THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

Despite the empty seat across the infinity of a quiet table, I can hear you above the chatter and clatter of the everyday cafe. As Sinatra sings, “All The Way" from the piped-in great  beyond, your hand journeys past the tiny civilizations of sugar and salt to claim mine in the name of the forgotten moon. My food delivered like an offering sits - still as a Thiebaud. I close my eyes to go to where you live now and watch moments spin by in a swirl of creams, golds and soft pastels like the Carousel de Saint Pierre whose horses all tell a different tale Some rear. Some gallop. Just like we did when you said I love you too  for the very last time.

You’ve become the keys I cannot find, the misplaced glove the forgotten song that knows the opera of my secrets and lies. You’ve become the unreliable narrator of daydreams And you’ve become The dog, Scampering,   despite the pain along the shore, following footprints the way I do, collecting evidence, never once turning back. Because it knows: no matter what I will always be here.

When I pass beneath the Greyshot Arch, bound for shadows and sleep, I leave behind the song of the unsettled heart, and enter the stillness — stone and river,  deep. Even so, I will miss walking barefoot on the rolling tide of the Central Park meadow, like Jesus wandering the fringes of an Irish-green Galilee. I will miss my moseying — a derby-topped, cane twirling Chaplin — sailing past the silent cyclorama of East Side shops. I will miss being lifted from my feet by the scent of that temptress pizza, falling into the waiting parmesan-coated arms of Ray. I will miss greeting every dog I pass like a returning war hero — thanking them for their service with a formal salute. I will miss the currency exchange of a second-long smile with a passing looker who disappears into the crowd of swells like a film noir dame armed with a shimmy and a smirk. I will miss the stroll through the cornfield maze of The Strand, in search of meaning  that breathes in the belly of books But most of ...

  I remember my little boy soak tub when bubbles would ricochet off tiles with pop and circumstance. I remember the sleepy time choir of late August crickets whose notes would take flight  and soar in formation in honor of  the death of the day. I remember the sound of my dad laughing at Sid and Imogen like someone was tickling his feet transmitted from  faraway living room island to the shores of my crib which for a one brief second erased his blackboard  and made him forget  the chalk of everyone he had lost and still ached for  just like I did whenever mommy said good night  and would disappear into holy foyer light perhaps forever. Despite the fact that my job then was the pursuit of happiness I was always acutely aware even at two of the hidden companionship of sadness which lived in the secret places of grown-ups who, at the end of each day, from behind the grieving hush of closed bedroom doors, would slip out of their work costumes and life...

Snow is the accumulation of brushstrokes: Monet’s Magpie Hassam’s Late Afternoon New York Winter Renoir’s Skates in the Bois de Boulogne - framed by my windows which I can fly through on this island of passing days when summer feels as distant as the length of longing My  memories are a mad flurry of hexagonal plates and stellar dendrites that land like parachutes on a wintered battlefield  of insistent jasmine which has survived the casualties and blizzards of the heart. reminding me that weather is as brief  and lonely  as  the daydream that created it.

Ever since the days of perfectly fitted waistcoats silk top hats and the dangled kid glove when spring made its entrance as rowdy as a saloon, it became open season for desire. Inhibitions were lifted like a Crazy Horse skirt and for the pocket-empty artist, his swivel-eyed lust carried him by ragged foot   to the impossible distance of color-spattered fields, where armed with the seeds of paint, he tried to figure out the secret code of flowers which had spoken to him in the confidence of God since he was a child. With the genuflection of the Hog’s bristle brush and the consecration of the palette knife, the flowers were born out of creation--- becoming more human. with every stroke. Klimt’s sunflowers formed a soul Kusama made her blossoms quiver with the hallucinations of childhood and Van Gogh’s violet irises wept with madness from the asylum of Saint-Remy-de-Provence. And now after all these years the few that have survived be...