THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

It wasn't so much who Kobe was. He was a stranger to virtually all of us I met him when he was 18 with a broken hand on the set of Sister, Sister He was hanging with Brandy and was Deeply shy But it wasn't so much who Kobe was It was what he represented My son Jake idolized him And all these years later He will continue to idolize him Forever Because it wasn't so much who Kobe was He was what we needed. What Derek Jeter was to New York Kobe was to Los Angeles. He was a hero at a time when we Had heroes Who worked overtime To be one His obsessive pursuit of perfection Was mythological Losing was unimaginable. Being ordinary was unacceptable. He moved like a jungle cat Mocking gravity Defying physics Seducing  the impossible Beaming like a spectator At his endless bucket drains That Looked like the comet trails Of high tech smart bombs He was a virtuouso Who could find the mathematical equation Of the improvised court melody L

Isolation Does not Stay behind When you leave The house Watching you exit Through the upstairs Window As the animated you Gets lost In The moist fingerprint of exhaled fog Whimpering that it has Been Forgotten. It is very much a Presence in your Well-populated Dreams there to remind you That there is no one, Even In the gold rush prosperity of Sleep clouds, that you can touch No matter how high You hold up your arms. It sits next to you At work In its very own Ergonomic chair As people Sail past Like wind swept yachts Off the coast of Whitsunday Heading for The cliquish air of The kitchen To share Pringles of gossip And fistfuls of Hershey Kisses. It's in The faces Of commuters That hurtle by In the tear-streaked windows Of stampeding subway cars And it's in the static Of the matrimonial bed burrowed deep In the dissonance   That you will Defend To your Dying day.

The Setting: Hollywood Sunset Blvd Starbucks Early morning squint light The kind That inspirits Ray Bans and causes Muzzy rock musicians To bang into walls The cast: Two girls Tanked on corporate ecstasy  Working their team caps And verdant aprons While flashing signals And knowing  glances In the secret  Language Of the multi-tasking barista. Hollywood people. Float in and out Like they’ve just made touchdown on the waning part of the moon. Everyone got the memo Apparently To wear slouchy knit hats  Implanted earbuds  And bring phones To slump over Like Muslims showing Their devotion at Ramadan. Tables  are islands of castsways The street-sullied homeless guy with his bashed in skateboard And life-drained Gatorade bottle Stares into space As if he’s trying to see The future In the crystal ball That has always let him down. Spindly pale bespectacled  Black tee shirt guy With an arm ta

For awhile Which is  The dark And  Vast space Wedged somewhere Between I have no idea And now, Loneliness  (Which is a word That goes back as far As the 14th Century When apothecaries Tried to cure it With pestle and mortar With no success Which only made Them lonelier No doubt) Has been  The condition That most  Of the time feels Like a violent Demonstration, Like the ones That are being Staged on the streets Of China, Which is Dedicated to Containing Or preventing  Any further Outbreak Of happiness. While even the most Skilled MRI technician Can’t spot it Trust me Loneliness is there Day And  Night, Lying on the mantle of my gut Like a snoozing Tail-fanning cat Who When suddenly startled  Can  Turn Self-destructively Claws out  Feral. Foresakeness Which is the new Black Plague Suffered by  Millions Has been my Since birth Indissoluble Siamese

Distant love Can feel so Close And close love Can feel So distant Depending on what the Commute is. I could say the same Thing about memories Which is Distance Held close With eyes closed But open for Dreaming Season I can feel the warm Skin And inhale The Ambrosial fragrance of the Invisible baby Who sways like A pendulum in the Hammock of my arms As the high tenor section Of my grandpa heart Sings a good-night song Like Tender Shepherd Which began  with the question “Can anything harm us mommy after the Night lights are lit?” To which mother Responded “Nothing precious. They are the eyes That a mother leaves behind To guard her children.” And from there From the lunar surface of Planet Nursery The disciples of Neverland Took flight To reach Whatever in life felt Scary, Unreachable Or Far away.

November. The sky is the color Of freezer ice. The woods The path You Me And an impossibly happy dog Collars are alert Cheeks are claret red Hands are rolled in pockets Like sonogram babies Winter boots  Scrape through leaves that are scattered like propaganda On a small country of pine cones You Ahead of me Heads down Breathing like horses We are still attached. You and I The tether of heartbeats Even though  We both know That it’s over Every step forward  is a giant leap Towards  a million miles away. There is so much to be said  when there is nothing left to say. And so We let silence Have the last word.

She asked me Why ghosts Keep appearing In my stories Like the milky incandescence Of dead relatives, evaporated friends, femme fatales And long ago women who Are forever Lust And I said I don’t know What do you think? And she said I think it’s about Hope Which made me stop And confer directly With the ghosts Who prefer to call themselves Hereafter Americans Who told me that Job one Besides neatly folding And packing away memories Made of fine silk Into a steamer trunk Like an ingenue’s backstage handmaid For the long journey Home Is to ride shotgun And read me stories Where the slapstick team of maybe and forever Collide like Coney Island Bumper cars And hearts cry out like Incubated Newborns Who never grew up And sobbed into the night Waiting to be held Until now.

It is all temporary. Claire de Lune Will always end In fairy dust It is all a distraction. Dimensions Will always explode Like flash bombs It is all a dream. Perception Will always arrive Like an Afterthought. It is all a dance: A Virginia reel With do-si-dos And the gallops of Head ladies And Foot gentlemen Sprinting for buses And trains And ways to say I’m sorry. But in the end it’s all about The aftermath of birth. The swaddled The stilled And the not yet grown ones Whose final breath Will best be Remembered for Releasing the seeds of white/gray dandelions Without getting the chance To make a wish.

Where shall I go today? Written By David Steven Simon I’m staring up at the destination board Of my brain Calculating the arrivals And departures. Hmmmmmm. Let’s see. I can take the 12:25 AM A direct flight back to opening night the Precise moment of my birth Brooklyn, New York Young parents Older sister Waiting at the gate For me Armed with bouquets And baby’s breath. Or. I can plan a far more Twisty itinerary. The first stop is my baby boy room A living, breathing thing that I lived in In a shy, garden apartment building Which was as quiet as a cotton field at night As pesky shadows played tag On the ceiling While the outside world Hummed like  mommy when she washed The floors And whistled why she worked And I floated in my My crib The cradle of my civilization. Then its on to years later nursery school Me in trouble Banished to the kitchen Again Where all the criminals of Childhood are sent Where I wailed like A baby in a Max Fleis

Snow comes equipped with its own form of quiet. It’s a different kind of quiet than everyday quiet. It’s like the hushed, hold your breath silence that descends in-between movements when the string quartet is temporarily still and resonant. At first blush, leaves rustle like brothers wrestling in their bedroom, the sky turns ice-tray gray and the air churns into a thick, icy froth, as sweet as fresh milk, as faraway traffic and with it, modern times,  slowly get erased from the soundtrack. The world rattles like a thousand festive maracas, making a splashy diva entrance like the wind they call Maria Carey. This shakes the last of autumn color right out of the picture like a giant etch-a-sketch and strips the trees bare, leaving them startled, skeletal and bald. It reminds you how unequivocal time is. Fall falls like a swaying parachute, as if accompanied by George Winston playing the piano in his socks. But winter arrives like an invasion of heavily armed stormtrooper