A Balmy Day in FLA

In 1974 Broward County boosters, hoping to attract game fish, dump millions of nylon bound tires to create the Osborne Reef. Over time storms bust them loose to shred nearby natural reefs and wash up on North Carolina shores.

On ocean edge of ecodisaster emulsion blots of hyperglobality--petrolium tankers, containerships of lumber, orange marmalade, t-shirts--import/export from Port Everglades Foreign Trade Zone.

The air a carwash interior, droplets to downpour shampoo the yellow heat. Creamsicle skin strained muscles amble and pump along faint lightning steamed sand.

A man, squirting cartoon sweat, waddles with one leg twice-thick the other--salt rusted frontyard flamingo stem peglike limb.



Squeezed between cement skeletons of soon to be jacked up tropi-glamour condos



W Fort Lauderdale Hotel/Residences, with an interior that "incorporates elements of fenshui, color therapy and aromatherapy,"



and Trump International Hotel and Towers, "a one of a kind destination for the select few,"



are the broken plastered bones of 1950s era unsentimentalia.


My economy hotel room overlooks patio turned parking lot. Mattress squishes next to chipped veneer of nightstand on dull cracky linoleum floor. Half-inch of screw sticks out on bathtub faucet knob. Water drains slow through clogging sand.

Banyan tree swamp, former Fort Liquourdale, now Venice of South Florida, multimillion dollar yachts park along white tablecloth purple aquarium dining elegance. Open collared fifty somethings with blonded companions strut the sparkle studded sunglass boutiques of Las Olas Boulevard competing with the concierge and valet parking of chilled dry faux art deco Galleria Mall a mile north on Sunrise Blvd.

Not quite competing a half mile east at downscale curving Sunrise Lane, "The World Famous Parrot" hides amid neon xxx Playboy paraphernalia and tatoo parlor with hand on hips artist gruffing "Tattoo Bro?" to passer-by me.



By a smoke shop, a man stands on the sidewalk in white to grey Chuck Taylor low tops, ripped jean shorts, bare torso--body hair bleached by the sun, tufted over broiled apricot skin. He crosses the street to confront me sticking a two inch square gash on inside elbow in my face, "Hey Buddy, can you spare some change for some gauze and bandage?" I wave him off and pass by souvenir shops selling drunken sexhibitionist T-shirts--a Men's Room figure missing top circle with the caption "UNIVERSAL SIGN FOR NEEDS HEAD".



Back on A1A, a golftourist in SLK convertible, clubs sticking out the back, flips off a grey Dodge van with cardboard for one back window, "Go to fuck!"

Warm moist wind sways darkening palms.

With you, my life

Napoleon put his hand on his heart because his hand was cold.
I put my hand on my heart because my heart aches.
--Ralph Kramden.

"Tell her I can do her make-up and hair tomorrow afternoon"
A splash of pink on the forehead sprouts from the spiked black hair of my Wednesday night traveling companion. Phone perched upon shoulder, she drags on board a roll-bag containing tools of a beautification student.
"Who?
What?
Shut up. You spoke to her?
I thought she hated me.
Oh my god, I miss her so much. I so want to talk to her.
Should I call her?
Tell her to call me.
Ok, love you."

Five minutes later rings the tinny mimicry of a pop tune.

"Hello?
Hey, I am so glad you called.
I am so sorry about what happened.
Y'know I totally didn't mean that.
Yeah, and Susan was totally trying to fuck with us.
I was so stupid and immature then.
I felt so bad.
You were my best friend, and I would never want to hurt you."

Imagination of Dirt

On a breezy fall afternoon, from the sidewalk, a glance at the park interior, a woman sagging naked scrubs herself with soil, grass, leaves in the shade of an oak. The confused appears as a blotchy black and white reproduction of Boticelli's Birth of Venus in a scribbled 1950s high school textbook.

The grape tomato worm ricy grit tasteless on the tongue stuffed down to gurgling belly, gums laced with black goop, the condition of Pica, the condition of Rebeca in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude palpitates our Freudian pulmonary artery--the maniacal fist feeding of dirt, the drive toward dark essence, the intestinal brick-making lust, the nourishment of decomposition and death, the lowly exaltedness of bourgeois pretensions.

This residue of unexpressed sickness expresses itself in the rumbling blast of highrise apartments in the "Noho shopping cArts District". The MTA recently approved a billion dollar office-housing-retail tower near the Noho red line station as part of our Mayor's dream of bringing the New York subway lifestyle to rubber boinking buggyville.

But a study by the LA Times shows previous attempts to link housing to rail stops in Hollywood, Downtown and Pasadena simply increased congestion since residents continue to drive.

Blind sticking smudged fingers down throats, pushing yuck to the yuppies, inters the clarity of solving planned foolery.

Why not simply require the new housing only be rented to people without automobiles, saving money on constructing needless parking structures and reducing traffic snarls?

Because people without cars are also the city's poor, and to build housing for poor people cuts deep with the anxiety of failed romantics.

Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

--Paul Verlaine

inbetween bleakness

Passing through the park a red orange feathering into grey tail squiggles after a squirrel perches on a "Ron Paul Revolution" sign. The squeaky bark of a Bichon hanging from a Honda CRV rings through the pines.

The sorely broken pungency of a refrigerator interior, not the moldy abandoned grime of a Frigidaire abandoned in an alley off Devonshire in Mission Hills but the ordinary unpealed onion, wrinkly peach, ziplock bag of fried rice and tofu, hoping it will not seep to tinge one quarter remaining half gallon fat free milk, melancholy soaks the dialogue of strangers sitting in the back bus seats facing one another.

"You headed for school?" asks the older man who has the height and headshape of Alan Arkin and a low creaking voice.

"No work," replies the younger. He recounts a one minute life story of wished I had-almost completed-still plan to... "Right now I am a mover."

"Moving is a good job. At least you stay active. Take care of your health and stay out of trouble because when a big break comes along if you're not healthy or you're in trouble, you won't be able to take advantage of it." Light tongue sticking to mouth roof ends the aphoristic exhaling.

A man with captain bars pinned to a camouflage hat crosses legs on the front seats, pulls a Binaca blast from his duffel and starts misting the surrounding sadness. He sprays the head, left-right shoulder, opens his mouth and takes it on the tonsils.

I blink at a pinch in my neck.