Wednesday, November 13, 2013




The Persistence Of Memory

 

 Undercover cops assaulted me as I was walked home from school activities that were designed to build character or good citizenship. I suffered a concussion when one of the cops forced my head into a brick wall that exploded with graffiti.

 

As blood crossed my face, they rifled through my belongings.

 

My bus pass and membership card in GO (General Organization at I.S 155) drifted to concrete as one of them shouted,” F**k! It’s not him!” They ran to their unmarked car, as I stood still in the middle of the entrance of the building I live in. One of them stopped and looked back like he wanted to say, “Sorry, kid”. Then they were gone. Quietly, 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 while I dropped a shoulder bag and lifted 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 back 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. I sensed 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, my eyes would’ve been wrenched out, 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 shop on Prospect Avenue where he told cops 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. His son learned this behavior so well he upset his father when he put me in a chokehold and later attempted 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 bitch slaps when his father tried to drown me in the bathtub where I pretended to be Namor, the prince of Atlantis, a mutant from Marvel Comics.

 

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 went far for freedom. I saw people as points of colors on sands of time and myself as washed up on the shores of the future free from abuse, free to evolve into someone different, someone who wanted to get others to 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 when I 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, a gift from a merchant marine uncle who lived for the open seas.

 

This how my holiday vacation from school ended and homework resumes: I saw red-faced cops handcuffed my mother’s other son and take him to Lincoln Hospital.

 

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.

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