The people waited for these reports once a week. They’d gossip nervously all week about it, till the next one.
Every Tuesday a report came in on the radio, at three o’clock in the morning, from a monotone man, who the people used to ignore or mock….that was before the reports started making sense….too much sense.
The old man sat in the run down hotel banging away on the report. Banging away what he promised gad. Banging away the stress that was wrapped around his mind like rubber bands and sharp thread tightly wound causing marks…screaming.
Hunched over the keys, dressed in a filthy suit, stained, and ragged….I could smell it through the thick smoke that had been there for decades, I could see it through that smog in the room, as I peeked around the closet door where I was hiding. I could see the nightmares he had every night.
I could see the years of failures in his life every night……. every night that I watched him from behind the closet door.
I could see the regret and the stained tea cup, caked with years of old tea, browning the inside of the cup.
I could see it from behind the closet door.
I could smell cedar and mold and old man, in the closet behind me, but I couldn’t see what he was writing and that’s why I was there, for all those months and now I couldn’t see what he was writing.
We were running out of time, I could feel it slipping away as he banged on the keys like a mad metronome.
So many depended on me, not to be discovered or dead. They all loved the old man, in terror. What would they do without his approval…but he was anonymous, nobody knew who he really was. I was the only one that knew who he really was, or where he was. And now nobody knows where I am.
And I was afraid of the frail old man, afraid of what he knew….and what he might do with it. You see while everyone else lived apathetically, with point of views based on vanity, the old man had toiled away at learning. He disregarded his own self-interest, even if it was embarrassing….even if it was enduring mockery and threatening accusations.
And I was trapped in that horrible stinking room, with wrenching cramps shooting through my legs and body, the hunger pains were almost unbearable….always peeing in a bottle. All I wanted was for him to finish….but he kept chain smoking, hunched over…. banging those keys.
Then a surprise shock of pain in my stomach as I heard him speak to me for the first time, from across the room…………
And it was at that moment I realized he had known I was there the whole time. . . . . .
- The Lunatic woke and came out in the morning....it was 8 in the evening.
He sat on a sidewalk trash can until 3 in the morning.
As I crept up behind him along side a building, he could not see me.
But I heard him begin to speak.
He said,
"But oh Man!"
"Where is our humility?"
"Can you see what the great minds of the Modernists have done to us?!"
"But can it really be Christ the hope?"
"Can it be so simple and so complicated that we forgot how it is that we blaspheme?"
"Did we rule him out for some thing better, or for the sake of our own vanity?"
"For even the protestants rely on they're own interpretation.."
"Is our authority really our own vanity?"
"Chesterton and Belloc knew.....they knew."
"Kerouac the st. Augustine of our times....he knew."
"But, somewhere, poor old Luther forgot."
"Marx the genius who must have forgotten to add God when designing a perfect society."
"Lilith, the great emasculator and baby killer and destroyer of families......"
"Refusing modesty and humilty for hate and ego and the right to be immoral."
"Who are our children?"
"Who are our fathers."
"Where is our Holy Mother?"
"Where are the meek?"
"Woman where is thine veil?" . . . .
"In this mass transit society of emediate gratification, no one understands aquiring a taste."
"Instead of a cigarette....a candy bar."
"Instead of caviar.......that same old slop from mass media."
"Once again the savages have invaded Rome."
"But for me,"
"I see..."
"I see giant icons of the Mother Mary....and Fidel Castro luming down with big shifty eyes and a big cigar in his mouth."
"I see Machiavelli and Charles Bukowski, arms over shoulders singing drunkin Irish songs and pointing with sarcastic grinns."
"Laughing at the confused failings of the great expanse of the 'American know how'."
"But as Americans we cling to the hopes that computers, technology, materialism, wieghts and measures, the here and now, the great myth, will some how save our souls."
"BUT...!"
"Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us."
- And the Lunatic went and confessed.
Hanging off a priests ear, he confessed.
For he knew he was mad and he knew there was only one hope....
That latin god Jesu Christe, the God man from the Jews.........
And as I stopped following him some where in the back streets of the dewy morning night.
Just above my spot on the sidewalk, held up in another run down hotel room, my past was jabbing at me again....as it had everyday since she left.
"I miss my wife, I miss my wife," would spew from my mouth uncontrolably every now and again and at least once a day....for 7 years.
mental scar hiccups
nagging shame.
but not as bad as it used to be. shortly after she left state and took the kids, i would wander around New Orleans with outbursts of frequent screams and sobbing.
i couldn´t leave the city because anywhere else the police would have taken me away.
the fifth of wiskey a day did little back then. so at nite after the fifth i´d go out drinking.
even travelers have a home, for me it´s cheap hotels that let you smoke.
it´s a never ending search for a spot on the sidewalk and a hotel that´ll let you smoke.
sometimes days and nites sleeping on buses and trains searching.
sometimes a good spot but no cheap hotel.
sometimes cheap hotels, but they wont let you work the spot. so back on the bus to another city so i can sleep on the bus.
it´s a gamble.
in the winter a thick tuff suit jacket and fedora, cargo pants and slip on sneakers....not white ever.
in the summer cargo capris, sandal flip flops and a vest i make out of a suit jacket. after the winter the fedora has usually thinned out enough for the summer heat.
i buy as i go, i don´t lug. one bag is all i need. holds my rig and personals.
working outta the pockets, slight of hand is the gimmick for the quick ten minute show, for the curious or those with time to kill, ten fifteen minutes then the hat is passed. usually the first show is just less then the price of a room.
4 or 5 shows could get me through the day. but if i can, i work all day to forget my problems.
in the states i would prefer to live outta my van. driving hundreds of miles, from pitch to pitch.
truck stops with cheap private showers in the morning and cup of tea.
i come from a long line of sidewalk shifty eyed losers. when i´m in a crowd, i´m the one who looks like trouble from your grandpa´s past....maybe your great grandpa´s, maybe worse.
i remember when i was younger, lookin at old guys like that downtown and thinkin, "that`s what i´ll be"...well here i am.
for us it´s hard now, private property regulations, and less foot traffic in the states....and the spots in europe are closing up.
cops, shops, and bad guys are the set backs to the job.
cops and shops wanna shut you down and the bad guys are looking to take what they saw you make.
so on my back i stare at the cheap neon lite on the ceiling of my room.
it´s lonely, but it´s less trouble then a woman.. . . .
