THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

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...

They were friends at that point, shoot the shit confidantes hoisting ale shots at McSorley’s as rain splattered the windows like Pollack paint  and sawdust added extra pulp  to their fiction. When she asked him  kind of casual, kind of not, why ghosts keep showing up in his poetry like the milky incandescence of long dead relatives, evaporated friends, and femme fatales who lowered the standards of his heart to that very moment he gave it a thought a seconds long inventory at best and answered: I don’t know, what do you think? She looked at him like she just solved a whodunnit and said I think it’s about hope… which stole his breath like a Times Square pickpocket and moved him to tears like  the first time he heard Piaf sing “Non, je ne regrette rien,” which guaranteed him safe passage right there in the saloon with its ususal crowd of diehards and tourists to enter his writing place where he conferred briefly with the spirits  who told him  to pack his mem...

After a life spent repairing his cowhide heart that's ruptured as often as a field of oil rigs in the Amarillo heat, a gunslinger of some years, weathered to the amber of Old Overholt Rye, emerges from the final gasp of train steam. With a low-slung belt and spurs as rusted as him that jangle past the platform of twirling parasols which, from space, must surely look like newborn daisies, he makes his way toward his long-promised reckoning — the high-noon showdown at La Misión de las Almas Perdidas — stopping once to stroke a gentle horse, and once to catch his breath. And then he stands in the middle of the tree-lined crossroads, whose leaves, red as Malbec cling to their branches like kinfolk in the Great Flood, praying, like him, to hold on one last time. But youth will outdraw him, and the wind will take the leaves. Leaving behind his legacy — a misspelled name on a weather-cracked wooden cross, the ballad of a chapel bell, and the shadow of a mournful woman quiet as an unwound ...

The years drift by. Muzzy. Half-empty bed abandoned chair, a pair of hopeful brogues waiting for one last invitation to begin the beguine beneath the stars and night wash of The Ballroom of Longing and Light  Until grief— like my soul, and my refusal to forgive— softens  into the  low keening song of the mother whale, whose notes fall like  tears along the salted cheek of the living sea— where an armada of bottles  have landed green glass and cork each one carrying the same  handwritten message in the bellies of their hulls that say: "I miss you more."

My mom is mist now like the spray of Chanel that lingered in the atmosphere of her wrists and neck from morning till night My mom is a distant moon now as luminous as the pearls that she wore on special nights when being pretty was her only fate. My mom is music now She’s Gertrude Lawrence still guiding young lovers wherever they are bone-skinny Frank in the wee small hours  Fred and Eleanor as they begin the Beguine My mom is in the clink of a china cup In the messages scrawled in the secret code of cake crumbs In the mumble of a soap opera In the plaintive whistle of a tea kettle  My mom is rage now As uncontrollable as she was When the shadows swallowed her whole. And my mom is sorrow now Like the moment her mom died when she stood crying  at the window that shut out the world and said in a voice much younger than mine, I’m an orphan now.   

 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...