"Hot"

There's my old comrade David Wynyard Isaac w/mic on air, WBAI wbai.org , covering the 1982 or '83 gay march in Central Park. The others are Wayne Sunday...David Thorstad w/glasses...in fore-ground David Wynyard...headphones. Lower foreground "Thor" Finton...skull ring, and smoking. 
Next over back-ground,...I recall him, but forget the name. He passed from AIDS several years later..., and Barbara Journer. 

Again all this at the gay march in 1982 or '83.I was at the station that afternoon on engineering duty. 
...also it was too hot!

"I'm Retired I'm Allowed to do This"

"A Day at the Opera'

A visit to Social services is pretty much the same all over the world. Well some are more humane that others. However the common experience is hard plastic seats wall screens tuned to propaganda or cartoons of one sort or other, and seriously long waits. 
Sometimes there's a show as some of the clients are insane or otherwise not quite house broken.

Unlike the Fox news racist crap. No everybody there ain't Black or junkies. Well okay there are blacks, and junkies. However things being what the are the population is as diverse as the true population of this land of the no longer as free as it was.
  
The economy is working fine for one percent of the one percent. The rest of us are fucked. Heck more than half of our armed forces live on food stamps things are so bad. Half the country lives on the edge of poverty, and 50+ millions live in the real thing...lately being an old guy this includes me.

Speaking of me. I'm here because these swell folks take care of part of my utilities every month. Yeah you get this if you don't get killed in a timely manner. You live long enough,...at least in liberal states they keep your lights on. This so you can read your other bills.

In the red states you're fucked. You're supposed to be a rugged individualist. Mind you if they handed out muskets black powder, and lead rounds I might go for that Nazi myth. Ya know go out, and hunt stuff to eat. Like the white pioneers did after they murdered all the Native folks, and took their land.

I'd go to Prospect Park here in Brooklyn along with about two million other proles, and do some rather crowded hunting. This for giant rats mutated squirrels, and toxic pigeons.

This should be fun for the first day or so. After that we'd turn the flint locks on each other for our daily stew.

The upside, besides getting me out of the house, by accident I finished up at the "Department of Not Quite Dead Senior Citizens" in only two hours. Last time it took from 8:30am to after 5pm. ...I went early this time.

Such was my Day at the Opera.

*"Not Insane"

I had planned before things got seriously out of hand to hold a one person "Witness for Sanity". Not for peace gimme a break. I'm talking just plain don't eat your baby or bark at the moon sanity.

For now I've put the idea aside. As I say things having got so insanely out of hand all over the place. Also I these days could get shot 49 times in the back for my troubles.

I mean after all I would be holding a paper leaflet saying "Stop being Nuts".

Cops could claim "Justifiable Homicide" for sure. Can't have old retired Negro Queers preaching that stuff around town. I mean what if it caught on. Who would buy all that backed up inventory of heroin assorted opioids, and 3-D porn in them NSA warehouses.

Be reasonable.

Well anyway as ya recalls I was going to hold this love fest at the Gandhi statue in Union Square lower Manhattan. This used to be a rough scary area. Now it's all hyper-white, and gentrified. Matter of fact it's probably too expensive for the likes of me to even walk on these days. Still for old time sakes I wanted to go back to one of my old haunts for this.

"Witness for Sanity"

I thought this was something everyone across all barriers might get with. I mean who wants some nutter running up to bite them on the ankle or piss on their shoes. It's not like I'm saying to be nice or have peace. That bleep is 'never' happening. Just don't be so fucking nuts.

Sounds reasonable much like not getting shot with them 49 bullets for just standing around. 'Way I see it we needs to take this thing one step at a time. First,...stop crapping in old phone booths. Then try not to shoot up so much. After that world peace.

Alright needs more work.

I'll get back to you.

*( "Not Insane",...Fire Sign Theatre 1972)

More, and more un-White people are being questioned arrested have guns pointed at them by cops as I was. This for being alive while Black. 

I don't mind being killed that much. I just resent it done for so little.
There's just no opera in it.

An un-White woman had cops called on her for being Black while a Yale student. 

My reaction as always is sorrow rage confusion.
Now I just lay on the floor, and stare up.

I really don't know what else to do. Till it's my turn again.

"The Great Departure"

"The Great Departure"

It began with reports of tragic incidents in parks senior centers even churches.  Older people were taking their lives singly, and in small groups. Older Black people, and 'only' Black people. It was just a few at first. Local news gave minor coverage.

Reporters interviewed family, and friends of the departed. They had no answers. To all it was inexplicable. There were some doctors giving chapter, and verse about depression among the elderly but that was it.

These "departures" as they would soon be called went on for several more days. Then stopped as suddenly as they had started.

Life carried on. The suicides were buried as other news cycles piled on top of them. Celebrity scandals, and other trivia took their places as the centers of interest. 

However a few months later it began again. This at the start of the Holiday season. Once more just a few happenings. Again no apparent reason. Slight coverage, and once more forgotten.

Then came Christmas night. 

All across the country from coast to coast came reports of not just handfuls, but of whole communities of Black people departing. The dead were found everywhere. In places of worship homes their cars public transportation even sidewalks. 

As the night progressed news of this burst onto the many mediums. What was this "Black Death"!? Some suspected everything from poisoning by the government to space aliens.

Emergency medical teams all over the nation were trying to save those they could. Many wondered how this could come to pass. The truth though before us was unseen.

Except for a few.

Some more thoughtful commentators noticed that it was mostly the "Civil Rights" generation of Black Americans. The late middle aged, and elderly that had decided to leave.

An "Exodus" of a kind was in progress.

The year 2018 had seen a spread of regressive politics all over the world. America with it's election in 2016 of a President sympathetic to white nationalism was part of the trend. he later openly called himself a "Nationalist".

Violent incidents against the "usual suspects" increased. Especially in the summer, and fall of 2018.  Cumulating with the Mass Murder of Jews in Pittsburgh.

...the leavings continued.

Emergency services were overwhelmed. Mass burials commenced. Parks ball fields even playgrounds became final resting places.
This as political, and religious leaders pleaded with those likely to perish to reconsider.

Yet as the new year 2019 came others applauded the "Event". David Duke spoke at an early spring mass Nazi Klan rally in Atlanta. A city with now with only a portion of it's former Black population.

Duke said to cheering tens of thousands of white nationalists, "...I see the hand of G-d in these glorious days!" "He has made his judgment, and returned America to it's rightful owners!"

'And so it went.

The National Guard performed regional mass burials. Regular Army units defended the former communities of the departed where there were still many Blacks living. This defense was against organized raids by white nationalist militias. They were looting shops, and homes of the departed. That, and lynching what living blacks they could find.

The president had no coherent response.

However the vice president in a rare show of humanity made a special nationwide media appeal to those yet to leave.

He said, "....I know,...we know how our great nation has failed many of her loyal citizens. Yet we have made progress.  I admit slow painful progress towards justice.  Yet I ask you to have the faith in this great republic. The steady faith you have always shown in the past. We are brethren."

The Departures increased. 

The numbers are not complete, but as of the present date December 25th 2019. The first anniversary of the "Great Departure". It is estimated that one fifth of the Black population of the United States is gone. Millions of people of African American decent have taken their own lives rather than live within our borders.

The Departures continue.

"...maniacs"

I'm very amused, and happy with the little paper house I clipped together the other morning. It's from a 1908 paper pattern I copied on to a light board paper. The little guy is some Batman Villain. I think he's complaining about the loud "Rimbaud" poetry party across the street.

"Damn you "Rimbaud" Maniacs!!"

"so they will exist"

"so they will exist"

"I make my pretty things for their own sakes."

"I make them so they will exist. I make them because this is the world I want to live in. Live in even if such a world can never be. Like a Soul dreaming a beautiful aria in hell."

"The Day"

One day it just stopped. We all just stopped doing it. The cruel selfish mean things stopped. No sparkling lights no Angels around. It just finally stopped. Wars selfish meanness the big uglies petered out. They just did.

It's interesting as you remember most didn't notice for a little while. 
You know how we used to step over the homeless, and hungry all that. The bad stuff everybody always said they were against yet allowed to keep going. Well it stopped.


I didn't notice,...exactly. Till I went to a Chinese take out joint, and they fed me,...for free.

Police began taking homeless persons home to stay with them. That, and releasing them whom they knew were wrongly busted. Firemen took folks into their stations. Regular folks were doing this as well. Treating others like family. The News became very funny. Fox News MSNBC, and the rest of them jokers was all coming clean about lying to us.

Big fancy stores, and regular shops began giving stuff to folks. I mean not just the poor, but all of us. Like at the Chinese place. Where they told me, "...everybody has to eat". Just so the folks at the shops felt that people needed their stuff to live well so just helped folks out.

Btw I went back to the take-out place, and gave then an "Astro Boy" action figure in thanks. This has caught on as ya know. People exchanging things. Not barter exactly. Just a nice sharing.

Anyway about the big shops. I got a very nice winter coat, and a neat electric train set at Macy's. Aw gee they were really a nice bunch there. Btw none of that "Black Friday" greed festival stuff ever happened.

All this, and somehow as we saw the economy still worked,...better than ever. It wasn't just us. This was happening all over the world. I mean I was watching that BBC special about how our biggest aircraft carriers are being converted into grain ships.

The government, and president, and all had nothing to do with this. The sailors, and farmers just got together figured it out, and did it. A lot of this going on. Like them big Israeli Iranian water purification projects in Africa, and other places.

That, and the techs, and science guys everywhere getting rid of all the nukes. I mean who needs them things.

Mind you as you knows too well. Folks is still folks. We have all sorts of assholes still running around loose. Just not as many, and they're not in change anymore. However I'm thinking of voting for some just to watch them go nuts as they're ignored.

As for "The Day", and what the hell it means.

Well the surprise was that we've been in a post scarcity world economy for over a hundred years. Some of them wonks think longer. We'd been in a hand to mouth tradition for so long we just didn't know how to share. Predatorily capital, and Soviet style communism were signs as to how wrong we were getting it, but were too stupid to see.

So one day it just changed.

We saw.

That, and "saw" basically all at the same moment. Some religious types think it's some deity or other. However the smarty pants online, and TV call it an Evolutionary Awakening. Sort of like when the ability for language suddenly spread all over the place.

They think we've had this cooking up for a long time. Sort of explains them peasant revolts through history. Them, and the Hippies. One day like a genetic dam burst it just happened. Works for me.
Though I'm still holding out for some Angel stuff somewhere.

All I know is I finally got to open a free book store, and doll Hospital.

"...a dream"

I was Homeless again.

The Midwest.

Cold wind snow.

I wandered the wide frozen flatlands.

There were people. Farm families that had lost their homes.

I joined their column as they walked beside a highway.

They were kind to me. I was wrapped in a blanket against the terrible winds. A blizzard though the sun was above, and a silver moon on the horizon.

Tents.

They took us in.

Outside winter inside spring. It was warm with grass on the ground. A dream I slept, and dreamed within the dream. 

I sat on a beach. Watching the waves come in. I sat, and watched till I awoke.