THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

 A Sunday Walk on  Fifth Avenue Written by David Steven Simon I’m on a 22-block winter walk moving with childhood velocity along Fifth Avenue. The sky is Tiffany blue which makes everyone feel as prosperous as a happy ending. My heart is that red balloon escaping like a convict above the Strand Books Kiosk moving to the madcap rhythm of the Red Maple Leaf rag I’m swallowed by the fanny pack of tourist wolves the sneaker hoofed stampede the merry prankster dogs and the unicorn girl in her multicolored finery City pilgrims pray to their phones led by a sacred calling as I am caught in the swirling tide of Puffers and Pashminas.  A homeless man soiled as a chimney sweep sleeps on church steps dreaming of his full belly past. A cardboard of hand-scrawled commandments lay at his charcoal feet offering hand scrawled instructions  on how to lead a more purposeful life I dodge The hand-holding strollers and The hands-pushing strollers with their acrobatic babies the Nicotine...

  The Curvey November Ramble Written by David Steven Simon  The curvy November ramble With its fallen infantry of leaves Lit by the epitaph of the sun Does not lead me forward. Every step, Orchestrated by the final gasp of A snapping twig, Escorts me back... To my mom, Waltzing with her  carpet sweeper partner As Sinatra Sang You Make Me Feel So Young From the cathedral radio of her  Bobby Soxer heart While sadness  coursed through her veins Like a prairie wildfire. To my dad, Slapped silly by Skin Bracer And the slow death hours of a Salesman Sneaking Chuckles Behind the citadel of an  Early evening newspaper As he sank into the mother arms of his chair As the cushion  Cradled his head  Which returned him To the sanctuary of quiet shadows when his heart felt precious  Befriended  And adored. The visitations that come to me As I wade through this dignified  ghost filled battlefield  Of old New York With its  Painter's pall...

  I’ve lost a few things along the way. I’ve lost the sound of my dad laughing at Crazy Guggenheim from the sag of his summer chair, which come summer wore a tropical skirt. A floor fan droned like a monk’s prayer, a freight train rumbled past with the weight of the nighttime surf, and Adolph, the neighborhood love-struck shepherd, howled at the moon while fireflies danced like Bolsheviks in Petrograd. I’ve lost the scent of my mom rehearsing her mournful daydreams as she misted herself with atomizers that ruled like royalty on the court of her bedroom tray in the heart of Queens, while the shiny knights of lipstick guarded the round table. I’ve lost the grumbling of my sister, her hormones raging through her like Kamikazes, leaving her adrift in a harbor of teenage wreckage. I’ve lost the throttled silence of my grandmother, her sanity long gone from the yard, taken by the crack of a tragedy bat that sent her to the bleachers of invisible mothers who had lost their children too, l...

I  need to feel the underfoot sand, ocean’s silent partner, waiting for the wind like a setter at the door  which  will send me back to the Hollis train station  at the arpeggio of dusk, clinging to my mother’s summer-shy, Coppertoned legs, breath held, ready for my father to suddenly appear with a weary fedora smile a briefcase full of dandelion dreams and comic books— collected like oysters from the distant shore of a newsstand— my first instruction manuals on how to fly. Tonight,  all these memories later I need to watch the Slow Gin Fizz  spin of a Bill Evans record, its notes landing like the light splash of hand-slapped cologne hours before I trace the lower landscape of her back and say, with more tenderness than my heart can bear, how lucky we are to share the moon.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        My childhood  summertime commute  whose soundtrack was the armistice of morning was a ride aboard a most reassuring breeze the kind that blew kisses to schooners and made our living room curtains dance like the veils of Mata Hari. I wo...

Despite appearances   Heaven may not be  the always present  consciousness that watches over us during  beach hours, gray rain city days, or any number of man follies like battlefields the electoral college and never being able to find a parking space at Cotsco on weekends. For me Heaven is our private inner movie studio where all that is lost and forever feared is stored in film cans on strips of memory celluloid that we can call up whenever the wars of love  become too much to bear. Silent night pictures flutter by  on the silver screens of  daydreams and nightmares, that feature mostly tales of loss and temptation featuring a cast of  a thousand ghosts who haunt the shadow valley of our hearts until the wee small hours  when the lights come back on and the exit signs are clearly lit. In that still-life morning moment of want and limbo all that remains  is a carousel of  dissolving images  on shredded sprockets  which we...

Before the phone I stared I stared at the night sky like stars were diamonds and my eyes were jeweler loupes I stared at the girl who made my heart twirl like a Duncan Imperial top I stared into the crystal ball of my wild gypsy daydreams I stared at the covers of books like they were models loping on the runway. I stared at the impending animation of sculptures and paintings I stared at birds flying in formations as if they all got the memo I stared at the brief life of hand held snowflakes I stared at the technicolor dream coats of autumn trees I stared at window displays and gave voices to mannequins I stared into the whirligig wake of my past I stared into the wild west of my future I stared at scrapbook pictures and wished I was in all of them I stared at album covers and pretended that the singers were the friends who knew me best. I stared at dogs and wished they knew my name I stared at parades that moved like never ending rivers I stared at my babysitters and whispered, “I lov...

  The Caretakers by David Steven Simon Children are the caretakers of stars that can’t remember how or when they fell. It may have been a Tuesday. It happened so fast. One minute they were defying gravity, basking in the womb of time— and then, before they could wail in unfathomable sorrow, they tumbled and flailed and landed on the beach, like the twisted ragdoll bodies of Normandy, until the Caretakers arrived, Who carried them off in low-swaying buckets to their work station beneath a striped umbrella planted like an astronaut’s flag, lit by the surgical luminaire of the soon-to-be-forgotten moon, where the Caretakers began their tireless work on the resurrection of the Fallen. Points were readjusted. Spines realigned. Compasses rejiggered— guaranteeing no star would ever wander off alone again. The work ended at early bright, with a final kiss that triggered a thermonuclear reaction in even the coldest of heavenly bodies— which lit th...