For The Saints And Angels, Miles Davis, And You

Miles Davis was a skinny motherfucker, a bitter and often mean man.
I have always been a little on the stocky side and while often bitter,
I am rarely ever mean.

Miles Davis was a master trumpet player while the only thing I’ve mastered
is the art of keeping my better qualities concealed like money
people hide in their shoes.

Miles Davis was a performer who most of the time would have preferred to just
rip your eyes out rather than accept your applause.
I am a performer who most of the time would prefer to just rip your eyes out
rather than accept your applause.

Whenever Miles Davis wanted to make money he’d just pick up his horn,
play it, and come home with several thousand dollars.
Whenever I want to make money I write a story and two months later I get
a check in the mail for a hundred and fifty bucks or less. (Usually less.)

During the course of his life Miles Davis went to Paris, Tokyo, London.
The longest trip I ever made was the time I had the stomach flu and took
a Greyhound bus from New Orleans to Las Vegas.

Miles Davis -- people always seem to obsess on him.
Like the Irish Catholic girl I knew in college who said,
“All I know about jazz is Miles Davis.”
Like the kid watching a man play trumpet
on the corner of St. Mark’s Place and Avenue A
and saying to him,
“Hey, man, play some Miles Davis.”

As far as I know no one has ever obsessed on me,
and though I have heard stories of people other than me
reciting my poems in public
I believe these reports to be greatly exaggerated.

I remember when Miles Davis died.
I was at a girlfriend’s apartment in New York
and they’d been playing Miles Davis on WKCR all weekend.

We’d gone out for Chinese food and when we got back
to her place she suddenly turned catatonic,
giving me an evil look as Sketches of Spain
came out of the radio.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, “Was it something I said?”
She just sat there on her living room chair saying nothing,
and after a while I walked out the door,
went home and turned on the TV.

Miles Davis would have screamed
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, bitch?”
before picking up the phone to call one of his other girls.

“Mary,” he’d say, or “Martha” or “Johanna” or any of a hundred other names,
“This is Miles. Meet me at the corner of Second Avenue and Eleventh St.
in ten minutes, and make sure you’re wearing that red silk dress I gave you.
No, not the blue one the red one. Did you hear me, I said RED, woman!”
Click.

Miles Davis is dead,
though I, at the moment, am alive
and remembering the night two years after he died,
when contemplating the wind’s direction, I stood
on the corner of Broadway and West 57th street
in a crucifixion pose.

Elsewhere the Eiffel Tower was standing tall and Big Ben still
ringing as the lights of Tokyo pushed out the darkness.
And with the November cold sliding through my winter coat
I put my arms back down and walked
like on a Sunday morning in the spring
when the blood rushes through your veins,
only it wasn’t spring and it wasn’t Sunday,
and I wasn’t anywhere near Heaven
with no money in my pocket, no tune to play
and no made-up angel in a silk dress
to take me home.

Miles Davis
is long gone and so is
Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad or whosoever
has inspired or moved you
but at least you
are still alive.

So let your idols expire. Let there be joy
on Broad St. and bedlam uptown.
Let young hearts and your own be crushed.

Commerce will work against you once again,
but the law of the land
is a wasp with mud on its wings
and honey in its left eye.
Its belly is full
but its heart is a sponge:
kill it before it kills you because
the gods will never punish you,
and the saints and angels will never squeal on you,
only men whose names have
already been forgotten

-Jose Padua
---------------------
From around 1996.

MacArthur Park

When I was a kid I thought
that the greatest record ever made
was the 1968 mod orchestral rendering of
of Jimmy Webb’s lost love opus, MacArthur Park.
For me, MacArthur Park was a flash of wisdom, an epiphany as great
as an apostle’s brief glimpse of Heaven,
and an experience so innately sensual as to make Fanny Hill
seem like a Lyndon Johnson state of the union address by
comparison.
As sung by that great drunken actor, Richard Harris
(who, if they’d had videos in those days, would have crooned the
words
while decked out in love beads, mirrored sunglasses, and a paisley
Nehru jacket),
MacArthur Park was Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony,
and Dr. Suess’s Green Eggs and Ham
all boiled down to five bittersweet minutes
in the American summer of love.
I’d always stop what I was doing to reflect,
to meditate like a pilgrim at the end of that long, tortuous journey
through the slough of despond whenever it came on the radio.
I could almost feel Casey Kasem fighting back the tears
every time he sent it out as a long distance dedication.
I could almost see the women in their yellow satin dresses
swoon as the song, after traveling through the airwaves,
came out of the radio like a succubus wearing Old Spice cologne.

For me MacArthur Park was no one-hit wonder or one-night stand,
no temporary truce or let the sun shine in fly-by-night Broadway
craze.
For me MacArthur Park was the fall of Hanoi, an ether binge,
an up-against-the-wall motherfucker are you part of the solution
or are you part of the problem
Evel Knevel motorcycle leap into the great beyond.
And, like all great works of art, MacArthur Park raised some serious
questions.
For example, who was the miscreant who left that cake out in the
rain?
And what exactly was that recipe that he’d never have again?
Yea, these metaphors were deep, giving me forlorn visions
of that “sweet green icing falling down” in the dark,
of drinking “the wine while it is warm” with no one
ever catching me “looking at the sun.”
These words and images moved me
and I was sure they would move others as well.
I often quoted them in love letters
I wrote to my first teenage crush,
believing they would reveal me to be a profoundly sensitive
young man whose passions she would be foolish to deny.
It was no wonder she sent the letters
back to me:
I was young, in love, and as powerless
as a corpse at a funeral.

This, of course, was some years before The Silver Convention’s
seminal Fly Robin Fly rid me of my more sentimental proclivities.
Before I sat back in cataleptic paralysis like one of Marcus Welby’s
patients
as a friend of mine from high school began singing
“They’re coming to America” along with Neil Diamond
when that hideous song came on the radio.
Before I cringed in late night horror film terror while another friend
began chanting, “We got a great big convoy, running through the
night,
we got a great big convoy, ain’t she a beautiful sight?”
as we headed east on Route 50 toward the beach in the dead of
winter.

It was about this time when I began having
my doubts about the afterlife.
When I stopped believing in ESP, astral projection, pyramid power,
speed reading, streaking, and the amazing Kreskin.
When I stopped believing that the police were on my side.
When I stopped believing that the concept of America included me
whether I was rich or poor,
white or something else.
When I stopped having faith in God and the entire world.

It was all so long ago.

I was dressed in the blue wool suit I’d grown into since high school,
a stiff white shirt that reeked of too much starch, a red silk tie
I’d borrowed from my father, and the black
leather shoes my brother had bought me for the occasion.
It was 1994. It was cloudy and cold with gray sunlight flowing through
the stained glass windows as a priest gave me instructions
on how to read a passage from the Bible.
It was the same priest who had mumbled his way through
the rosary the night before like a drunken Elvis impersonator
going through the motions of putting on a show.
The priest who would later put words into my dead mother’s mouth–
a priest who had never met her, who had never known
of her existence until she was gone–
saying from the top of the pulpit with his head held high
in self righteousness how if she were here with us today
she’d be asking us to take the time to consider
and reflect upon our lives as Christians.

Holy Christ, I thought, she’d never ask us to do that:
Because if she were alive and at a funeral she would have
shown some genuine respect for the dead.
And though I’d always shouted out from among the crowd at the fools
on stage, demanding from them some measure of truth,
I sat there in silence loosening my tie as he delivered a sermon,
which,
like a stupid song from the summer of love that no longer moved me,
had nothing to do with either life or death.

-Jose Padua

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From around 1998.

Power Lunch

Feeling heavy pressure
from all sides
I bit into
a steak sandwich
and grabbed a handful
of greasy French fries.
As women walked by
in their short skirts
followed by men in
rolled up shirtsleeves,
I realized that
the control I have
over my sandwich
is, for me,
a beautiful and
awesome power.

-Jose Padua

A Short History of Everyone In The World

On the train going
back to my home town
people are laughing at the
drunk who’s making fun
of the bald spot on a guy
a few rows up.
Across the aisle from me
a deaf man is making garbled passes
at all the women walking by
on the way to the club car.
Next to me a girl
with a silly haircut
is drinking a beer and
talking to everyone in sight
between drags of her cigarette.
It’s one of those
holiday weekend party trains
where everyone’s celebrating
and ready to tell their life story.

The drunk guy is going
to Richmond where he’ll find a bar
and drink some more.
The haircut girl is going
to Philadelphia -- she plans
on becoming a hairdresser.
The guy with the bald spot
has just gotten out of prison
and he’s trying to stay
calm and out of trouble.
The deaf guy is just horny
and doesn’t bother to read
the lips of the women
who tell him to fuck off.

When the haircut girl
asks me for my story
I tell her,
“I saved up my money
to buy this train ticket
so I could visit home
and get there comfortably.
I cut my spending in half
by eating my own shit.
Why I’ve been living off
the same macaroni and cheese
dinner for two months now.”

“Oh,” she says, startled, grimacing.

“Excuse me,” I say. “I have
to go to the bathroom now.”

When I stand up
everyone’s quiet,
and I know that when
I get back to my seat
I’ll be able to just relax
and sleep.
No stories, no loud laughter,
no more rude comments,
snide remarks or subtle innuendoes.
I’d put an end to that
because I’d just said all
there was in the world
to be said.

-Jose Padua
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This first appeared in Michael Carter's Redtape in 1992, and was then included in Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, an anthology edited by Brandon Stosuy, in 2006.

Pulp Fiction

This afternoon a bum on the street mistook me for a drug addict.
“It’s that CRACK that’s making you sweat,” he advised me.
I nodded and said, “Yeah, I really ought to quit,”
as people walking near me picked up their pace to get away from me.

Later, I’m crossing the street when a carload of scraggly haired kids pulls up beside me.
“Hey, man, you got any rolling papers?” one of them asks.
“No,” I say, “I just drink, that’s it.”
“Come on,” he says, “just give them to me, all you Filipino motherfuckers smoke reefer.”
I keep quiet and walk ahead as they start to jeer and yell at me.

It’s been said that the meek shall inherit the earth.
But I’ve got bruises on my arms from running into people
on the street who expect me to scurry out of their way like a rat.
I’ve got dark patches on my soul from people who move out of my way
because they think I’m going to kill them.

People always either see me as the lamb who’s ready to sacrifice himself
to the gods of their ambition
or as the wolf who’s going to set his fangs upon them,
tearing them limb from limb, eyeball from eyeball,
when the truth is somewhere in between.

“Do you speak English?” people in bars often ask me.
“No,” I tell them, “I’m from France, I speak French.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” other people say to me.
“No I’m not,” I answer. “I’m from Saturn and I’m here to mate with Earth women.
Is that your sister who’s sitting next to you? Nice tits.”

It’s been said that he who makes a beast of himself gets rid
of the pain of being a man.
So I drink straight from the bottle till the hair grows on my cheeks.
I steal the drinks from in front of other people
until the fur forms on the back of my neck.

“I was born here,” I used to say to people,
“I ate my first McDonald’s cheeseburger when I was 4,
recited the Pledge of Allegiance for teacher when I was 6,
and by the age of seven I could speak the language better than you do now.”

It’s been said that the truth is what sets you free,
but whenever I speak the truth no one believes it,
and whenever I hear the truth it makes me feel like a prisoner
on death row.

So I tell stories to keep the truth alive without telling it.
I create history to keep me from becoming history:

“I was raised by flying cockroaches until the age of seventeen. Could you lend me a buck?”
“I’m a crack-head pimp from the planet Liechtenstein. Would you like a job?”
“I’m a millionaire from Muffberg, Ohio. I came here two years ago with a dollar
in my pocket and a smile I could pry open doors with. Would you like a tip on
the stock market?”
“I’m vice president of a mid-sized consulting firm making
two hundred grand a year tax free. Can I pay for your groceries?”
“I’m Johnny Depp’s garbage man, wanna go out?”
“I’m Conan O’Brien, wanna fuck?”

This is the way I spend my days.
This is the way I earn my nights,
walking the earth telling lies, spreading rumors:

“And blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will
shepherds the weak and ignorant through the valley of darkness
for he is truly his brother’s keeper.
But I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance
and furious rebukes those who attempt to poison and destroy
my brothers
and you will know my name is The Lord
when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

It’s been said that that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I think that that which doesn’t kill you simply lets you live longer.
There’s a difference.

- Jose Padua
---------------------------
From circa 1996

The Complete Failure Of Everything

At the carnival sideshow
the veteran sword swallower has bloodied his throat.
The snake charmer has been attacked,
his cobras, rattlers, boas
have stung, bitten, and squeezed him to death.
In the tunnel of love the teenage couple
keep their hands at their sides and
look straight ahead,
waiting anxiously for the ride to end.
Out on the rollercoaster people are yawning
while on the merry-go-round children
are screaming in terror.
In the suburbs a man has decided
not to build a deck on the back
of his new house.
His neighbors are at the mall
attending the grand opening
of a multiplex porno theater.
Back in town the crack dealers
and junkie hookers
are giving it away.
The Jehovah’s witnesses are wandering around
drunk, cigarettes dangling from their mouths
as they mumble, “Jesus, I just don’t know.”
In the universities the professors
have taken over the libraries.
They’re tearing up the pages
of every book on every shelf
on every subject.
In the nightclub the stripper
with the 72-inch bust is keeping her top on
while the flat-chested women
rip open their blouses
and shout, “Va Va Voom,”
to the delight
of the already frenzied crowd.
The billionaire is sitting on a park bench
perusing the want ads
while the panhandler orders dinner
at a fancy French restaurant
for fifty of his closest friends.
Over in the third world
the mercenary is helping to build a hospital
while the Christian missionaries
have just raped and pillaged
in a small town of peasants.

There is snow in the desert
and flowers in the arctic,
wild music in the asylums
and silence in the dance halls,
charity in the casinos
and greed at the Salvation Army,
orgies in the convents
and prayer in the whorehouses.

And what we are witnessing
is the complete failure of everything.
The failure of the rich and the poor,
the failure of the ecstatic and the tortured,
the failure of the loud and the peaceful,
the failure of love and hate,
the beautiful and the ugly,
the good and the bad,
the daring and the timid.

It’s the failure of the holy to stay holy
and the sinners to keep sinning,
the failure of the rich to stay rich
and the poor to stay poor,
the failure of those who love
and those who hate,
everything failing,
inevitably falling into its opposite,
into its enemy, into its nightmare,
into the end
where the big bang,
having reached its limit,
reverses itself,
with everything you know
falling apart,
here, in the carnival
where the last great act
is to take something,
and through a swift sleight of hand
turn it into nothing
as the bright lights dim
and the merry-go-round
grinds slowly
to a complete
and silent
stop.

- Jose Padua
-------------------------
First published, in the St. Mark's Poetry Project Newsletter, in 1992.

Notes for an Interview with Sarah Palin

What are you thinking about when you stick
your tongue between your teeth and smile?
When the sun rises on a cold Alaskan morning,
does it warm you or do you feel a disturbing chill?
Sarah, when you take off your glasses to rest your eyes,
does it make you feel like a different person?
Sarah, when you look out the window of an airplane,
do you sense a distance that can never be overcome?
Is it hard, Sarah, to tell the difference between
the stories you tell and the things that are real?
Sarah, did you know that whenever I see you
on TV I give you the finger?

-Jose Padua

To John McCain

Your odd almost twitch
as you wait for Sarah Palin
to finish introducing
you reminds me that
while she is the religious
right's latest asshole,
you are still the Republican
Party's scariest bitch.

-Jose Padua

September Song

When I was a kid in grade school
the teacher once made us repeat after her,
“The key to success is hard work.”
Years later, in college, another teacher told us,
“You have to work hard to get an A
and you have to work hard to get an F.”
One thing they never told you
was that sometimes you could make it
without any effort at all.
This you had to learn on your own.
And though it’s true
that most of the time
you have to slave away
to get anywhere,
the most beautiful moments
are those when you find yourself
in the right place at the right time,
or when, after doing something easy,
you find yourself suddenly
on top of the mountain.

It’s like when you’re at the racetrack
and you forget about the jockey,
the odds and past performance
and bet big on a horse
because you like its name,
and you go home with a hundred dollars
you didn’t have that morning.
It’s like wandering the streets aimlessly,
looking for nothing,
just walking like a zombie,
when you run into a friend
and end up drinking and laughing,
ready once again to look
at the world that surrounds you.

It’s the beauty of the moment
that comes alive without artifice,
the beauty of the mountain
that is built without industry
without business,
without blueprints and guidelines
and a right way
and a wrong way.

It’s the beauty of being human,
of not always making sense,
the beauty of falling and getting up
not because there are things to do,
but simply because you have fallen
too deeply into the realm of the possible,
and it’s time to do
what you were told
you couldn’t do
and you do it effortlessly
and easily high
and wide
and running on these
still golden days.

SHORT POEMS FOR THE LONG ROAD

Waking Up In Rock Springs, Wyoming

The store at the
old bus depot here
sells about
a hundred different
pornographic magazines,
and though the fat guy
behind the counter
smoking a cigar
seems friendly enough,
I can tell
this isn't the place
for me to hang
around.


Walking The Dog

I met a woman
from Tennessee
who licked my fingers
in the back of
a taxicab.
Her hair was blonde
and her lips were apple red.
We didn't look
and we didn't talk.
Sensing the steady rain outside,
her hips
couldn't keep still.
Neither
could
my free hand.


Square Biz

In the record store
one day this
girl with spiked black
hair picked up a copy
of Teena Marie's latest
and said, "God, she's
so ugly."
I walked over to her
and said, "Hey,
Teena Marie
is a
Fucking Genius.
And she's not ugly.
You are."
It was the only
pick up line
I could think of.


Other Afternoons

At the matinee
movie in Utah
the curly haired kid
taking tickets
stands stiff
and looks at me
like I'm some sort of
criminal.
I liked it better in
Atlanta, where they
checked my bags for
guns or knives
before letting me into
this gigantic
old movie palace
to see a bad horror
film starring
Oliver Reed.


California

The clear glass
ashtray's
on the floor
and the
Sunday morning mass for
shut-ins fills out the
dusty TV screen:
when I wake up
in the morning
I often feel
a sense
of loss.


LSD

The painted doves
on the corner
walls coo
softly in
a summer
space.


Ask Judd

Judd had a
head full of
bong hits.
He was sitting
straight and
tall in liquid filtered
slow motion.
When I asked him what
he wanted to do
when he got out of school
he said,
"Fly planes."


San Francisco

I don't know
why
I didn't
give the girl
with the gold
nosering
some
spare
change.


The Kamikaze Kid

At my 10 year
high school reunion
Carl Jackson
walks up and tells me
he dreamt
I was a Japanese torturer
in World War II.
Just then I remember
why we
didn’t speak much
in high school.


On the Road

Watching TV
in my hotel room
in downtown
New Orleans.
I'm by the freeway and
my room feels cold.
I'm
thinking
about
birds.


Poem

Get the money
Try to score
Grab the blanket
Meet the bus
Go to hell
Drive that truck
Talk that trash
Knead the bread
Dig the street
Buy the meat
Meryl Streep


The Dynamite Kid

Like a
perfect rainbow,
nothing can match
a flying
headbutt
for insight
into the lives of
the billion and one
maniacs
we call our
fellow
human
beings.


Speed

Driving down
the Verrazano Bridge
the Earth slows down
its colors
through its
very swiftness.
I close my eyes
and when I open
them again
I discover how
the thickness of the universe
feels.


81 St. Mark's Place

Ice ceam
in noisy glass
cups:
the TV's on
in the dark
and the phone
and doorbell keep
ringing.
We're
watching
cartoons.


My Own Like Poem

Leslie,
I like you.
I don't think you're
a jerk as
Michael does
why I even like
the way you eat
strawberries.

You interrupt the silence
the way Tahiti
interrupts the ocean.

Don't change

I'm going away for now
I'll be back soon

bye bye.

bye.

-Jose Padua