A New York Minute... or longer

Submitted by
Sym-petal-ous ~ from no certain address


Sooo...I spaced out on the ride and let the flow take me
where I musta had to go, and that would apparently be
the beautiful Henry Hudson Parkway/West Side Highway
and it bein' a Saturday, traffic backed up at those shitty Mid-town lights
but I just shrugged, took a chill pill and then took in the sights
and then emergin' from the rip-off backed up Battery Tunnel I flagged
a beat cop he was and he was just walkin' the line, payin' no mind
and he winced & scratched what was left of the hair on his head
and wasn't sure he said 'bout what's the best way to some Brooklyn hood
so I asked the next cop with couth & he just pointed to the ol' toll booth
"ask him" he grunted and so I paid a piece o' my soul to the Com-pa-ny
askin' what's the best way to blahblahblah and said he in a sorta fun-ny
little voice soundin kinda blue that he really didn't have much of a clue
and oh yeah, "I am not...from around...here, are you?"

No that's true and I got a little lost, hey what the hell else is new?
and so I passed the same stuff twice, a deja vue freakin' time or two
but eventually I parked on President near the Funky 4th Avenue venue
The Spoken Word Cafe that is and a Flatbush dive it was...
the kind where you walk in the door and they hit you up for your
One Drink Min-i-mum, a five dollar sum, before you can even explore
so I sipped my brown bottled brew and slowly strolled around right in-to
the strangely orange bare back room with a giant boxed-in chimney
squarely situated city-style smack in the middle and amidst thee...
ample clutter with no aisles but a tangled spread of metal folding chairs
and some tired but cushy couches and sofas that sorta belonged in some
SUNY frathouse somewheres or the like just as the 2 o'clock open-mike
was about to actually commence...and with a few sweet smiling oldsters
spewing the type of sentimental verbiage that makes poetry the "P" word
~ ~ ~ it painfully did just that ~ ~ ~

Then after a bit of a while (lucky us!) there was a break
and still waitin' for my time to shine, I ambled over
to a middle-aged woman with a brash and arrogant air
the type that could probably hold her own drivin' a Yellow Cab
in the Big Apple (you know, make it there, make it anywhere!)
Now she was busy arrangin' her blessed "broad-side" freebies
so it occurred to me that she just might be the Featured Readah
name o' Jackie Sheelah, kinduva movah and a shakah in and on
the local Spoken Poa Tree scene...soooo to break the thin ice (no pond)
and crack that kinda cool veneer, I pointed to the 16 little pictures
of famous folks that were evenly spaced and adorned those walls
with faces like Malcolm X, FDR, Bob Marley, and Mu-ham-med
(you know, Ali!)..."So" I said, "they should have a little contest here,
maybe see who can correctly identify the most of those celebrities"
Huh? she mumbled looking up at the walls and then not quite at me
"Hell, I don't think I could name one of them" she sorta spat and then
incredulously I directed her attention to a picture o' John Lennon,
you know, the famed portrait shot with the beard and the shortish hair
from the 70s when the Beatles were no more here, there & everywhere
"that's him?" she now squinted with a skeptical air "musta been when
he was young" she muttered and then turned away to attend to her
words and her de-liver-ee that was frankly mediocre for a feature
or at least it just seemed like that to the likes of me

Now she did get a chuckle from the fawning locals by later fessin' up
to being well aware of how much easier it is to beg or implore
or hope for or even expect (Imagine that! an Entitled New Yorker!)
Forgiveness (Sweet Forgiveness) than it may be to have the decency
to ask for permission that just might be denied...sure I laughed,
but inside I cried... well not really, but know if you must, it was
more like derision and a little mild disgust, but not for long cuz
I quickly forgave her, for that's what I do in this type of case
that is when I'm not get-tin...a taste of my own medi-cine
and oh yeah, when my turn came I freakin' torched the place
~ ~ ~