Aim For The Stars
There is a funeral home opposite a residential building
turned into a homeless shelter in The South Bronx of incinerators. One night,
the air was scented lightly with a sickening sweet odor of cremation. Ashes of
ashes floated miles from Manhattan. It drifted over playgrounds and trees of
Saint Mary’s Park, the former estate of The Founding Father who came up with
We, The People. The remains of the awful day fell over the deserted highway and
across the river to Riker’s Island Prison.
I stared out the window to remember three Pit Bulls turn
into a three-headed dog on the funeral home’s roof. I’m like a man not sure
he’s on Death Row or in The Underworld. I stop short of making a Greek myth out
of the mess of my life when I write of Jesus and Apostles behind me on the face
of a kitchen clock.
Every night, I run of time. I’ll be so blessed if I get last
supper from the church pantry with a line of transients that gets longer. I
stole bread and became a thief who can play the thief nailed next to a good
Jewish lawyer. In The City That Never Sleeps, I’ve been dreaming vacations from
the nightmares of Reality.
I find myself back in The Wonder Years and it feels like the
future is about to begin. I wake up to a stampede of formerly homeless African-American
children. On Father’s Day, I found myself walking on water because someone
upstairs left the faucet running.
I look out the window and see The South Bronx is looking
Islamic. There are now black women that cover their bodies with black veils and
robes in a heat wave.
It’s morning in The South Bronx of America.
I’m a stranger in a strange land.
Alone.
There was banging on the door. “Leave your furniture behind!
I’m giving you bunk beds,” said a Dominican who claimed he was a cop in his
native land. He works for a company called Paradise Management. Hell comes in
the form of lies and harassments. They made promises of money and renovated
apartments. They had succeeded on concentrating the old time tenants to the
other side of the building.
The last time I heard of an offer of bunk beds was in The
Holocaust.
Once upon a time, I carried Anne Frank in my arms as shadows
of burnt-out buildings and bullies fell over us in the only borough connected
to the mainland of The United States. Before I was held down and beaten badly
on the brain by a Neo Nazi at NYU, I was given an assignment to create a tour
book to draw tourists to our town of low income to no income people. My fellow
students and teacher looked at me like they saw a dead man walking. What’s life
without challenges?
If homework goes well, I’ll have a story to pay the rent.
If a magical teacher like Mary Poppins were to show up over
The South Bronx she would be shot down with illegal guns owned by drug dealers
that get people stuck on stupid.
Higher Education here is a no-fly zone.
Mommy, I’m scared.
Mommy?
