Hobos Make No Decisions

I awoke on Saturday.

I went to the SHOUT OUT. My brother was not there. I set up everything and boom, my brother walks in, looking more sartorial than ever, his hair cut, beard shaved off and well groomed. He looked clean and all put together. I, on the other hand, look like a walking mess. I look like Hobobob. Should I feel upset or sad?

I don't know what to feel about me. "I have to talk to you," my brother tells me. Oh, boy, what did I do now? We go to the corner, our area of command and control of the SHOUT OUT. He sits his bag up on the narrow counter top there, reaches in, and produces a half pint portable! He looks from left to right emphatically and hands it over. No sooner that I right the small bottle in my hands does he hand over another. FUCK!

"I just found money on the street," he says to me. "So I had to hook each other up." I crack the top, take a swig and pushed both portables into my bag. The SHOUT OUT took it's normal course although we garnered the ire of the audience because this day, we had to have an abbreviated SHOUT OUT because management told us that another band was coming in right after us. That's great, so we push the readers forward and run through the show as if stepping down on an accelerator.

We are finished before our scheduled time to leave, shoo the poets out and get moving. The night moves along in its normal fashion and I'm soon home. The alcohol and smoking is banging around in my brain. I sit behind my computer and write e-mails until tired. A bad decision. When my head is banging is the wrong time to write e-mails to my friends....trust me.

Sunday, I woke up the other half of dead. Or wishing I was. God, it's hard to shake depression. This would be a glorious day to stay home and stew in my own juices, but I have engagements and have to get out. The situation today? We have been invited to TWO readings, my brother and I, to feature at. Oz is having one at a park in lower Manhattan, another poet is having a show uptown. What was our plan? To split up. We couldn't leave either one without readers. I chose to go to Oz's; my brother, the one uptown. I print out some poems from my new book and head out into the overcast and drizzly day, catching the way and heading downtown to the park.

I found my friends setting up their microphones and electronic equipment near the raised and overarching Manhattan Bridge not too far from us. A raised spiderweb of struts and columns, held up by huge concrete pillars, the bridge stood near to us like a massive overbearing Atlas. Within the framework of it's massive body rumbled the trains, going and coming. When passing, they proved who owned the airspace of the park, drowning us out and everything else.

I run into D2theL while looking for a Deli for some water. I'm spending what little money that I earned from the SHOUT OUT. Soon, it's time for me to go up to the 'stage'. James, the DJ, keeps calling my name to come up to read. There were numerous interruptions but, finally I do so, and peel off three. I'm not nervous at all. D2theL is called upon to read, and he does the same. While we read, the trains add to our rhetoric, blotting out our words like and ink spill on paper.

Near the closing of the reading, my brother arrives, all animate, he is hopping out of his skin. I can tell when he has been drinking. GL arrives with him and his face is red, as if hit in the mug with a cherry pie. Both my brother and GL get a chance to put in a reading and then they light upon D2theL and I who are just mellowing out from a sparking.

"Dood," my brother began, "We went to the reading uptown and when we finished they were passing around thank you cards. That's all I thought that it was until GL opened up his and there was $50.00 in it, man!" He showed me the envelope and the cash. I nod. Just my life anyway. I know how it goes by now my man. That's why I'm here in the condition that I'm in. I MAKE THE WRONG DECISIONS!!! I am indeed pissed. I don't show it though, the sparking helps me to shake off all emotion, but it does get under my skin. Hold on, both my brother and GL said, mournfully: "Man, she HAD one for you!"

That tears me a new asshole. I'm going home. That's when it started RAINING. Like a hose turned on by god, the band and their electronic setup is washed from the park. Everyone snatches out an umbrella save me. I stand in the rain because I decided NOT to bring my fucking poncho. Another bad choice. Both my brother and GL offer to take me out to dinner and drinks. I turn them down. I want to be alone. It's too late in the day and I've got to go to work in the morning. I smile at that thought. I have to go to work. That's got to be the funniest thing ever. I've got to go churn air I mean.

I'm pissed on the Way. Not so much that I missed the extra dough, which I could have used, but with everything. Everything that I'm doing. I'm doing everything wrong, because they are all based upon BAD DECISIONS. Bad decisions begin at the lowest level, like the atom, and as they say, practice makes perfect. It's time to start making right decisions than wrong ones...or even worse, no decision at all.

I lay down in my bed early. I am tired. There is nothing but bad news all the way around for me tonight. I take my depressed ass to bed. That's cool. Tomorrow is ANTOHER day.

To make decisions.

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