog. Jpeg Blog.
http://dannydope.blogspot.com
Saturday, November 16, 2013
When I was a little boy, I time traveled by peeling back
layers of old carpets to an era where people used newspapers to line wooden
floors in The South Bronx. As if handling butterfly wings, I picked up journals
yellowed by decades and marveled at the stories.
I saw a reporter who used my name as his first and last. He
wrote about Joe Di Maggio holding out for more money from the New York Yankees
and how he wished Jolting Joe would shout for his net worth as one of the
greatest ballplayers in history.
Reading ancient articles made them news again and made me
feel like I had slipped from the floor to the skies of the 1930s. I was so
there walking among the roaring crowd.
Strange that I practically live in the shadow of Yankee Stadium
and could hear the cheers but never once taken to a ballgame. My mother’s
husband was more interested in drinking with his friends and better with their
children than he was with me.
Childhood melancholy gives way to hitting my first home run
to the cheers of teammates in our backyard of scattered grass and cracked
concrete and that battered ball flying over the fence was as close as I would
ever get to The House Babe Ruth Built.
I call this chapter Bronx, Baseball and Beyond. I’m writing
this in an attempt to recover memories lost to head injuries. I aim to touch
all bases before sliding into home.
So far so good…
http://buildingshalom.blogspot.com
Friday, November 15, 2013
New News
When I was a little boy, I time traveled by peeling back
layers of old carpets to an era where people used newspapers to line wooden
floors in The South Bronx. As if handling butterfly wings, I picked up journals
yellowed by decades and marveled at the stories.
I saw a reporter who used my name as his first name and
last. He wrote about Joe Di Maggio holding out for more money from the New York
Yankees and how he wished Jolting Joe would shout for his net worth as one of
the greatest ballplayers in history.
Reading ancient articles made them news again and made me
feel like I had slipped from the floor to the skies of the 1930s. I was so there
walking among the roaring crowd.
Strange that I practically live in the shadow of Yankee
Stadium and could hear the cheers but never once taken to a ballgame. My
mother’s husband was more interested in drinking with his friends and better
with their children than he was with me.
Childhood melancholy gives way to hitting my first homer
to the cheers of teammates in our backyard of scattered grass and cracked
concrete and that battered ball flying over the fence was as close as I would
ever get to The House Babe Ruth Built.
I call this chapter Bronx, Baseball and Beyond. I’m writing
this in an attempt to recover memories lost to head injuries. I aim to touch
all bases before sliding into home.
So far so good…
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Welcome To The City Of Illegal Guns & Roses
The Persistence Of Memory
I suffered a concussion when my head was forced into a brick
wall that exploded with graffiti.
Undercover cops came from behind and assaulted me as I walked home after
I.S 155 activities that were designed to build character or good citizenship in
students.
” F**k! It’s not him!” one of them shouted as my bus pass
and other ID drifted to concrete like yesterday’s newspapers.
A vein of blood trailed down my forehead, as I stood mute in
the middle of the entrance of my home building. All I could do was watch them
run red-faced to their unmarked car. One of them stopped and looked back as if
he wanted to say, “I’m sorry, kid”. Then they were gone. I sat at the edge of my
bed with ice pressed to a growing head bump.
I almost forgot my
homework on The Underground Railroad.
Years later, holiday vacation from NYU and homework to
create a tour book for the South Bronx began by guns pulled out by cops behind
squad cars. They yelled at me to drop a shoulder bag and lift my arms up. I was
smashed against the back of a car and violently patted down by a white cop
while others looked through personal items.
When he hit my crotch, I pushed him several feet with one
hand. I turned and stared into the barrel of a gun held by a black cop whose
nostrils flared like a bull about to charge and gore. There was an unearthly
cold light of a stare from my mother’s other son, who, minutes before, had
tried to kill me with Colt 45 malt liquor beer. Had the heavy bottle connected
with my face, eyes would’ve been wrenched out of sockets, nose and teeth
shattered in a gruesome death. Possessed
by the demon Schizophrenia inflamed by Crack, he had ran with an awful shriek
to a coffee and donut shop on Prospect Avenue where he panicked police officers
to believe I had a gun.
The way they roughed me up was nothing compared to my
mother’s husband who belted me across my face and back when I was a boy.
Torture started at the age of five when he yanked off my red towel used as a
cape and dragged me to the bathroom. He slapped me once to wipe the look of
bewilderment off my face. Then he lost control of his hand and blinded me with
one rapid slap after the other. He hit so hard I didn’t feel anything. The
beating stopped when an electrical current bolted up my spine and blood burst
out of my nose. It’s been written that childhood is the kingdom of forever.
It’s agonizing to go back in time to see the child I was fall to tiled floor
like a marionette with cut strings.
I don’t remember death only night terrors of being pulled
out of bed to be belted.
His son learned his father’s behavior so well he put me in a
chokehold out of jealousies and later attempted mindless murder again that
caused lacerations on my neck.
It’s hard to live in the real world that made me the captain
of the USS Escapism.
Reality happened again when his father tried to drown me in
the bathtub where I pretended to be Namor, the prince of Atlantis, a mutant
from Marvel Comic Books.
Once upon a time, I felt the mystery of life when I went
deep into the waters of Orchard Beach, the French Riviera of the Bronx. Unlike
other kids, I could hold my breath longer and swam far for freedom like Cubans.
Without my glasses, I saw people as points of colors on sands of time and
myself washed up on the shores of a future free from abuse, free to evolve into
someone who wanted to go where common sense was religion.
The oceans were near to flying in the heavens and second to
the mystery of the human brain that could eventually figure out how to walk on
water. Even though my mother is Catholic, I was never one of those kids that
prayed to a crucified Jew who suffered after giving people Universal Health
Care. I wanted to take The Son of God to the hospital and get Tetanus shots
like me after I had stepped on a rusty nail that was hidden like a snake in the
grass in Saint Mary’s Park where I romped in my Lone Ranger cowboy hat and
silver cap guns, gifts from a merchant marine uncle who lived for the open
seas.
This how my holiday vacation from school ended and homework
resumed: red-faced cops handcuffed my mother’s and her husband’s son and took
him to Lincoln Hospital.
I forgive them for they know not what they had done to me.
Merry Christmas, baby Jesus, and peace on Earth for children
of all ages.
Amen.
‘
I don’t have a business.
I have a hobby.
I dream.
All Our Yesterdays, A To Z At The Library
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