Month: June 2017

The unlikely storyteller is always good to look out for. An older, retired gent sat on a bench by the Marina and always said hi, but not much more. My family weren’t members there, but we paid to use its boat ramp, to launch an older, sleek, mahogany lake boat we’d gotten from a camp in NH. But its wood didn’t like harsh salt water, and the boat was too light and shaky for white caps on the North Shore’s Atlantic coast. Even cruising white sandy inlets behind Essex’s Crane’s Beach was a bumpy ride, plus if you went beyond Misery or Baker’s Islands, the bigger sea would buckle and batter its underbelly. The Marina manager suggested we swap the 50 HP Evinrude onto a fiberglass ocean boat, like many used ones he had for sale. My dad wasn’t sure, but looking at the weathered wood, finally agreed, but said that it’d be my boat, my responsibility. I was ready to show off my proud captain skills when the boat was ready. I confidently, steadily maneuvered from the slip, between expensive docked yachts, as my dad looked on, sunning in back with a PBR, not missing the captain’s chair. I began to corner slowly, steering right into the harbor, but panic set in, as the boat turned left instead. I spun it harder right, but went further left, crashing violently into a luxury sailboat. It hit twice, so I reversed the wheel left, gunning the throttle to break away, but it careened right now, shooting across, directly into the side of a large cabin cruiser, leaving a big dent, along with assorted gashes and gouges on both yachts. I quickly cut the engine, and dead silence overtook the morning cove, even seagulls dared not squak, as we mournfully paddled back to dock, using a seat cushion and cooler lid. The manager was flummoxed, ranting incomprehensibly, brushing us away with, “Listen, pack up and go. Now.” He’d said he’d handle this and call us. A week later the phone call came, “You’re all set.” The manager was waiting, put the keys on the counter and left, mumbling, “No charge, fellas.” We figured out the steering cable had been wrongly threaded, while switching the Evinrude motor onto this boat, the pulleys turned the motor the wrong direction. But, as we walked out, the older gent, always, and still, on the park bench started laughing, “Oh, my Lord! Well. You boys missed a lot of fun, around here!” He continued, “Well, they went searching, all of them, the whole bunch, all these boat owners spent all day, going up and down, back and forth, here and there.. climbing around the yard. But that manager feller was smart, he HID your boat, way up high, at the very top, on the end, but he wasn’t smart enough! They found it, and matched the paint. Quite a day! Must have taken a pretty penny to fix those babies..” He seemed giddy, but as the chuckle slowed, he looked back to the docks. “Thanks,” I nodded. As I descended, he yelled, “Hey, make sure you enjoy that boat!” And that whole summer I raced the shoreline birds, clipping each crest and wave, surveying the mansions on the rocky coast, not touching anything, skimming the surface, jumping waves and riding on air, saving those moments up, free of it all, having scraped through into the kingdom.

Whenever I feel like I should condemn a person, or a group, I try to remember what an “artful dodger” Jesus was. With the tax collectors, He said, “Give Unto Caesar.” With sinners, Roman soldiers and hypocrites, he included them in “All God’s children.” And pleaded for the ones who’d condemned Him, saying, “Forgive them.. they know not what they do.” Strong and loud voices fill up our world, but it’s still hard to get past one from long ago.

You’ve got to know when to “cut and run.” I was living in an artist’s loft downtown, rehearsing the band there, but the place was getting destroyed by drunk roommates. It was leased to me, but when they lined up in solidarity, I grabbed a few things and ran. I signed the lease over to my drinking buddy, left the landlord a voicemail, and found a quiet apartment on the Hill, left empty by my gregarious sales pal who was away, working in Hong Kong. I wrote at the kitchen table, looking out at a small back garden with a stone path, winding its way into a grove of plants and bushes before disappearing. There was free laundry down in the basement, a student upstairs, and a cute, fun, flirty girl on the third floor, whom I’d met at gigs. But as I retrieved my remaining stuff from the loft, the scene got grimmer. One guy bought a pot-bellied pig, who ate the food left out by non-stop partiers. They cooked endless crockpot-stews, each day adding more meat or vegetables to it, but never starting the thing over.. My ex-buddy tried to rein it in, but with no luck. They partied so loudly at night that he bought a tent, and climbed a rusty fire escape, sleeping on an adjacent roof, boasting how he could cross the narrow ledge between the building and a lower roof, even when drunk. A few weeks later it all ended, on the morning news. A drunk woman had fallen, crossing the ledge, attempting to reach the tent, tumbling onto the lower roof, about 15 feet down. The firemen used a ladder to hoist her stretcher up and away from the buildings, her slowly-rotating, sedated body crossing the sharp-edged brick and iron cityscape, while a reporter mumbled she had suffered only a dislocated shoulder. I saw my drinking buddy directing the firemen, frantically waving his arms, dragging on his non-filter, sensing his empire in ruins. At a bar, the next week, another roommate sheepishly recounted how the landlord had sent three hard-nosed guys, a work crew “borrowed” from the prison, and a dumpster, to immediately empty the place out, and it was all gone within a few hours. I asked if any cops were there. He replied, “Oh, no.. they didn’t need ’em.”

I was part of the Beat Poets group, hippies more than hipsters, but sometimes we’d ambush the much cooler Slam Poetry group downtown, a very different scene! Our host asked me to write a Slam poem, and join him in the raid.. He said it had to be an edgy, catchy, pop-culture “hit,” that could pass muster downtown..
WHOLE CANDY BAR by frank martyn
i don’t need bang for my buck
i just need tang for my truck
because it runs on astronaut juice
from the spaceship filling station
and love and luck
i sing intergalactic mojo blues to the
spirit in the sky
for you
part of your hair pulled back
and part hanging down
a half pony tail erect
with zero gravity moving laterally
like we did in breathless atmospheres
special dishevelled undress
slap happy and dapper
but time fish tail whacked my face
everyone has gone
except us two
and the candy bar
let’s walk the earth from birth
to dearth and hurt
like multi syllabic serfs in a crew
polyphonic fools
shiny new tools
hanging side by side
on god’s workbench
we hammer drill
spill sawdust grease
onto broken worlds of
dry dreams
wet eyes
screaming laptops
atop stylish girls
gourmet newfactory coffee scents
expensive cents with no sense
matching dot coms
yahooing ad mausoleum
to lonely boney cheeks
hard honey
all money are bicycle cards
when you break it down
line it up and stack houses of love
love just kicks money’s ass
any time day or night
i knew that for so long
i can’t even remember
when i was twenty years old i ate a whole candy bar
bought and wanted another more only
hungry and bungling
again
and again until someone took it
ate it and left empty wrapper alley
take it bake it fake it make it
hold it sold it stepped in it wept in it
no matter how you wear your hair
go ahead, bite it
don’t hesitate unabated
i ate a whole candy bar once
while God and His moon men laughed
because half laughs last fast
and until that day, we split it
it was never really whole at all

“Ain’t no cryin’ in the club.” -Ben Franklin

King Trumpalumpa visited the land of Redneckia, promising to conquer Scoundrelia and restore the principles of Waybackwhenia!

My Dad’s 2nd favorite joke was seasonal, so you had to have it ready: “Today is Muggy.. followed by Toogy!” (:

I was obsessed with Karaoke for a few weeks, because the poetry group hung out at a Karaoke bar after readings. Finally everyone told me to shut up about it!
I Sang Karaoke
I sang karaoke at the bar
and karaoke on the way home
and karaoke in the shower and at work
and at the hospital to heal the patients and karaoke in your fish tank
and aquarium and the ocean
I sang karaoke to whales and they sang it back at me
I sang karaoke at Harvard
got a Nobel prize for karaokial achievement
I washed dishes by singing karaoke at them
Was an American Idol on tv
satellite radio
at the olympics
with my barista
was singing karaoke in the trunk of my Uber driver’s car
climbing Mount Washington
in submarines airplanes and zoos
on the moon with no atmosphere, gravity
depth or balance
karaoke in your bathtub and you were shocked
in your toaster dishwasher microwave refrigerator
into your mouth
at every party for you
and even as you pushed me from the moving train
smiling beautifully, for the good of the world
I sang karaoke for you!

One of my dad’s favorite jokes: “A visitor to the Vatican watched the Pope bless a line of people. But the Pope stopped only once, to whisper in the ear of a shabbily-dressed man, who was obviously down on his luck. The visitor asked the gent what wisdom the Pope had whispered, but the man wouldn’t say. He offered him 100 dollars, for his shabby coat and hat, and the man agreed. The next day, in line, wearing the shabby hat and coat, the visitor waited for the Pope. The Pope leaned down, and whispered, ‘I told you before. Get the heck out of here. And don’t ever come back!'”

I’ve worked a few third-shift jobs, and on the night shift it’s easy to lose sense of the real world. An occasional second-shift can restore the medium-slacker vibe, but a long third-shift run can put you in a big chill. At the hospital, I ran medical records back and forth to the ER, up and down the hallways and tunnels of that old building, learning many shortcuts from hip, late night, co-workers over caffeine-dream chats roving the buzzing, fluorescent nocturnal world. During the downtime, they made us file.. but we never filed enough to make them happy, so we’d get a strict speech, from a disappointed secretary, over piles of files, but they overloaded on purpose, so.. It was a midnight to 8 shift, but for me a 12:08am to 8:10am shift, rolling in a few minutes late, then killing a few minutes in the AM, bantering with real-world folks, watching secretaries sashay by, smiles, tilted coffee mugs through leather bags, or big sunglasses and stern looks after weekend romantic getaways with suave doctors and pharmaceutical sales kings. Apparently, no one told me about the extremely strict hospital “on time” rule, so at my yearly evaluation, at 8:30am sharp on a Tuesday, my day-boss looked downhearted, saying we had a problem. She held a long printout documenting my latenesses, no surprise to me, but announced the extreme actions: 1 tardiness = warning, 2 tardinesses = a notice, and 3 = discipline and/or firing. She seemed really shocked about my custom schedule, especially the number of, which was either impressive, or horrifying, coming in at 157! She rambled a bit then, thinking aloud, about how the normal procedure of her “finding this out” was getting ratted out by co-workers, so, on the plus side, I must be liked. Further good news for me was that it would look even worse for her, so we would lie, using some bureaucratic ruse, to protect her position and good manager rating. We’d claim we postponed this meeting for three months, due to a “personal matter” she’d make up later. I’d come in on-time from now on, and get a good review then. I agreed, and she smiled, hopeful we could pull off this scheme. She was a nice person, so I felt a little bad about having harshed her mellow in that high stress world, but as I was walking to car I thought, 157 censures, man, I worked a lot of days, or nights, last year!