burn, baby, burn...

I am not an American person of color...I will not, and really cannot, claim to know your anger if you are reading this...I do know of religious hatred...and have been at the receiving end of antisemitism...but I can hide my Jewish identity behind my married last name that is most often thought of as Italian, instead of Russian origin...as I could hide behind my maiden name...one created by my father and uncle in their early adulthood...hoping to blend in like Hellman's mayonnaise into the white, Christian fifties...but I know from the history of my people...with every fiber of my being...that I can be a High Holy Day Jew...or daily observant...or one who walks away from it all...and it would not matter...as when my ancestors were lined up outside trains bound for crematoriums...2020...our country is burning...and crumbling under the weight of collective amnesia...here we are again...this time protestors are masked...crawling out of covid confinement...the anguish palpable...the situation flowing coast to coast...like lighter fluid...and I don't have any answers...I thought we had reached the bottom of the 2020 rabbit hole when I saw the food lines in Corona...and a mile away...this is not a rabbit hole...it's an abyss...a visual indictment of why our fellow Americans of color cannot escape the grip of institutionalized poverty and incarceration...but mostly it comes down to this...that every day when a black man walks the street...there's that invisible target on his back...it's a bullseye born of hatred and fear...passed down from generation to generation...Rest in Peace, George Floyd...

Broadway baby...

another night of restless sleep...and when I am blessed with deep sleep, I am also tormented with dreams...that I mostly cannot remember, but leave me tired and dragging all day...not that it really matters in New York...the Covid epicenter...but after another night of crazed dreaming, one thought did stay with me...how the three Broadway shows I had tickets for this year...one that I just barely got in two weeks before the "pause", one that now is pushed to the fall, and one, well, who knows these days...it's the titles...the subject matter that brilliantly mirror where we were...where we are...and where we might wind up..."Jagged Little Pill" this past March...now, weren't those news conferences...statistics...and unfortunately, for some, those phone calls painful to swallow?...and much as in the thematic content of that musical, this quarantine is somewhat a time of reevaluation and contemplation...maybe confront the demons or reconstruct the path...then there was "Company"...April, now October...or maybe not...isn't that the driving force behind much of the breakdown of social distancing?...we are not generally "built" to be solitary creatures...we want company...in person company...and much as in the musical's penultimate song, "Being Alive"...that is what we crave to feel...and finally, "The Music Man"...November, if I'm lucky...wouldn't so of the many weary and frightened welcome a Harold Hill and his promises of music and joy...only this time, maybe not a trombone, but a cure...a magic wand that renders that past few months a fading memory...but this is not a Broadway show...and pandemics don't wrap up neatly in a bow in 2 hours and 45 minutes...so remember as summer beckons, and brain fog sets in...remember to avoid those "Promises, Promises"...cause quick cures are often created in "La Cage Aux Folles"...avoid gatherings where "Anything Goes"...cause if you don't you'll just be another "American Idiot"...

Sunday in the park with masks...

or not...yesterday we ventured out to Eisenhower Park for a walk...parked the car, slapped on the masks and headed out...now, I know as we have been told at least a billion contradictory ways to deal with covid, you might think...more than 6 feet out for a walk...why the mask?...the neon sign flashed as we entered the park only minutes earlier..."wear a mask"...and here's why...do you really think after so many people have been cooped up for so long...especially after the atrocious weather in April...that we were the only ones with that idea?...and after observing the multitudes of people all over the park...do you think everyone could manage the 6 feet at all times?...or that the larger groups of people were from the same household?...all the people who were maskless...they didn't even have one with them to pop on if needed...and they didn't give a shit...you know who gives a shit?...those poor health care professionals who have been at the frontline since February...to add insult to injury, there were demonstrations throughout this country for the past several days demanding that their respective cities open up...in Commack as well...again, no masks, no social distancing...crying that they need their hair done...judging by the pictures...dye ain't gonna help...but you know what, I say fine...if you feel your personal freedom is greater than someone else's health then go ahead...but you forfeit treatment should you come down with covid...I say a database of those who feel that they cannot comply anymore...or that the media is making it all up...that it's just like flu...grab your fifty rolls of Charmin when you can't breathe...just don't expect a weary nurse to meet you at the ER door...

the hundred years war...

it's day 4 billion in quarantine...I exaggerate, but you all get it...yesterday Governor Cuomo extended our pause until May 15th...if you are from Long Island you should recognize this constant end-date revision...it is like driving home on the LIE...5pm...any Friday...in the summer..."Delays Exits 13-21"..."Delays Exits 22-35"..."Delays Exits 36-45"...I'm gonna shoot myself Exits 46-62...at least at the end of LIE torture you get some drinks at a bar and ocean breezes with breakfast...here you get homemade hand sanitizer and a mask that keeps popping off one ear as some stranger walks within that 6 feet in a empty-shelf supermarket...and for extra pleasure as we sit captive at home...we can watch those of dubious IQ protesting shoulder to shoulder in states far away...no masks...no gloves...demanding an end to this pause...some calling it a hoax...or worse...angrily doubting Fauci and the CDC...and any other scientific approach to stemming the spread...and as the Governor of Michigan sadly stated...spreading infection further with these protests...ensuring longer quarantines at home...we have now entered the real danger zone with dealing with this pandemic...we have food being dumped and lines of people waiting for food...we have small businesses being shut out of loans so desperately needed...and airlines who were given exorbitant bailouts signaling layoffs (United)...which begs...where the fuck is oversight...leadership...I keep looking for it when I look through my fingers covering my eyes when our President talks each evening...and then eviscerates those asking the tough questions...and then I have to turn it all off...and I'm dreaming of that beautiful, tremendous, terrific ocean at that end of a long road...sitting here foot on the brake...waiting to hit the gas...

"april is the cruelest month..."

Oh, T.S. Eliot, if only you knew...the trees are budding, and flowers gently awakening from a winter that wasn't...soon the grass will be lush and green...tulips opening to the sun...but we won't...we will briskly walk past them...if we can...peering above our homemade mask lines...plodding onward...afraid to really breathe deep...and we will be the lucky ones if we do...I have come to my own conclusion based on whatever brain cells I have left in this 59-year-old brain...a few weeks away from 60 and entering an age group of dubious risk...I conclude that no one knows what the hell they are talking about...as I mused about before we entered our initial lockdown, as it were, in my blog about life during war time, and the Talking Heads...and talking heads...we truly are at war...but without weapons...and with an invisible enemy...how quaint it was when our enemy was only terrorism...when our enemy were angry factions of starving nations who hated our excess...when life was stripping in airports...adjusting to code orange or red or whatever the fuck they called it that week...now we occasionally find solace in a governor who was hated weeks ago for a half-assed policy that left New York City streets brimming with crime...and now the streets are afloat with viral remnants...we look for hope in a little doctor's messages...he looks like that nice uncle that gave you a dollar at the seder...we crave hope...directions...levity...light...and then bury ourselves in distractions...hoarding...binging Netflix without chill...in need of that old school religion, we suffer without the benefit of dedicated clergy...they look at us with compassion through computer screens...our ears denied the solace of choir and community prayer...where does that leave us all as so many enter this holy week...I truly do not know...should we be anointing doorways with blood to protect us from plague?...and the irony...it's National Poetry Month...and with each new poem I read or write...I find myself returning to Eliot's "The Waste Land"...April is the cruelest month...

Love in the Time of Covid-19...

as we move in slow motion through a new normal...or abnormal...I am flooded with thoughts...things I want to write...poetry I'd like to create...but it is quickly consumed by the barrage of news seeping in at all times...life as we now know it has in a sense become a series of book titles...catch-22...the sound and the fury...brave new world...the plague...oh, no...sounds like a pitch for another lame network show...Seinfeld!...am I Jerry or George?...but the book titles...it was that moment last week as we descended into the rabbit hole that I thought of this book title...is covid our cholera?...and will my mind and these fingers ever reach the genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez?...I think not...after all, I did submit my latest poem to Rattle's weekly Poets Respond contest...and they didn't respond...so it's back to the keyboard...trying to give voice...and words...to all the feelings these harsh days..the fear...the anger...the love...and the hope struggling deep within...today is Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday...I'm looking at the tickets on my desk for the revival of "Company"...end of April...and the reality with each new statistic is that those tickets are toast...but I came across this Sondheim quote today..."art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos"...yes it is...as I keep writing in the time of covid-19...

Life during wartime...

there is nothing more obsolete than a post about the coronavirus...covid 19...what we know is ever-changing...what we are told by talking heads (all irony intended...pay attention to this title) sounds like a 4-year-old telling a joke...no beginning, no end...just a bloated middle and no punch line...today I looked at twitter to torture myself...to see what form of panic is trending...and idiocy...so today's term was boomer remover...yes, the latest generation...gen z...laughingly tweets that boomers have destroyed everything and covid 19 is karma...they are tweeting this on $1000 cell phones that mommy bought who may be a boomer herself...eyeroll please...hey, miss gen z...I too rallied at a generation before me...the silent generation and its patriarchy...I rolled my eyes...and when I felt no one valued me and my world was crumbling below my feet....I blasted the angst of Janis Ian...who was the Alanis Morissette before the Billie Eilish...originality is an overrated term...but I digress...generational finger pointing aside...this is what I do know...it is morally wrong to hide your head in the sand and be cavalier about this disease...it is pummeling Italy as I write...as it did in China...don't be misled and have some false sense of security because your youth lets you check a different age box on a doctor's form than me...or those one generation up...and in your fear don't deny anyone their need to pray to their god in this troubled time...or also not to pray...please admit that maybe it's more than time to revere brilliant scientific minds again...from all corners of the globe...and in all languages...because make no mistake...however we get to the other side of this...there will be another virus looming in the distance...how we decide to move forward globally on the other side of covid 19 will have enormous ramifications...for all generations...especially those yet to come...this ain't no party...this ain't no disco...this ain't no fooling around...