American Mohawk

Thank you for stumbling onto my chapbook. This book is about the spirit of America and my strides to find my way in an increasingly difficult period in American History. We are only now beginning to realize the true force of the Internet and all of it's phases. This is my book, and it is titled, American Mowhawk. I am part Mohawk Indian. My great grandparents were from Ontario Canada and through migration and movement, my Mother and Father collided as Americans. I have strains of 16 different cultures in me, and they are too hard to keep track of, so I will simply call myself American. These are my struggles with understanding life. I began writing them in 1995.

Enjoy your reading.

Christopher J. Bradley
All Works (c)2003
Noisecontrol Publishing
posted by Christopher at 12:10 AM
~ Monday, April 05, 2004
 
Table of Contents:

American Mohawk by Christopher J. Bradley

I. The World Before Latin
Maple
Black Maple
Winter Maple
Cold Maple
246
The Sex Life of Popcorn
Drip
Modern Forms of Corn
Candle Beaux
Foreign Exchange Student
O.L.S.P.
Fishnet Marianne
A Stand With Jinx
The Big Red Men
Wires
Steering Column
Scramble
Salamander
The Bum
Trinket Tandem
Outside The Wall
Rock City Window
Naval Park
The Fire of Dawn
On My Brother's Graduation
Silly Putty
The Skylit Clouds
The Stars They Move
Zen Thing

II. Black Operations
Month One
Cracker
Boston
Billy
Jinx D Cooley
The New Scriptures
John Travolta, My Uncle
Grandma
Jumbo Pop
The American IRA
Quitting Sony
Black 47
Chip
Dad
Ellis Island
Swatches
Chicago
Larry
Plastic Man
Standard Love Story
The Onyx Pickups
The Agents of The Government
The Warlord
The Sweetheart Waitress
The English Church
Red Jacket
The Hipster
Happy New Year
Mr Ohio
Tick

III. The Tail of The Dragon
An Afternoon Out Alone
Electronic Music Workshop
Driver's Education
Homecoming Crash
End of Shift
Roulette and Madame Zilch
Lunches with Joe
Joe at Georges
Chemistry Seven
Atlantis Vertigo
Manhattan in A Shirt and Tie
Truly Brilliant Orange
A Fiance' Not Forgotten
Radiant Dawn
Sky Blue Irises
As Winter Begins
As The Fierceness of Winter Breaks


IV. Harmonies From Within The Maze
Head Kick
Composing
A Steak Sandwich
Hurling New Dough
Now Try The Best
The Greenery Of Beans
Sketch An Edge
Extra Tempestual Being
Origami Trick
From Harlem To 42nd
Grand Central Station
Central Park
Exit to George Washington
Garden State Extraction
No Parking In Jersey
The Darkest Zing
Rotating Lamps
Poison Tree in New Berlin
Lasergrid Pole Position
Camp Hill Hit Patches
They Can Read The Fine Print
For The Raccoons And Fauna
Accident
An Angel Descends
My Assassin
Awkward Moments
Desire In Commercial Lust
Cubicles and Pods in January
First Seconds Of Airtime
God Save The Machines
Grey Stone And Velvet
I Never Met A Monkey
El Biblioteca Americano
Fool's Tokens
Praise For The Public
Screws, Nails, And Boards
Movie Theater Scam
When The Blues Turn Red
The Latin Senate
Yohimbe Gold
On Finishing Books
A Promise Of New Life
Antique Piano Teacher
Fiery Leaves in Autumn
Painting The Rock

V. The Mid-War Sessions
From The Fallen Rubble an Olive Branch Trembles
Chi and The Art of Kawasaki Ninja Investments
No Legacy for The Mainframe
Are there parallel universes?
Discovering A Lost Piece of Boston
Higher State on a Tuesday
The Horse Shoe Crab
Creating and Organizing Lists
The House that Jack in The Box Built
Vaporware v. 1.0
Potato Chip Breakfast
Rediscovering New England in A Time of War
Finding an Old Friend on The Web
How Her Fingers Danced
For a French Poodle
Coreon Surface Pressure
Resources in a Bookstore
March 18th 2002
MP3 Recordings at Andy's
Cooper's Virtual Forest (Last of the Mohicans)
The Doris Day Movie
Tide
Tangled Arms and Legs
Repaying Debts
Pringles
On Getting The Cat Stoned on Catnip
Looking For The Right Girl To Marry
Gyros and Dreams about Gyroscopes
Which Edge of the Universe?
Physical Therapy
Walter and The Moon Buffet
The Bubble Tea Café
A Message From God in Webster
Ambulation in Amherst
Holly and Glitter Leaf
One World, Indivisible

VI. Medford Village Currents (The New England Slack)
a supermarket parking lot
the someday cafe'
the steps of the pink house
the kendall square stop on the T
the brewery with the overhead pipes
davis square
we move into the pink house
baybank
the bakery
dunkin donuts
purity market
music and cigarettes
massachusetts ave
the au bon pain
the snap cafe
the harvard book store
the arrow pub
the international house of pancakes
haymarket square
abbott staffing
advent international
central station
sitting on the bus
loading the car
black maple cruise
the beer mart
scrabble in the evening
computer city saugus
circuit city mystic avenue
the gillette agency
the last days of the green tomato
the mac world nomad spoilers arrive
epilogue - the tennis match


VII.The Neuroscience of Christopher St.
in seven parts

posted by Christopher at 7:24 PM
 
The World Before Latin
by Christopher J. Bradley
First Child Of The Digital Age

Completed: 11/26/99 7:20:31 AM Revision 1: 11/8/01 10:04AM
(c) 1999 by Christopher Bradley

Chapter 1
The Maple Tree

Maple
by Christopher J. Bradley

Seeds
Pirouette
Spiral To The Ground
I Will Spin With You
And Get Dizzy

Leaves
Purple Red
Green And Orange
When Falling
In Fall

Stems
Long Non-Polycarbon
Hard Shelled Veins
Cellulose Composes You
You Distribute
You Share Your
Nutrition

Branches
You Were Stems Once
Now You Hold Many Leaves
And Weave Toward The Sun
Creating Nature's Three Dimensional Maze
For The Ants The Bees The Mosquitoes And Termites
Your Larger Folk Were Friends To My Gripping Palms

Trunk
Orange-Brown And Grey
The Cracks Line Your Weathered Skin
My Feet Would Press Against The Bark
Sneaker-Prints On Dry Hard Wood.
You Grew Quickly I Remember Your Youth
I Grew Up With You.


Now That I Am Older

Cars
Evening Lamps
Sweepers
Concrete Streets

Cement Walkways
Telephone And Telegraph Poles
Electrical Cables
Noise.

These Are The Things That I Need.


We Cut You Provide You With Grey-Green Mold
Pull Off Your Leaves Paste Some Black Goo
Snap Your Branches On Your Wounds
Thicken Your Water With Toxin Feast On Your Sap

I can see where you would have grown
I can see
where you would have grown.




Black Maple
By Christopher J. Bradley

You look a bit sinister in this season
Like something wicked
The end of September is here
And the drips from the sky
Are popping down
One by one
Through your leaves
Into my short hair.

I haven't had to step back away
To see your figure planted
While your smallest parts
Are still alive
The veins like al dente'
Spaghetti strings
Draped with black-purple nylon
Dragged to earth by fluid gravity.

There's a black pool underneath
Where your juices collect
Formed by a broken square
Of cracked sidewalk
And I'm watching your life
Fall away in the darkness
With my cigarette
Smoking wet tobacco.

Your limbs at my usual angle
Are stretched up
Like the arms of an addicted supermodel
Breastless
Waiting for the needle of October
To make your oily feathers
Slick to orange and shiny red
And dangle down to the runway concrete.


Maybe you were a faerie once
When I was thirteen
And no one was dead yet
Waking up with the moon
On a simpler evening
Watching the hill
And protecting the owl
I could still "Who" with.

And to whom do I owe this honor
To gaze at your hacked off hips
That made your older arms
For my palms to grip
And climb to join the last mosquitos
Or march an army of your ants
To stop the dive-bombing winged ones
In the city in the evening clouds.

If you had eyes to show in the rain
I know now that they would be saphire
And spider burning acetate
That you'd slip out of your bark
And slide across to spend an evening
Hanging backward on my stiffened limb
In the Waltz of Northern Autumn
While I pace In the droplets of your life.

Heaven is the color of pitch Black Maple
And you are truly a bunch of bats
Gathered together in one hole in the air
As if frozen by the early winter chill
And so many mixtures of our chemistry
Sloshing through your cellular pipes -
We will kill you one day.
One day we will quicken your soul.

And your flight will be marvelous
With a furious flurry of whipping wind
The colors of your final summer
Will drift the currents of the breathing Globe
Washing across blacktop
Choking off gutters
And sticking to automotive windows.

And your secrets will sing away with you.
When the moss finally finds its way in.



Winter Maple
By Christopher J. Bradley
February 10 1998 2:15 PM

You have no leaves now
But it is a warm winter.
Soon you will have buds
growing sprouting with the sun's heat.

Your skin is cold to the touch
a bark made of thin brown wood
And I stand
no longer polluting the air.

I stand with a friend
And I tell her about you
How I've thought about you
How I've spent hours with you and the moon.

You have not faded away
since I have made my wish to dance with you
And the mold
maybe it is one of your silly ornaments.

Can you bring the inside out again
so that I can take your seed
and plant it into an unmowed grass
where it will grow and make rich saplings?

Of course you can
You will out exist me easily
After all the back yard is not paved
And it is bigger than all of your minor plot of turf.

Your infinite growth
ensures that
No concession will be made
to the stone that moves like a sifting sand in winter.



Cold Maple
By Christopher J. Bradley
October 15 1998

Now your leaves fall again
Rain and Hail spit from Heaven
Red-Black leaves turn brown
And my feet feel the cold of the earth.

You are frozen standing up
The water flicks your skin
A light brown bark darkens
And cracks with age.

It's been 3 years
Since I started counting
And I still weather with you
Unable to stop smoking.

The moonlight glares off one face
while your other is blackness
and streetlights comfort you
in the silence of night.

A junkie wouldn't have made
Three years worth of progress.
Watching you as you live naked
Clears my optical fibers.

A future is coming
Furiously Rapid
Where trees will spring up
In Virtual Space.

I hope I still feel
when it happens
and that I don't forget again
where we both were grown.



Chapter 2
Delicacies



246
By Christopher J. Bradley
March 17 5:35 PM

Rectangular Kitchen Appliance
There You Sit
Each Night I Stay Up Late
You Wait For Me To Push Your Buttons.

2 Of Your Buttons Don't Work Anymore
The One and Five Keys on Your Soft Face.
So When I Place My Soup Macaroni and Cheese
Or Mom's Leftovers Inside You

I press them always
Two Four Six
And Always
You Cook My Dinner.


The Sex Life Of Popcorn
By Christopher J. Bradley
It's an entirely oral experience
An explosion of butter and salt
While I flip it between my lips
Orville Reddenbacher knew
And he talked about it once
The Sex Life Of Popcorn.

There's something thermo-nuclear
About a shattering kernel
In an old metal pot
While the television's on
With a big politician's haircut
Flashing into my mind.

Every girl I've slept next to
Has popped a few styrofoam movie bites
Into her mouth.
We usually get the oily liquid
All over our faces
And we can never find any napkins.

Hey!

Maybe this time if I use the microwave
I won't get one of those damn shells
Stuck behind my back tooth.
And have to keep pushing my toungue
Against the roof of my mouth
Or maybe she'll set it between my lips.

With her soft white fingertips.



Drip
By Christopher J. Bradley

The drip of honey
on your breast
was the beginning
of the finish.

The sex could have been better.

I should have known
Better than to use McNugget brand
You've always been
A Burger King girl.



Modern Forms of Corn
By Christopher J. Bradley

When I was a baby
I ate cold corn from a can
one kernal at a time.
The can was aluminum.

Now that I am older
I find it cooked from a frozen bag
with a pot of chinese noodles
as I sit at a table.

Somehow I know
That I am modern
That the forms of corn that I know
rarely come straight from the husk.

Someday a stalk might grow
on the land where my family lives.
Until then I will enjoy
the corn that finds its way to me.



Chapter 3
The Opposite Species



Candle Beaux
By Christopher J. Bradley

The liquid mesh of your tounge
web will strike the spark which
creates our flame.

You should be aware of my love.

My love is like a warm candle dripping
upon your stiff wax body
until our flame expires.

I will cover you
and we will be frozen together
and you will be buried inside
what we both are
and our plastic substance
will stick to the
rock onto which
we were set
until the sun melts us
into eternity.



Foreign Exchange Student
 I want to write to you.
By Christopher J. Bradley

My fingers drip through your
rainforest flesh and you gush.
I want you to feel the tide
like the top of a surfer's tube
that I've never ridden.

Your earlobes are my toungues
grope spot and I see the arch of your
back
I twist my bony musicians hands
mathemetician's hands
into your hair
the crop of your
short tight golden mane
not dyed at the roots
and your fingers
grip the post
your arm twisted underneath
your neck
behind your head.

I will not speak of your breasts
they do not make you the student that you are
I will not ask of your past lovers
for their voices and their lack of vision with respect to your value
are inconsequential.
I already know that you will tell me about them
when the time is ready
and of course as I have spoken
the time before our mergeance
will be long
and you will have to write your thoughts about this poem
and this experience
after I introduce you to my family
and our strange ways
and my many tribes
and your exchange parents despise me
while your real ones have an adoration for my effort
It is my belief that you will be the one
and that it will yet be
a long time in coming.





Fishnet Marianne
By Christopher J. Bradley
June 21 1998 6:04 AM

A girl in stockings
With long legs
And blonde hair.
I kissed you once
In the back of Scott's
Black Ford.

Your hair behind my hand
Soft and thin
Set my senses into overdrive.
And then he came out
Your skinhead boyfriend
Pulling his shirt off.

He didn't know
We had kissed on the hill
Next to Tops
While Scott bought
his stinking
Budweiser.

Earlier
We'd had wine
In your apartment
The six of us
And your friend Tanya.
The room was dim.

To this day
You are not forgotten.
But how could you forget
Black combat boots
And dark sunglasses
At our first meeting

In the cafe.



A Stand With Jinx
October 30 1999 4:46 AM
Dedicated to Sue

In your denim jacket
You watched us play chess
In the coffee house
On Allen Street

I was wired on caffeine
Mike the mad Russian was there
We were all going to Larry's for a few games after closing
And I invited you

Your jeans were bleached black
And torn at the knees
You were wearing cheap sneakers
With your long curling hair and pale face.

We were hungry
And we all walked
To Niagara Street in the darkness
I bought us chips and salsa.

We shared a soda in the doorframe
Of the small apartment
You told me about the streets
While Larry played with his Nunchucks

He was a tall African
Looking like Michael Jackson
With missing teeth
And a fuzzing fro.

I asked you if you wanted to come home with me
And you did
And neither of us showered
Until after we had been naked.

Your body was smooth and young
And your skin cushiony
To the tips of my fingers
As I stroked your hips.

You asked me to take you back to Ba's house
So I drove you there
And we ran out of cigarettes.
We walked to the back of Quality Markets.

We had rice with his father for lunch
But I couldn't let myself sleep there
So I drove home
And didn't see you until a year later.



Chapter 4
Transportation



The Big Red Men
By Christopher J. Bradley
1993

The men in their big red trucks are evil.
They smile with their big red smiles
while they murder the innocent with
their big red wheels of steel.

The cost of their plague to society is tremendous.

The big red men with their big red trucks
and their big red smiles and their big red
wheels of steel must be destroyed.
But I shall not reveal my strategy.



Wires
By Christopher J. Bradley

My house is connected to wires.
Outdoors.
Inside my room
my wires connect.

Connected to my parents room
My telephone buzzes sometimes.
The modem humms at night
when I am alone.

I stand outside
under the wires
while the data transfers
to my machine

My thoughts can be sent out
To my friends
My family
My world community

On Wires.



Steering Column
By Christopher J. Bradley
There was a time
when I could appreciate you.
Now you are rigid
You no longer obey my commands.

I try to strap myself in behind you
But it is never comfortable anymore.
Ever since the workman switched you
You have been untilting.



Scramble
By Christopher J. Bradley

Rough like a jump jet pilot
Take off in a windstorm
While a siren bounces
Through unfiltered air.

Mickey mouse on a cheese wheel
Running to catch a morsel
That he can smell
but will never taste.

Make me some eggs
Tobasco is nice
Mushrooms rule
I like a side of hash browns.

Up the hillside
with a big gun in his hand
Jumping mud clumps
Man has to hold on.

I like a puzzle with a point
One that bends my mind
One that takes me down
To a place where I

Scramble.



Salamander
By Christopher J. Bradley

I came up to catch you
On the big hill
Down by the road
Near Niagara University.

During the winter
We all sled here
But now it's September
And it's just starting to get cold.

I rode my banana seat bike
All the way from my house
And then I parked it in the mud
Under the mudslide.

You should see yourself
Peeking out
From under the rock
Into my eyes.

You think that you might
Scramble away
And slither through the mud
But I am faster.

I've got you now
In my Cool Whip bowl
And I stuck some grass inside
So that you can play.

You'll enjoy the bumpy ride
While I drive
One handed back home
On the yellow bananna seat.

You can slide around
In my aquarium
Because you're cool
And purple.

And I won't let you die
Like the tiny frog
Last year
With no water.

Little Purple Salamander I'll let you go soon.



Chapter 5
Urbanity



The Bum
by Christopher Bradley

At one time there was a bum on the corner of main and ontario.

he had deep old weary eyes
a watery sunken smile
and whiskers smelling of olde english
eight hundred that was.

a cracked face and clothes
smelling of vermin musk
reeked out at me on the pavement
as I wandered by his corner.

Did I mention that I was speaking of a bum?

I remember asking myself many times
does he understand his place here?
He must have for it was sacred ground
the ground that he owned.

We passed the fringe the mass of flesh
huddled in his coats yes he knew and he was aware.
We walked to the Burger King and bought some fries.
Would you like dessert with that?

Once again as I recall we were speaking of a bum.

The change fell from the worn hole in my pocket as we passed
on the way back. We thought he would scramble for it.
We walked on back to the car.
Get in drive away don't think drive get gas drive.

The next day the same corner was in our path
his corner the corner belonging to the worn frown
the hairy beast the friend of no-one.
He was gone. I saw twenty-two cents on the pavement.

I believe I've told you enough about the bum. Maybe not.



Outside The Wall
By Christopher J. Bradley

I know that this has been written before
but I must give you my version anyway.

I am standing outside the wall.
My friends have pushed me out here.
My family has insisted upon the same
in not quite the same fashion.

I have joined them
but at what cost.

I can no longer exist on the same plane
as simply a body of flesh
I must now excercise my mind
and it gets harder again
I feel like I am two
because it is hard to show myself
as a human to people
that have not shown me the same.
The wall still stands before them
and they punch at it with rubber mallets.

I must learn to be less demanding of surface contact
and more demanding of my friends
for their love can crush me quicker than any other.

The friction in my mind is dying
and I am seeking physical sleep
while my mind records the day.



Rock City Window
dedicated to Scott Ansel and Jodi Crocker
By Christopher J. Bradley

A dim light shining
through a grated screen window
and thin curtains
falls on the red glow of an alarmclock.

My friend sleeps
snoring loudly under covers
on the couch.

There is a cigarette
smoldering smoke up around
my computer
as I type in the dark apartment.

I have spent several weekends
here with them
they live a Rock life
with a hundred CD cases.

Their two cats
black
purr in the darkness
with the girl in her room.

An answering machine light blinks
green
next to the charging cordless phone.

They have all of the amenities of home.

Someday I will be independent
and strike out on my own
maybe in a different way
maybe the same.

There are considerations to make
And circumstances cannot be the same
for someone with my special case.

Can I live in an art district?
Can I salvage any of my talent?
Can I aquire enough new toys?

Maybe this small light I see
will show me the way.



Chapter 6
Writings For My Family



Naval Park
By Christopher J. Bradley
For Robert Alan Bradley (my father)

I saw it once
as a cub scout.
The Naval Park
Buffalo New York.

Then one time
Dad You took us
The family
On a ship.

We cruised the edge of the city
in a new War Boat.
It was grey painted
and manned with many men.

Back then you were working
For the government
and for a place that made
aircraft radar jammers.

Someday I will show you
How I can work.



The Fire Of Dawn
dedicated to Dawn Bradley
by Christopher J. Bradley

I can remember the things that
you have told me about you.
You wanted me to go to school
you gave up many things for me.
You lived with crazy people
that were unhappy.

You did this so that I could know my father.
I became like the jungle man upstairs
that you feared
and you have fixed my broken back.

I became him even though you did
your best for me. I should never have joined the tribe.
The lord of the flies ate my soul
and now I am forced to rebuild it
or take on again with that pack.

They are like snakes and wolves combined
they slither and leap and poison and tear
and there is no escape without the intervention
of the people of our house.

The houses of Arnold and Bradley
rest quietly on the Block of what is
called madness by the city.

John wrote in the Revelation
2000 years ago in Chapter 17
verses 15 through 18 :

"The waters you saw
on which the prosititute sits
are nations peoples races
and languages.
The ten horns that you saw
and the Beast will hate the Prostitute.
They will take away everything she has
and leave her naked.
They will eat her flesh
and destroy her with fire.
For God has placed in their hearts
the will to carry out his purpose.
By acting together
and giving to the Beast
their power to rule until
God's words come true.
The woman that you saw is
the great woman that rules
over the kings of the earth."

Mother I have given you
to the ten horns of the Beast
and you have crushed them all.
As though to set your
foot upon the eggshell
backs of dead sea-urchins.
You and your kin are mighty.

My name will be a killing word.
I will crush the city when
it's vision fails to show truth.
The woman with the cup filled
with blood has stolen from me.
And I will not drink of her spittle again.
Let her dry up and die of dehydration.
There is no wine for her left in the bottle.

For she has too many times
choked off my breath
with her vile toungue.

You raised me to survive and succeed and I have failed...
I have fallen like an Asimov Robot
who has misinterpreted its simple instructions.
Mother you dressed me for the snow and rain
and kept me from the roads to protect me
because your baby brother Paul died in his sleep.
How can I forget this? You have done me no wrong.

It is the television that I will smash.
It is the television and it's blind naked vixens
and it's blind naked dead men
whose skin will be torn apart by my white fire.

A leper fails to believe...
I have been given this mark of the athlete on my foot
to remind me that I am a destroyer.
If I am forced to destroy for God
Then my name is already a killing word
and my name is of my house.
A house that is strong.

And my house is held up by my mother
who has fostered my need.
She has sent me out to be crushed
by the city and her whims so that I will learn.

She has brought me back with the books
of his word and borne another child
before crossing over the mountain
that I must now teach.

I will save him someday as others have saved me
by teaching me to be innocent.
I will rip the enemies of my house
and my brother's house and my children's houses
to bloody shreads with my bladed fingers
and the point of my pen.

I will destroy their clans of dark power
with my understanding that they are evil.
You who see this that do not deserve to
will not question the words that I write.
Anyone who does this is my enemy.
You will not question the words that I speak.
Anyone who does this will be burned and will not survive.
You are all the children of God the only God.
And you should follow your leaders to him.
If not it has already been written that you will die.

Your fate has been determined by the strength
of my mother's pain
and my brother's hand.
My father has given me science?
Has yours?
Do you not then have something to
demand of your father?

Show me the pain of your house
and I will say that you are strong
but not until then.

You will not forget my mother's name.

For when the sun rises
those of you that are with my house
and have sought out your true Father
and succeeded will see my vision.
For those of you who would question my words
even after the warnings given in the only book of God.
Her name will be written beyond your pathetic reality.
Her name will be written on the sky with Raes
through the ashes of the unfaithful.
And by the Lord
She will be called Dawn.



On My Brother's Graduation
By Christopher J. Bradley
Dedicated to Daniel Bradley

After the long drive
And sleep in a comfortable bed
Next to my brother
Five Years old now
We walk through the courtyards
Of the Spring Green Campus.

It is almost un-natural
The color of the grass
And blinding to my night eyes.
We approach the neat rows of chairs.

My father strings a Japanese Camera
Around his neck
And sits waiting patiently
For the ceremony
When he will walk to the front of the podium
And quickly snap out pictures.

We all talk about Daniel
And his success
And we watch him climb to the top
In a long black robe with a square hat.

Now no one can take away
Our first four year degree.



Chapter 7
Transcendence



Silly Putty
by Christopher J. Bradley
February 14 1998

like a mostly pink ball
of changeable shape
I take the news on
as my skin

And I am tossed around
by the hands of an infinitely young
and an infinitely old
God
to be present
to witness
the many jokes
of the earth.

Can I wash this newsprint off?
Or will it turn me grey
as I get older?

And how
can I keep the beautiful
colors inside?

Perhaps the solution
is my indefinable puzzle
being worked
by His hands.



Skylit Clouds
By Christopher J. Bradley
Dedicated to Scott Ansel and Eric Gansworth

I went out to see my Black Maple
In the blackness tonight.
I thought I would reflect on her
And then I thought I have a paper to write.

But when I looked up
I saw looking away from me
The pale junkie face
Of Ziggy Stardust.

Ziggy was hiding in the Skylit Clouds.
They pushed back and forth
Anchored by his bright white head
With the mouth hung open.

You could see his teeth
In the shadow of his painted lips
When the clouds cleared his way
And his mottled eyes re-sang his song.

Now I think I let myself wonder again
"So where were the spiders?"
And I think
What is a paper anyway?

The Skylit Clouds will always
Bring back Ziggy
The Skylit Clouds will always
Take me back -

To where these words began.



The Stars They Move
by Christopher Bradley
September 12 1999 4:53 AM

Above my lawn
Above my big bushes
Above the front face of my blue house
Above my maple
Above the tall buildings in the city to the South
The stars They move.

Little dots that aren't little at all
Monstrous balls of fire
They spin and twist
in seven hundred and twenty degree rotation.

They have slow momentum
while space folds and flows around them
And planets gravitate
They shift and slide through the universe
There are more than a thousand points of light
in the blackness of a cool clear night.

The moon is a chunk of rock
With personality
It has no water
It finds its life from our sun.

Stars die phasically
losing their flare
They are born in a quick burst
And pulsate radio blasts of energy
The spectrum is their art form
All color falls from their skies.

Actors move
like Mel Gibson on a motorcycle
or Tom Cruise launching in an F14
from the surface of a Naval Carrier.

But they do not burn
or smolder with passion
in Red White and Blue.
Above us all.
Above us all.
Above us all.

The stars They move.



Zen Thing
By Christopher J. Bradley

I think I just did a Zen thing.
I learned how to breathe
and my lungs allowed me to do it.

I saw a sign yesterday.
"Get Your Butt Out Of My Face"
Teaching with aversion.
I don't think that it always works.
I still have the strong urge to smoke
cigarettes when I see people
destroying themselves
destroying their families
destroying their communities
destroying their habitat.

I can feel the maple leaves burning
when I breathe.

When I breathe
the inside of my face burns like fire.
But the leaves they drip with acids in the
water hanging in the air.
Are the leaves as strong as my lungs?
Can my lungs show their color
with the twisting of the sphere?

My maple has been growing for
twenty-nine years.
It is being sapped by our shortcomings.
I will guess that my casket
will be constructed of its body
and we will rest in peace together :

when we cease to breathe
when the water washes us
back into the earth
and the sun warms
the whole
of who we are.

The presences of existing nature.
posted by Christopher at 6:58 PM
~ Sunday, April 04, 2004
 
Black Operations By Christopher J. Bradley
completed for WWW on October 25 2001

Month One

There was a war in Nineteen Ninety Six.
The month was January.
It was the first year
That I ran for President.

Cracker

I had known it was coming
Because Jinx D. Cooley
Had dropped me the line
After a ride with a crack addict.

We drove in my Dodge Shadow
All over Buffalo
And that was Nineteen Ninety Five
He wouldn’t get out of the car.

We didn’t know who he was
When he ended up in the car
We had walked away from an addict
He had been with us and Jinx had invited him.

We found out when he told us
That his wife had kicked him
Out of his house
He was ex-army and hi-strung.

Jinx puked on the East Side
In the house where he visited his brother
While his “friend” who we’d also let in
Watched me ouside the house.

I thought he had a gun.
The simple fact was that he was bigger
And he was black.
A Black Operative.

He made us drive a long way
And we stopped at many businesses
That were closing
In the darkness of three past midnight.

It was a Wednesday in the summer
And I didn’t have to work that day.
I was the Iron Cow
And they liked my sweatshirt.

The told Jinx to marry me
And she said she couldn’t
Because of her "friends"
That was before I slammed his finger in the trunk.

The last stop had been Kentucky Fried Chicken
Where another of his "friends"
Had left a bag of garbage with fresh food in it
After loading the back I smashed his finger.

I learned that he wasn’t violent
Toward me at that instant.
He yelled a lot
And then got in the car again.

We dropped him at his wife’s
And his "friend" carried their fourty-ounce
And Jinx and I
Had sex in the basement that night.

She explained to me about the "friends"
And in Nineteen Ninety Five
I thought that she was crazy.
The "friends" protected her she said.

She told me that she wanted
To teach me how to survive
On the street without a car.
I told her that I already knew.

All of this happened before Boston.
I went to Boston.
I took an Irish "friend"
He picked our appartment.


Boston

We met an MIT Graduate
She was a scientist
Who told us about apartments
In a coffee shop.

The Irishman sorted through the list
And picked our residence
Correctly the first time.
The old man we lived with was a schematic artist.

The old man was a "friend"
He knew the owners of a bar
And we went there exactly one time
And played scrabble and learned linguistics.

I used my computer knowledge
Of Operating System 2
And Microsoft technology
And Voicemail and Facscimile.

I obtained a job
And used the bus
Subway and Taxi
All for work.

The Irishman was frugal
He despised the money problem
And didn’t like the nighttime
In a city that closed at two.

He chose our landlord
For a loss
And set us up
To have to leave.


Billy "The Buffalo" Graham

In nineteen ninety five
The winds of war swept Buffalo
And Bill Gates
Owned the year.

I worked for him for a while
On his supposed project
And when it apparently fell through
I went to school. And met the literalists.

At first I was disturbed
When I saw Billy Graham
Say that a powerful force
Had driven the man across the Falls on a tightrope.

Billy Graham was convinced
That it was time for us to walk the tightrope again.
Billy Graham had let me know
In a simple three minutes that the tightrope was mine.

Billy Graham was the savior
Of the supposed right

And the left well they aren’t really "friends."
Be aware of your behaviors he said.

I won’t tell you how he knew about Niagara
And I won’t tell you what sorts would alert him
That we were here And alive
And waiting to be brought to Jesus.

I was learning how to write
And Jinx was on my mind a lot
While I went to school
But how is it that you can write about Jinx?


Jinx D. Cooley

Jinx was a little edgy
For a "friend" of Seventeen years
She was into bikers And seventies punks
I’d just met her the second time before the Cracker.

She was the Irishman’s fault
Both times we saw each other
He had been out of sight
In the background Somewhere close.

A once a year sex freak
She spent our time in the basement
Both times in June.
And she showed me her copper bound knife.

Jinx was going to Florida
She’d done it the year before
With her boyfriend
A biker without a bike.

She was still seeing him
But she had needed to see me
Before she left the second time
Because she missed me.

She said she’d had an abortion
And she didn’t know whose it was
But that she hoped it wasn’t John’s
And that maybe it was well maybe not mine.

I will assume his name
Was John Smith
But there was never any reason
For concern about him He was a nice guy.

I dropped her off that summer
On a long road
In Sanborn
The same place she’d called me from.


The New Scriptures

As I said I was learning to write.
I was the jungle-man
And described the Twenty Third Chapter
Of The Book Of Revelation.

I managed not to Damn my soul
By not claiming my words were truth.
And as you can see
Nothing has been added to the Book of Life.

And the war started in heavens
In "The Prophecy"
And there was no room
For a second demon in the conclusion.

Eric Stoltz was Simon at Gabriel’s right
In a war between Gabriel and Michael
Over whether humans should
Bathe in the glory of God.

I saw the film after the war
And I knew that it was history
Otherwise the story would never
Never have been told in proper form.


John Travolta My Uncle

The man from Washington
He was my Uncle
And he rode into Washington
In a Jeep from the Navy.

I knew that I’d seen him before
When he was hip in the seventies
And he danced in a nightclub
And wore bell-bottoms in Florida.

He complained about his ex-wife
And checks up on his kid
At least once a month.
His ex-wife is a Catherine.

We stepped into a Tops
And talked about Grandma’s House
And all of the fixing it needed.
He was my hero because he saved her.


Grandma

Grandma was an Alzheimer’s case.
I sat with her all night in November
When she called on the phone
And her voice shook with the jitter of Coke.

Grandma only drank Coca-Cola
She only wore big-wool coats
And managed her life
From the telephone And a taxi-cab.

Grandma was a Black Operative
And she knew all the people
On the street in the Falls
And the Banks.

She was always looking out for me
And introducing me to the older ones
And keeping me out of trouble
By tucking a one dollar bill into my hand.

She said to keep them in the bed
Hide them under the mattress
Because that way the crooks would
Never take it away.

Now she’s in a good place
Where they bring her decent food
And she talks to people
Rather than bank tellers.


Jumbo Pop

We talked about connections
At the grocery store
And how the mob closed
The bar I used to work for.

And my uncle
He picked up a pack of Jumbo Pop
And bought me a Wall Street Journal
Because he said that reading was great to be into.

I was in a Big Green coat that day
And he knew I was more than green
In fact The Jumbo Pop was in a blue package
And he paid for it with a fifty.

The assistant manager was notified
And he checked the bill
While I noticed my sister had a "friend"
Working at another register.

While we drove back
For Thanksgiving dinner
I kept thinking he’s going to save Grandma
And fix up her house.

My uncle did more than that
He took me to an Al Pacino film
Before he left for Washington
And I told him About my theory on Oklahoma City.


The American Irish Republican Army

A fat blond chess player
Alcoholic and Scotch whiskey drinker
This other Irishman Called Black Fourty Seven
Who had a Long Shoreman’s card

Told me at the cafe’
Within a day after the bomb
That I ought to know who I was speaking with
When I made comments about the military.

It would seem fitting
That we would discover
That McNicols was from Sanborn.
I thought better than to re-approach the idea there.

They hassled me all summer
He and a "friend" In ninety-five
While I drank coffee
About my car How they needed to borrow it.

And they kept trying to bet me a nickel
On a game of pinball
And they weren’t talking about Mary Jane or her sisters
And they wouldn’t agree on the term of "five-cents."

The two of them were interesting that summer
Before Jinx had come back
And before Boston
Because they got me cheap beer and places to crash.


Quitting Sony

On the way to Boston
I dropped off my headset
And a printed letter
To each department head.

I was quitting Sony
And telling Michael Eisner to find another sucker to screw.
Disney Interactive designed the worst software on earth
In Nineteen Ninety Four.

My job had been to fix it
For a hundredth of what it had been worth.
I liked the people I talked to.
Michael Eisner had fucked the company.

There is no way
To get ahead
On fourteen hours of work per week
And Michael Eisner I handed you the bucket of brains you wasted.

I made sure my own weren’t in there
And I know that Takahashi was smart enough
To know that we were smart enough
To take the dive Moving to the Atlantic.

Next Time I’ll be looking for Ed Asner
And Fred Astaire And someone young
Like Val Kilmer
Who knows the Score.


Black Fourty Seven

Black Fourty Seven drove me home
In my car
I was too drunk to walk
And the party was at his place.

He wanted to make sure I didn’t kill anyone
While driving the Eisenhower thruway
And the party was atomic
With The Jesus And Mary Chain.

We drank more there
With Chaos
A ripped nightclub security
And Lady Japan and her Chip.

I went to lay down after a round
On Black Fourty Seven’s bed
And soon made my way
To the bathroom.

The toilet had slimy rounded edges
And when I looked up after
At the shower
I could tell that the place was no paradise.

Black Fourty Seven got a bottle of Jack
That I delivered to his brother
Another Clive Barker
The next afternoon.


Chip

Chip sucked his thumb a lot
He was the "friend" after the car
His front tooth was chipped
And he was a Cafe’ clerk.

Chip said he owed a black man money
And he wanted the Shadow
To make Three Thousand
In two days.

I had to start inking out the line.
The car didn’t belong to me
It was my dad’s
And he’s ex-Navy.


Dad

I made my dad out for them
He was a dick
and he didn’t like people
and I was lucky he liked me.

He was actually his Brother
The man from Washington
Except a little more reserved.
He almost went to Viet Nam on a boat.

He said the chances were lower
Of getting shot On a boat.
And since he didn’t go
He must have been right.

There are three others total
Including Uncle Jumbo Pop
One is an Army historian
The other retired Airforce.

My Dad is very stable
And I remembered when I lied to Chip
That he was a teacher
For Naval Fire School.


Ellis Island

During the summer
The green statue on Ellis Island
Waves the torch
Above the harbor.

She was copper once
A gift from the French
And now Iacocca
Has repaired her.

I bought my dad his first Iacocca
The book about the Chrysler turn around
And I think he read the second one
When I left it in the bathroom.

We talked in the snow
In December
Just before the war
About Ellis Island And the Olympic Games.



Swatches

In Boston I was on the subway
I was reading Windows Ninety Five For Dummies.
As we headed downtown at seven in the morning
Two Japanese Stepped onto my car.

I looked up at a Gucci watch
They were getting off at Harvard
I knew they had a briefcase full of job offers.
The ride was to an interview.

I got off at City Hall
And walked across the cement patio
To the steps to South Market
And waited to see a woman.

She was from Buffalo
And she set me up with a job
After a typing test
And fifteen minutes of talk.

On the ride back
I saw the poster
Of a watch on a fence link-chain
An Official Sponsor of the Olympic Games.

When I got back to Niagara
I bought two
And an extra battery
From a nice older jewelry saleswoman.

I tried to sell one
A week later
To Black Fourty Seven’s friend
But Chip wanted it too cheap.

One was silver and grey-faced
And another Black and silver cut.
You can see the gears inside
The six-point star and hear it ticking.

I had one with copper cuttings
At the beginning of Chicago
It was purchased in a Mall
In Toledo Because I’d left the Timex.


Chicago

I left Chicago the year I arrived
In December while snow grew
from the sidewalk.
It took time to pack the car.

I could have stayed
My fiancé drew me back
I couldn’t not know my future wife
But her Mother wrecked her when I’d gone.

My part of Chicago was cold
The buildings were all Albany grey
And the floors all black tiled
Squeeked with wet sneakers all season.

I was a fraternal freshman
And our house the largest was amazing.
We had water wars
And beach volleyball.

We were rocking scientists
Listening to the Killer-B
And making Nirvanah
Smell like teen spirit.

We had three rectangled floors
And a basement.
We had a Halloween party
And learned to practice safe sex.

We were Dr. Seuss fraternity
With one named Larry
Who Re-Wrote the classic
And called it "Drunk-Man I Am."

And Drunk Man I was
With a mouthful of Whiskey Sour
In a motorcycler’s room
Every other night.

We carried each other to tests a lot
I remember crossing the busy street
At eight forty five
And getting a seventy in Calculus.

The first time I shaved my head
I was sober.
I was an Industrial Musician
Convening with the likes of Jourgenson.

I went to Wax Trax once with a Plastic Man.
His art was Plexiglass And tissue paper
And he and Morrison
Spent time On The Other Side.

My designer roomate
Had suspended my bed from the ceiling
With a single concrete screw
And a thin wood bar.

It came crashing down
The day after her visit.
His weak design almost killed us both
When the wood sunk into his designer mattress.

I finished my time there
In a private room
In a cubby hole under the raised floor
And dreamed of her at night.


Larry

Larry is an Italian Architect now.
He made it out
And continued through graduate school.
They made him an officer of the house.

Larry and I talked about Celtic Prose
And he explained why he hated his real name
And taught me about Archetypes
And Greek Jesters in his Literature.

Larry and I went to Medusa’s
An art club With music and noise
And Front 242 from Germany
Fueled the open theater.


Plastic Man

The Plastic Man is a music collector.
He had gone to art school.
He insisted that the next big band
Was called Smashing Pumpkins.

I didn’t believe him.
I told him that I didn’t like Haloween
And I explained the story Clearly
About the suggested murder of a turtle.

He ordered lots of compact disks as Benjamin Franklin
From Columbia House
And BMG and every other club.
They delivered them regularly to the non-existant fourth floor.



Standard Love Story

She pulled me inside her
Naked on her sister’s bed.
In her mother’s room
And under the shower curtain.

Those were our first times
On the first day
That her mother left for Ohio.
There was a twist.

We’d been playing for a month
And I hadn’t expected her
To let me hug her chest to chest
Watching cartoons.

The summer before Chicago
We knew I would be leaving
But we had to know our Prom meant something
Two hundred dollars worth of gold and diamond.

My living room floor was quite healthy
A light blue rug and a nice comforter
And of course the television
We never slept there was no reason for her leaving.

And then it crashed when I came back
And I wasn’t a smart boy anymore
With a shaved head and plans for Buffalo
Another idiot concert freak.

Thank you dear Mother-In-Law
I’ve learned that sex can be better
And you knew all along That she was a Burger King girl
Because you made her.


Onyx Pickups

The Onyx Pickups started showing up in December.
They appeared first on Television
Launching through mid-air.
And next I saw them following me.

Dodge was moving them
Faster than lightning
Propelling them over snowy hills
Coated with micro-fine-print lease rates.

I determined through a series of assumptions
And past envisionments created by film
That they were driven
By Agents of the Government.

The Onyx Pickups weren’t inexpensive.
It could only benefit the economy
To effectively protect
The Nation’s Future Leader.

I watched them fall into line one night
Driving down Main Street
Pulling out from different perpendicular streets
Ahead of me And behind me.

I was giving them a test run
By wearing my sunglasses
To pick up a copy of the Journal
At the Supermarket.

The agents in the trucks spoke without words.
They didn’t need cell-phones.
They didn’t need CB’s.
They would listen for Alice In Chains on FM radio.

The idea wasn’t very complex.
They had been watching me since Chicago.
All they had to do to find out my station
Was flip to the ones that didn’t static out on their custom tuners.

Whenever I put my sunglasses on
Alice and Chains would play.
And if I put on my readers
The Onyx Pickups would be gone within minutes.

In this way I tested them
A couple of times over vacation
Only at night.
Sometimes Police Cars joined them.


Agents of the Government

There are several types of agents
Agents of the Government
In my realm of perception.
Some you see Others Just exist.

You easily spot the secret service
They jog with the President
In red white and blue
With thin light grey lenses.

Others have darker sunglasses
And they wear black suits
And run alongside his limousine
And look hyper-pro in the sunlight.

Others just show their eyes
Wiggling them up and down fast in their sockets
They’re Mercs
And they instantly assess miles of terrain.

The Mercs deserve a special note
They do a sweep on request
Of a building entered by the important.
Many have grey hair but look younger than twenty.

The "friends" do not get mention here.
They are non-existant.
Try to pin a "friend" down
And a "friend" will vanish to even the air.

Each of these has a secret horror to cope with.
Each of these has an undefinable cost
And Each of these Agents of the Government
Has sculpted talent for service.
In all of it’s gruesome form.


The Warlord

The Warlord was huge
She was an old Communist
Driving in a big dusty
A black Buick Skylark Limited Edition.

I met with her council
On the bridge once Sitting in a circle
And they had Old General’s Eyes
And wore heavy coats.

I told them I’d be running for president
But I didn’t tell them when.
They looked at me in the green coat
And thought to themselves.

We went to Rite Aid one afternoon
A new building on Military
And the new signs inside
Reminded me of an airport terminal.

The Warlord showed me her cafe’
And I had a Diablo Omlette.
We paid the Sweetheart Waitress
And I smiled at her and arranged her marriage.


The Sweetheart Waitress

This girl knew what the profession was about.
She smiled at me three times
And I knew that she was Catholic
A red guard with a hard philosophy.

She had medium long black hair
And brown eyes that looked down her nose
She wore no glasses
And I could see her bra.

It showed lightly through the white shirt
At the pancake house
I knew that it was her style
Not some strange accident.

That was the first time she smiled.
On the second
She leaned over to hand me my eggs.
She knew that The Warlord was watching us.

We were flirting like teenagers
Something we wouldn’t have done
If The Warlord hadn’t been there.
And she kept my coffee hot.

It was a war-torn smile she had
When she came back for refills
With the sweat of the kitchen on her brow
And she asked "Don’t we know each other?"
without saying a word.


The English Church

I went with the Warlord
To the Big English Church
To start the Holy War
On Christmas.

I’d been to three churches that day
At each There’d been a different note played
Of the same Ancient hymn
That we heard on the Pipes that evening.

The stain glassed windows
Showed their colors only in shades of grey
And their shapes were no longer biblical
I pictured the crusades in their fuzzy night-time look.

There was an Operative there
In a long Red Jacket
With black lips
And purple under her eyes.

She looked degenerate
And I was sad to say I knew her.
She was one of the people who harassed Grandma
Because I heard her talk about her once.


Red Jacket

The red coat or Jacket
Was worn by a blond woman
She was twenty
And gruesome.

I could picture her lying nude
On a bed of Pointsettias
Spreading to get anyone
To drink their juice.

She was an unregistered lethal weapon
Of X culture
Armed with bayonets for fingernails
And poison lipstick.

I met her with a younger one
Who was far from thin
And there had been
Mary Jane in the ashtray.

There wasn’t any reason to talk
After I’d heard the story about the cat-lady
That crazy old grandmother
And her boyfriend The Hipster.

Now she’s a Black Widow
Everyone knows it
And maybe she’ll quit the free agency
And start understanding the messages
Start getting with the program.


The Hipster

The hipster had a big white ghetto sled
He dropped Grandma off once
A while ago.
I was busy working problems.

I told him thank you
And she gave him five dollars
And he smiled at me through his long hair
And lit up a cigarette.

When he pulled out of the driveway
I remembered him in a Tesla shirt
One of the rockers at High School
And how I’d never known him
To do anything in particular.


Happy New Year

Tigger threw a new year’s party
With red candles
And Blue and White Dresses
At his cottage under the escarpment.

We ate shrimp with sauce
And vegetables
And Played Taboo
And a lot of people showed.

Nickel Lucy Babbage Stacey
And The Forester
And Nikita and Case
Ghandi’s Daugther and her cousin.

Lucy and Tigger get it on.
They like Stacy Babbage and The Forester.
They all gave each other Christmas presents
At the last Party.

They did me the favor
Of picking up some wine with no kick
Because I’d straightened out
And I was proud of it.

I told them about the postcard
From Mr. Ohio
And they said they’d gotten them too
And we talked about Henry Rollins.

After the others left
Lucy and Tigger got me a nice blanket
And I wrapped myself into the folding couch
Before the fire of the television.

When I woke up
There were Bannanas In Pajamas
Playing on the beach
With Teddy Bears.


Mr. Ohio

Mr. Ohio is a "friend"
He has a brother also
But I’ll get to him
soon enough.

The postcard arrived
Mail-marked from Costa Rica
On the same day
That Kennedy rescued a Hispanic.

She pulled him out of the fields
Of a work commune
And put him on the back
Of her moped.

Mr. Ohio is a Kung Fu expert
He ripped the card off of a cereal box
And mailed it back to the U.S.
To me And I got the message.

Mr. Ohio was coming back.
And "Yeeeeeeeeahhhh Boyee"
He was coming back.
We were going to party Mr. Ohio and I.


Tick

The night after the biker war
Tick walked into the cafe’
And asked to borrow the table
That I’d been sitting at.

It was post-Christmas.
He set down his helmet
And pulled his black Jacket back
To reach into the inner pocket.

His face was all scarred up
And his leather was coated with old punk
The torn T-shirt near the pocket
Had the skull of The Exploited spiking out.

I caught his night glow Timex
Just like Uncle Jumbo Pop’s
And I knew why he was there
With a chemical liquid in a balloon.

He making sure it had held
It hadn’t broken under his arm.
He was saving it for the set up scene
Where at least sixty death certificates
Would be issued.

"They were all my friends and they died."

posted by Christopher at 5:45 AM
~ Saturday, April 03, 2004
 
Tail Of The Dragon

Concluding the first year of the Millenium

by Christopher J. Bradley Completed December 31 2000 12:25 AM




An Afternoon Out Alone
by Christopher J. Bradley
8/9/00 10:46:16 PM

Today I spent an afternoon out
Drove my Saturn to the Cafe'
Through the beginning of a Thunderstorm
And waited in line for a restroom.

I ordered a Mocha
And sat down
Delighted to encounter an old friend
A Bag Maker who'd survived a heart attack.

He had been playing chess
With an African and maybe an Arabian
At the place I call the Spot
As many others do...

We talked in the ferocious rain
On the patio
Where he told me about his implant
And we discussed the merits of American Health.

I knew he needed transportation
So I gave him a quick ride back to Allen
And then circled around back to Elmwood Avenue
And drove all the way up the well lit strip to the theater.

I watched the Coyote Ugly
After being harassed by the nameless ticket seller
Who wasn't fond of the film
Which turned out to be a great deal better than I had expected.

I drove up Delaware on the way home
And cut over Sheridan to the Boulevard
To stop at my favorite bookstore
To buy a copy of this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Then with the fifty cents in my pocket
I decided to take the express way home
and make it an early night
So that I could write this poem.

While my father and brother watched Toy Story on Video Cassette.
And my sister kept me from the Internet for a minute long enough.



Electronic Music Workshop
Dedicated to Bernard Pasquintino Chris Udy Mark Traine Rob Brown Craig Hyla
Paula Bucelato Paul Wos the Jazz musicians of The Niagara Falls High School Band
and my fellow students.
by Christopher J. Bradley
4/8/00 6:20:00 AM

Where was I at the beginning of it all?
The era of direct to analog?
Sample to Sequence to Four Track...
Staring at a catalog for a Fairlight...

I Bombed into the studio running
With barely a wit about me
Just knowing that I could do it
I could be my own Peter Gabriel.

How could Paula in homeroom know she'd changed my life
By showing me the album cover
for Depeche Mode 101
the one I'd kept seeing on Hyla's shirt
As he walked down the hallway with Severely Spiked Hair.

Two weeks and I was figuring out the ESQ-1
Popping beats out on the TR-404.
Four weeks and I was setting MIDI channels
and linking up to the ROLAND S10.

Multi-Channel Sequencing
Multiple Instruments
32 channels of bliss
In a four walled dirty white room
With posters on the ceiling.

I locked myself in for study hall
And came out with a disk full of composition
Suddenly there was a new toy in my own room
The Ensoniq Performance Sampler.

And at the end of the year
My "Guitar Trio in C Harmonic Minor"
Came out on 100 cassettes
Along with Pasquintino's
"Mary Had a Little Scarecrow"
And so many others
that the titles are a blur.

The Auditorium blacked out during the
1989 Homecoming Rally
And Sal danced in an Indian Headdress
Made of Construction paper feathers
While the band played.
Traine with his Guitar and Pedals
Udy with the Sequencers and Drum Machines
And Bernie masterfully fingering the black and white plastic
whipped us all into a frenzy.

The three of them won a Casio synth
and several other instruments for the workshop
After a battle of electronica
in New York City.

We had some fun at Christmas that year
in The Wintergarden
Playing our Multi-Layered tunes for
A small but possibly international audience
that included TJ Insana who would later become Jesus
At least for 3 shows.

I started getting Rob Into it
and by 1990 he had an Ensoniq board too
And we slammed some tracks together for
Class Day
and snapped sticks against drumpads
to trigger Orchastra Hits.

Rob went into the Marines
and By College I was striking my own keys.
But those stories are for prose
And for what you can find from the music

Because the music is really all there is
The rest is just settings for cracked actors
And the life of the sound
Comes from the people who craft it

Even if they are only somewhat famous children
in a world
that only sees
through cathode ray static.


Driver's Education
Dedicated to Niagara Catholic High School
by Christopher Bradley

I can't remember how much it cost
or quite what I was up to that summer
but in 1988 I attended driver's education
and drove my first new car.

Of course the car wasn't mine
It was leased to the school
A nice large Buick LeSabre
with Air Conditioning.

I learned all kinds of road signs
and accident statistics
And talked a lot to a shy girl named Amy
who I had worked with for the school in eighty seven.

It was a privilage to learn to drive
and tour a vehicle
around the back streets off of
Cayuga drive.

And pull onto an expressway
for the first time
confident that I would find the
freedom of the road
at every slight maneuver
through the time
of my life.


Homecoming Crash
Dedicated to Isaac Panzarella
and Charlene Scozzafava
by Christopher J. Bradley
4/8/00 4:08:26 AM

It was too real that night
the night we left the dance
the first night I ever thought
I was going to make things happen.

We had plans to get hammered.
It was if the gymnasium had been lacking
in all of its fanfare that year
except for the fact that I had danced with a girl.

She had short curling hair
Together we had learned to speak and write Japanese
Doitachmaschte and Sayonara.
Hiragana and Katakana.

She wore a black dress
with a white rose wrist corsage.
I wore my white suit with black pinstripes
and her floral adornment.

They played one or two songs that defined the time
Information Society - Pure Energy
And we danced to everything slow
Titles I can't remember : Except for Stairway to Heaven.

So we left together
and climbed into Mom and Dad's red wagon
and slowly pulled onto Portage.
I took Ferry and decided to follow 16th back to Pine.

That's when the laughing started
A slightly intoxicated laughter broke through the back
And as I turned to see what was happening
The shadows crept over the stop sign at Walnut.

So there we were
20 feet from clear of the other side of Walnut
And my foot finally hit the brake pedal.
The car stopped.

Terrors of twisted limbs massacred my neurons as I saw the light
Twin beams flashing toward us at 40 miles an hour.
My foot wouldn't move.
And then Fender contacted Axle.

Everything was in motion
Welcome to the Jungle
But somehow we just bounced left and stopped
And everyone was still uniform.


There were flashing lights before I could open my door
A man with a hat a flashlight and a Gun
I got out and talked with him
I had checked to make sure we were all ok.

It was a man who lived on my paper route
He asked me if I had been drinking
I said no
And he wrote me a ticket for failing to yield right of way.

The other driver had been speeding
and he had been following her
Just our luck right?
Not Exactly.

The Axle absorbed the massive force of the other car
but it cost $800.00 to repair
I had to work it off that year
And Charlene seemed to vanish after Rob and Karen helped me get her home.

Ike and I rode the bus for a couple of weeks
I'm still not sure I'm over it though
It's not exactly like bumping into that first telephone pole
It's something a little closer to Falling "off target" in Skydiver.


End of Shift
By Christopher Bradley
12/7/00 10:55:39 PM

Time to turn off the blenders
And the taps
And the strobe lights
And close the doors.

Time for the people to go away
To their parties
And homes
And various places of rest.

They called the bar almost an hour ago
And the last lingerers are making out with the staff
And looking for cab rides away
And counting how much money they have left in their wallets.

We've had a colossal night
And the ceilings have rained with the fire of laser beams
And the women have danced on the speakers
And taken off their shirts.

And the Go-Go dancers have gone
And the Inspectors have Inspected
And the Police have had drink with the People
And the Ambulances have carried the drunks away.

And the DJ was like a Promethean God
With Rhythms and Tempos meshing on the fly
And even a few men have been given to the drunken folly
Of trying to follow a simple beat at 130.

It is time to pack up the flyers
And laminated cards
And clean out the Ice Bins
And pick up the shards.

It's End of Shift now
And we're ready to go
We'll be open tomorrow
Through Rain Hail or Snow.


Roulette and Madame Zilch
By Christopher Bradley
12/7/00 11:35:08 PM
Dedicated to the Roulette Players of the World and Scott Ansel

We called you Madame Zilch
Before the ball Rolled
And we were dead on
How could we have known.

Your name was something Russian
And it sounded harsh
Just like the Zeros
You dealt us with panache.

The wheel kept revolving
For a half hour or so
And we saw all of our numbers
And more pass go
But you kept striking Zero
And spoiling the show

Soon after a Double
And nothing to front
Which made us see trouble
And let's not be blunt.
When you lose at Roulette

It's not always bad luck.


Lunches with Joe
By Christopher Bradley
1/17/00 5:48 AM
Dedicated to Joe Cronin

Joe lives a few blocks away
It seems at times that we are worlds apart.
He has a job as a substitute teacher
At a school in Lewiston.

We had lunch today
At a Chinese restaurant
That he introduced me to
A good while ago.

I started having lunch with him
About 4 years ago
And we started remembering
What all of the times
We had lunch when we were six.

Back then we ate Macaroni and Cheese
And watched cable television.
After school we would play table hockey
In his basement.

I remember a time
A very innocent time
When we played with plastic dinosaurs
In his bathtub.

A few years from then
Joe had collected impressions
Of his favorite television personalities
And I was close by to record them
On the tape recorder
That my mother bought for me my birthday.

Joe got Piano lessons because I had them
And I got a keyboard because Joe had one.
We shared keyboard magazines
Every once in a while
In seventh grade.

Joe was living with his father
For most of high school
And I had a very vague Idea
Of where exactly that was until just before I was leaving for college.

A couple of years ago he gave me a hockey card
He had remembered that I had liked John LeClair somehow
From one of those conversations
Over a table of some kind of food.



I don't know how we started seeing each other again for lunch
It was as if three years disappeared in a haze
But now it is nice when he calls
And I get to remember
That I did have one friend who stuck around
Until this very day.


Joe at George's
By Christopher J. Bradley
7/26/00 7:25:27 PM

Joe takes me to George's
A new restaurant that used to be something else
And I am trying to be calm and forget the banking incident
That I most recently fell prey to.

Things are interesting here
There is no one around
And he is reading the paper
Seeking out apartment possibilities.

I am perplexed as to what to say.
I am poor and it is more than obvious.
I offer my last $3.00 for the tip.
Someday this will all clear up.

It always does

It just keeps taking time.


Chemistry 7
Dedicated to
Rich Tanya Scott Smiley Mark Dante and Alx
by Christopher Bradley
4/14/00 12:28:48 AM

December twenty third nineteen ninety two
The end of my first year home from Chicago
First go at the Biz for myself
I had only an inkling of what I was in for.

Scott and I drove up to Tanya's early in the day
She lived a few streets down behind Yonge and Bay
In a large Red Brick apartment
With narrow staircases.
Scott and I met some of her roomates
And then went for a walk to get Pizza and Change.
It was a long walk across to Yonge on foot.
And we encountered some interesting places along the way.

Somehow weeks later I would find a highly liberal magazine
Dedicated to Angry Dykes
In the trunk of the Shadow
I think we had thought it was amusing during our walk.
We found a small Italian Restaurant
Had a slice or two and a soda
And then resumed until we found the Arcade.
It was almost straight ahead when we got to Yonge.

The vendor sold us neatly wrapped Loonies
and a bundle of red twos.
We walked back
Barely aware of our own conversation.
I was still in amazement at my luck
Sean had gone to Europe
and I was stuck with an exclusive party.
It was as if the world had fallen into my lap.

We snagged Tanya and had her walk us to the subway
and we met Rich the skater
David's friend
Soon to be the only sober one among us.

We packed Tanya's boyfriend into the car with all of us
and stopped at a Mini-Mart to buy all of their Ice.
The bags melted slowly all around my backseat passengers.
And then we were on our way East to the hidden warehouse.

The structure was longer than I had imagined
but had a low ceiling.
We walked along a Handicapped access ramp at about 9:20.
And dragged the water and Ice behind us.




I dropped my bags in the entranceway when I saw it
It was more than just a test image
It was the Lawnmower Man
He was twisting hexagonal cubes attempting to escape cyber confinement.
The projectors were replicating him on every available wall
Tiny camera looking things
Attached to girders in the ceiling
The speakers were vibrating the room without any music playing.

I saw Alx and asked where we were to go
He showed us to a small room
Where I thought we would never be seen
There was a blacklight bulb in the ceiling.
We grabbed a board with a Jack O Lantern painted on it
And made a makeshift table with a rough metal frame
and Drew Posters on Neon Red and Green Poster Board
And hung them on the sweaty thin grey wooden walls.

I organized the change in the cashbox
Opened the powders
Mixed some test drinks
And then it was time to find a fix.
We found our paper and shared it
One hit of the Dreamscape was enough
And we were sizzling when the first bass beat rolled.
Rich would help us keep our heads together and we barely knew him.

Tanya was going to get what she wanted
I promised her a trip home to Detroit
I was thinking about shopping for Records and stopping off at Karl's
We could never predict that she'd be riding home with a broken nose.
Tanya was the candy girl
I sent her into the masses with Smarties at midnight
To hand them out with paper flyers
Printed out on my 520 and photocopied at OfficeMax.

Mental Jackhammer was having its first run
with customers winding their way into our little party room
Following the flashes of the Strobe Light against the wall
And lining up for Fast Blast and Brain Boost.
Scott was a confused Mixer
While Rich sorted the Cups
And I counted the change.
Everything was going smoothly.
We were addressed by the Master's of Ceremony
And motioned into acts of dancing
Working the table
to the selections of Dr. No Mark Oliver and Alx.








I didn't know the title at the time
But it was the first time I would hear
The Future Sound of London's Papua New Guinea
Wailing through the warm air
Washing chills through the crowd.
I walked among them
Seeing women in silver sequined suits
Smiling and laughing as if in orbit
Feeling like my black canvas converse
were the soft cushions of moon boots.

There was a game to play
I looked on at the fried teens
with their heads in round helmets
standing on magnetic plates
trying to kill the virtual pterodactyl
that swooped down from its perch
to lift them into the air
and drop their cartoon bodies
to the perfectly flat pavement
where they shattered and began again.
I was told it was driven by a high end Amiga.

In the catacombic rooms at the back
bodies writhed against the cold floor
Some of them cross legged
Waving their heads entranced
To the gentle electronic buzzings
Infiltrating their minds.

A Jester in a Riot sock looped through the crowd
Grinning
Knowing that a good part of this madness
was his doing.

Coming around and through the back
I encountered Smiley and his Italian friend.
They had bought drinks
And they wanted to let me know that they loved us.
I told them that I loved them too
And walked them around to the bar
Stealing two cups from Scott
and sharing them with Smiley and his friend.
Smiley offered me some Vicks to put under my nose
and I accepted
The vapors stirred the paisley spirals
Out of my tricking Axons
and They vanished
and the line became convulsive.







There were hands reaching for the bar
And before I knew it
We had run out of twos.
I told Tanya to get in front of the door
And let no one enter.

That was a sight
I wrangled in my mind for a solution to the problem of the twos
And looked to Scott for help
But he was lost in the cups with the Braun Blender
And I noticed that people were frantically trying to push past Tanya
Her petite body was being pushed back
And her arms were stretched from the door.

As they washed in and she rushed back to the bar
I noticed the Loonies
And Scott and Rich laughed
as the Ice melted in the colored plastic goblets.
We had the means to make change
for the moment at least.

At 3:30 the celebrities came calling
Mark Oliver and his Zebra clad girl
Dropped twenty for two drinks
And gave us some African Gum
That minted our mouths
Until almost the end.

Rich talked Tanya into filling cups with Ice
Even when there were twenty full
And she ran to get a big bucket
from the water bar
When ours was finally liquid in bags
In the dust on the concrete.

And then Dante was there
With a bald head and a centaur's Goatee
Looking like an incarnation of the devil himself
And he handed me a business card
And another twenty
And said we should all come to New York
And work at one of his parties.

It seemed so far away
But his face was domestic at least
A reminder that we were Americans
Toiling on foreign soil.

At some point in there
Tanya's boyfriend danced carelessly
And his fist cracked cartilage
Her nose was bleeding
The best we could do
Is give her some ice.


Dante's friend came to visit us later
He bought drinks too
He was a black man
With short Jamaican dreads
With a muscular build
Sporting bright yellow overalls
He was the last of the out of towners
that we saw that night.

Scott had gotten himself up there somewhere
To a place I dared not voyage
Because some tall kid had given him
Something special for free.

The sun was starting to shine through the windows
And the inside of my eyelids kept flashing
Even after we turned off the strobe
And I watched the dancers continue to lock their joints on the floor
Even after the music receded.

It was time to count up the various colored bills
Give Alx two hundred for our wonderful space
Gather up the powders and lights
And meet back at Tanyas.

That morning in her living room
I thought I saw the floating letters
For the name of a new Rave promotions team
In a painting of a red Mars Scape on the wall behind her.

I couldn't help thinking that her nose was partly my responsibility
But I can't choose the friends of strangers
And I couldn't do anything but drive them home again
And sit and watch her swelling nostrils.

My eyes twisted the letters into the word Phoicos.
And I made the pronouncement
That one day we would have a party
And one day not so far off into the future

We did.


Atlantis Vertigo
by Christopher Bradley
Dedicated to Don Chris (Dogwhistle) Ian Jason Bowie Scott Shauna
Every Poet Whose Challenge Arises With The Changing Time
and The Crystal Princess.
4/14/00 12:51:26 AM

They announced it in August
In the Metro West Convention Center
Under the Pulsing of a Revolving E
On two screens on the outsides of a Green Argon Laser.

The city was going to rise
To the top of the spire
At the epicenter of the Emerald field
Near the intersection of Spadina and Front.

Moments after the announcement
The club kids were moving through the crowd
With the multicolored slicks
Dated October 23.

The 23s were signifigant
It was as if they had stepped out of the Stars to me
December the date I had started making money
October the day I would get out.

I had it in the back of my mind
It would be my last trip to eternity
And it would be fabulous
And there would be nothing to alter the course of events.
It would be the end of a Trilogy
The end of an Era
The conclusion of a compacted year
Of absolute entrenchment in potential jeopardy.

I called Berns and asked for a discount ticket on the day of the show
He put me on the guest list
The guest list to the city in the clouds
A circular flywheel in space.
I was hoping to see Stormtroopers
one last time
Before the rhythm ebbed
and my heart would start to grow old.

I was 19 and my affair with Canada was about to end.

Canada was a blond woman in black stretch pants
Her long curling hair was drifting away into Ontario
It had brushed my chest with sunglassed vision
more than once in an eternal sea of hot chocolate
in the back seat of the Shadow behind Tim Hortons
and in a roadside motel in Windsor on travels to Detroit.




Canada was moving in with other people
People with herbal remedies for glaucomatic presidents
Whose armed forces moved quickly with Uzis and Axes
While the frost drifted lower toward the edge of America.
I met her in her small apartments
And watched her slowly siphon away my liquid assets
Forgiving her wiles
knowing that at some point
the copious entanglements would come to a conclusion.

In any case the Tower was there for the climbing
And if there is a Tower to climb
Then there is the reason for climbing it
Because it is there.

October 23rd arrived
And the Gardiner Expressway rushed by in the late afternoon
Minolta EDS Ford and Scotiabank
Greeted me in their green bush form.

I slid over the bump at 100 kilometers
And noted the presence of an emergency telephone
As the sidewalk to the right passed
And then it was there Spadina Exit.

I passed the closed Dome of the stadium
Remembering the Blue Jays game
I had taken the Pleasuredome barmaid to
Maybe three weeks earlier.
We had watched them play Chicago
and visited The Olive Garden along the strip.
She'd told me she had a Marine boyfriend
and I'd ignored that fact
And kept the conversation going
All the way back to the Rainbow Center.

I parked in back of Queen Street
Down past the Pizza Pizza
at the intersection opposite Speakers Corner
The place where I had danced
On Much Music
Broadcast to the Northern World.

It was a cool but comfortable evening
The lamp posts began to cast glowing photons on the pavement
And I passed the intersection of John and Mercer
Remembering the place that was there before it changed to Oz.
An industrialized nightclub that was called The Factory
where I took my friends
and I met the Roses
While dancing in a Neon green Labcoat
purchased from South Pacific Surplus
Before I graduated with honors.



The Factory was the origin of rave in Toronto
When Ian spun Messiah and Apotheosis
With the launch into bounce mode
With Rotterdam Termination Source - Poing.
Back before he changed stations
Sheppard twisted disks there
And set the metropolis on fire
With his Techno Trip Compact Discs.

Nothing could stop Oz from being beautiful
except for the winged monkeys
who decended on the child-like munchkins
who were only trying to follow the Yellow Brick Road.

I continued to wonder
as I flowed into the soccer garbed massive
at the base of the citadel
Who is the Great and Powerful Oz
and why does he project such a frightening spectre?
Could I rub my purple and green sneakers together
and Find my ticket back to Kansas?
Or would I have to seek out Dorothy
The Crystal Princess
And ride on the heels of her ruby slippers
transforming from the Tin Man
back into a simple farmer?

There was no music at Dusk
But there was a sharp green light
Gliding around the cylindrical structure
beckoning into the fog.

After my contemplations
and greetings to groove riders and strangers of all sorts
I signed the third page
Was waved through security
And stepped through the door.
I'd already found my Purple Window Sky
and I was grinning knowing they would never discover
What was already in my spine.

I was alone in the ebb of humans
More alone than I had ever been
Ecstatic that there was no chain to hold me to earth
Ready to take the Tour of the Universe
A close substitute
for the Millennium Falcon.

I was to be the closest to the Moon that I had ever been
The Black Raybans shielding my dilated Pupils covered the fact that I would never fly
Never pilot a shuttle like the one I commanded in Seventh Grade
The one I commanded into implosion and fiery death in Alabama.
The Speedball Surface Cleaner in nineteen eighty eight
had made certain I would never pass an eye exam without lenses.


The elevator stood before us as we anxiously waited
The boy in the orange Fresh Jive shirt with the long hair
And the girl with the twist tied pigtails
sucking on the clear magenta pacifier attached to a whistle strap around her neck
The people in Addidas stripes and painters caps
And shirts with the Atlantis logo stenciled in black on rainbow tye dye.
The soft electric sound of the bell sounded
And we climbed into an empty cell
Standing in noiseless anticipation
during the smooth sensual voyage to the pinnacle of Architectural wonder.

When I was in sixth grade
I had been up there briefly
Looking down and hoping to see from the observation deck
The massive shopping center called Eaton
On Yonge and Dundas
where I had shopped with Robin and Isaac and Casey and Shannon and DeEtte.
I opened fortune cookies in Chinatown
and bought Sunglasses with straps and a Bryan Adams tape
to listen to on my generic walk-man
in the Train on the way back to my side of Niagara Falls.

What my eyes showed me when the door opened was entirely different from that time.
It took my ears a fraction of a second to recognize the audio
But it was somehow different than what I had heard when I first came home from Chicago.
The track phased the Shamen's voices through space
between multi-dimensionally arranged speaker housings
And before I knew what I was up to
I had asked three people who was spinning
The answer had been Ian.

I circled around the outside of the centered ring
and found the Tall Dark haired Jockey standing with one hand at a headset at his ear.
The circles on the Mark II plates were slowing and quickening as his fingers manipulated the vinyl
I watched him slide the pitch bar up toward the +8 marker
He organized the flow into a white label.
When he was done he turned and smiled
He knew that I wanted to know what he'd been up to
He handed me the slip cover for the single
And I looked at the circuited design
Wishing that I knew where on earth he'd discovered it.
I let the cover rest on his crate and walked into the crowd.

People were dancing against Virtual Reality Projected on the walls
In the gaps where the souvenir stands would have been on any given day
I tried to find space to let my arms fly and my feet shuffle
But I was beyond excitement
And the doughnut ring of the Cement Nail was becoming smaller
as the elevators brought the teeming humanity into the sky.
I decided to drop back to earth and take the Tour.






The Tour of the Universe was a Computer Generated flight
through a quadrant of the Galaxy that I had never before seen
Girders of space stations and Planets and Constellations whizzed past
Burning jets of color into my perspiring retinas.
The seat I had strapped into tilted with the whole thirty member audience
And my blood poured into my feet
while my head stumbled on visual sketches of Android controlled vessels.
I was lost in the Cosmos for five minutes
in a physical man machine interface
Wishing that I could never stop coming to the end of Gravity's Rainbow.

In the middle of it all
I remembered Tron and The Black Hole
and Blade Runner and The Terminator
and had a thought to pray that one of Gibson's novels would make it to film.
I had a vision that I might someday try to put the whole kaleidoscope of HallucinoGen-X into print.

And it was quickly forgotten
as the Falcon swiftly landed
and it's razored talons gripped the earth
Ripping up the ground
And needling my tear gassed brain
Like "Good Bye Blue Skies"
Just before the lights came back up.

As I left the Pod and carefully set my feet on each stair
I looked ahead to the tilted floor of the ramp
And set myself into careful motion
Swaying with the chosen thirty.
Some said that the end was near
I could see that the beginning was near
And that there would be no turning back
from the bath of liquid sunshine
of the silicon age.

At the base of the tower
In the House Cage
The Detroit people were playing Dimensional Holophonic Sound
"The House of God"
A dance fell into my step as I moved toward the elevator
And at the entrance I spotted Jason.

He was wearing his graphite lenses
and smoothing back his blond hair
The girl who'd sold me John Player Specials on the Mountain wasn't with him
He was alone and headed for the T-Shirt vendors.
I banged his knuckles with mine and told him about the Shamen mix
and that I'd just come back from the Tour.
I kept walking at the elevator
and he kept straight on to the vendors
and then I was in the frictionless tunnel again.





At the top things had changed
People were sitting on the rug with their backs to the glass
And there was a little bit more space to dance
I stood for a bit and just took in the sound
piercing harmonic frequencies at enormous decibels in hyper-clarity
Bass guitar samples that made the high ground shake
Frenetic loops of syncopated swing Jazz drums
Sputtered hiccups of Triangle and Sawtooth wave modulating in burst pulses.

I was inside a lightning bolt of Audio
watching the frantic motion of hip cracking thigh twists and knife handed jabs at the air.
People wearing Sun-In and Electric Kool Aid in their hair passed
as the Chinese Dragons of firecracking Wavesample barraged the pulse of my heart.
I nearly cried at the beauty of the smiles on their lips and the smiles on their linen
A warm tear ran down my right cheek as I smiled back and I swallowed it.
The salt hit me and I realized that it was time to drink.

Liquid Adrenaline was there.
I had never directly competed with them
So I let them fix me a drink.
Banannas Wild Cherry Drink Mix Orange Juice and L-Phenylalanine.
I gave them the extra two dollars for the choline because I wanted to see the walls breathe.
I took a sip of the wet chipped cherry ice concoction and walked to the steps ringing the outer rim.
The Liquid Adrenaline people were smiling too.

That's when I lost track of time.
I slowly set myself down on the steps
and pulled a Benson and Hedges Special King Light Menthol cigarette from my sky blue pocket.
The flame flickered on my Bic disposable after I struck the flint.
I pulled my Sunglasses down slightly
so that I could watch myself start the correct end of the cylinder smoke.
I watched the ice swirl in the cup and had another sip.
And I started to realize
That I was beginning to forget.

I was forgetting the sand volley ball pit of my first day away at school
Forgetting paint ball in the forests of Illinois
Forgetting fraternity football in the Rain of October
Forgetting the Grain Alcohol behind the bar in the basement at the Pledge Halloween Party

Forgetting Two girls who wanted to buy me a Pizza while I was trying to write a song
Forgetting Cool Vaughn the Air Force ROTC and our Fortran 77 class
Forgetting Business English and Being Carried to Calculus to earn a C while drunk
Forgetting Being Thrown into the Pool after a game of Risk in the living room of the house

Forgetting breaking my roomate's custom designed bed
Forgetting having the telephone line installed in our Dorm Room
Forgetting the picture of the Ace of Spades that Aiston kept hidden under the floorboards of his deck.

Forgetting Brian's Japanese American Girlfriend
who wound up in bed with another brother after too much liquor.

I was forgetting that this had all started in WJJL on Main Street
Where Scott and I Listened to The Announcements of the First Parties on CFNY.

I was forgetting the computer engineering class at University at Buffalo
Forgetting the Physics I took in high school
Forgetting how I ran for class President and lost to Eugene Williams
Forgetting Quickbasic and the Electronic Data Systems Co-Operative


Forgetting my crush on Emily when she sang Bette Middler for our graduation
Forgetting the Electronic Music Workshop and the people who taught me to compose
Forgetting sitting on Karen's back porch with Rob plotting our final Yawp at class day
Forgetting Sitting on the Rock above the Whirlpool with Robin S after Lunch at Emperor of China

Forgetting Selecting the Engagement band at Zales in Summit Park Mall.
Forgetting the Two Proms I attended with the same girl
Forgetting that same girl as I left her on Regent Avenue far behind the Shadow to dive into Nitrous 013

Forgetting my Mother and my Father who labored day and night so that I could attend private schools
Forgetting Ike Chris and the Boys Club kids on Portage and Niagara who taught me how to use the Apple
Forgetting how to play Axis and Allies which I discovered in Huntsville
Forgetting the Role Playing Games and the people I collected and left for my own peace of mind

Forgetting the summer Bicycle Camp which took me through Genesee county and Batavia
Forgetting taking Jennifer out alone on a Sunfish on Silver Lake during the Regatta.
Forgetting a picnic lunch with Tammy who taught me to write poetry to go with my music
Forgetting spending an afternoon in a wavepool with Mesha.

Forgetting learning to speak Japanese with Charlene and then taking her to a Fugazi concert at Buff State.
Forgetting the red haired girl that helped me obtain Depeche Mode 101 on video tape.
Forgetting watching my first PG-13 Movie with a long haired Jennifer
and seeing Charlie take Tom Cruise's Breath away.

Forgetting Bowling at Bowl O Drome on Pine Avenue with Paula and my Brother and Sister.
Forgetting Valentines Day at The Red Coach Inn with Michelle.
Forgetting Programming Color Macros for C-NET on the Commodore 64.
Forgetting Rides out to Glenn's houses in Lockport and Wilson to learn about PC's.

Forgetting the thrown Chestnut incident on Lewiston Road near Deveaux manor.
Forgetting being kicked in the head by Rob in Hyde Park at a picnic in the Fall.

Forgetting my Math teacher who died of Cancer.
Forgetting my grandmother whose estate bought me the Ensoniq Sampler.
Forgetting my Grandfather who lived just long enough for Joshua to be born.
Forgetting my Aunts and Uncles and their families

Forgetting that I should have taken pride in my work and not kept it behind the closed wooden door of my
tiny goblin green bedroom.

In an instant after that final thought she was there
My Crystal Princess.
She had long brown hair and Ruby Slippers
All I can call her now is Dorothy
I never knew her real name.






I left my half finished cup to rest on the tight fibers of the carpet when she asked me if I was Ok
and if I wanted to dance.
She put my hands on her shoulders and started slow.
While in motion I looked at my chrome swatch and realized that I had been motionless for an hour.
I also noticed that I was still holding the cigarette butt.
I let the paper fall.

I watched her chest heave with the music and followed their downward motion to her feet
They rested beneath the edge of her long cotton shirt
Beyond the rustling cut strings of torn blue jean
And they were clicking together
I didn't have to count
They had hit many more than three times.

I saw her face and she smiled at me
and I smiled back
her eyes were narrow
and I could feel that we were both sweating
like the clouds fogging the windows from the outside.
Sweat that comes from just under the surface to make the skin of the face glow.
It was all over both of us.
I ran my fingers through my hair and it spiked up
And I saw many figures of her dancing inside her platinum aura.
She was here to take me home.

In that instant I realized that what I thought was forgetting
Was remembering.
I had somewhere to go.
The end of my time in the Tower in the Emerald Patch was here.
I kissed her sweaty lips and we walked past each other.

I made for the elevator at the center of the tower and walked past a spinning Disco Ball.
There were Gel Lights on the floor in the coridor flashing patterns that flashed
like Fourth of July Fireworks against the wall.
America was coming back.

I remembered standing in the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center with my Aunt when I was Five
and pouring Pepsi in my eye to put out an ash that had fallen into it.

I remembered choking on a lifesaver at the Auto Vue drive in while watching Luke Skywalker fire his Photon Torpedo into the Death Star.

I remembered dashing up sloping sidewalks in Winter to drop rolled newspapers into mailboxes.
I remembered that I earned my component Stereo system steaming Eggs for Breakfast at McDonalds.
I remembered that the Wicked Witch was dead.
I remembered that it was always safe to come home.

And then I was in the elevator and there was the musty smell of already smoked marijuana
And I put my sunglasses on and struck my lighter to another Menthol
And the smell vanished as the doors opened
And I was vibrating on a tiled floor





And I caught the back of Jason's head
and then I thought better of annoying him with my discovery
after all where exactly does his concern for my travel come into play?
He told me once that I'd meet up with him in Hollywood.

And I thought Maybe it's better that the continuing party in Oz costs only $2.00.
I will go for a little while
And let the Medicine run its course.
And find a clean bottle of Evian to run through my veins.

And then I think
The House of God was there through it all
There is something of a Soul lurking out there
and Maybe it is worth the cost of a careful ride home.

But only after a brief visit to Rochester
And a long float across a field full of people in England
who've been around thirty years longer than I.
In a white balloon painted with love
While the Sun Machine
was coming down.


Manhattan in A Shirt and Tie
by Christopher J. Bradley
Dedicated to Ricky Lee Tammy Sharpe The Impulse Foot Soldiers Jim M and Jim A
The New Culture Industry Manipulators Anyone Who Has Ever Had a Sales Crisis
The Venture Capitalists of Advent All of my friends at Electronic Data Systems and
The Social Reforming Activists of The University at Buffalo.

Inspired by the Music Video for "Sleep Now in the Fire" by Rage Against the Machine broadcast on Much Music on Friday April 14 2000 At Sometime Around 4 PM.

Transmission Coding Header:
Warning - Electronic Letter Bombs not delivered by Federal Express may contain
Action Provoking Patriotic Imagery. Do not read this poem partially.

As proscribed by the laws of The United States of America:

Parental Advisory

Explicit Content
that May Contain
Statements of Fact.

Transmission Coding Footer:
The beginning is always a good place to start.

Manhattan in a Shirt and Tie

Back Up
Behind countless vehicles of all sorts
Old new auctioned and in between
The monoxide drifted through clouded girders
Above the blue-green current below
Everyone behind the wheel
slowly pushing forward
toward the four dollar toll cages
at the end of the George Washington

A bicyclist passes wearing headphones
And I realize that there is music
Among the talking in the Shadow
Z-100 Boosts SWV with a hint of Michael Jackson
To the ears of the four of us
Ready to sell Kansas and Boston
From Black Bags loaded into the trunk in Jersey


We might have been selling poppies
Silver backed disks in sealed plastic
I was going to work the streets with an Italian named Joe
An ex Air Force mechanic named Steve
A hispanic account manager named Jose
And a moustached black man named Carl
We all knew that we were going to do it "My Way"
if things didn't work out and we were going to come home with money.

The day shift was enough for a thousand words.
We parked at Six A.M.
And hit the bars and pornography houses on fourty second street
with a furious vengeance
that could only be characterized as a kind of anger for gross earning

We enticed the Arab and ex-bounty hunter vendors and morning barkeeps to pick up
the Greatest Hits of Billy Joel
and Try on for size a digitally remastered Jefferson Airplane ticket
We had Sinatra and Benettar
And if you bothered to dig
We had some Chris Cross to make you Jump

The clerks ate up our numbing brain candy
Especially when we featured "Dust in the Wind" for them.

Everybody had a few nickels to drop
And we were there to pick them up
Like aluminum scavengers with Glad twist tie kitchen bags.
As I walked with the canvas slung across my shoulders
I saw huge billboards along the walks
Women dressed in underwear
Poked inviting fingers out at me
Supermodels I'd never seen on television.
People stood behind walls of plexi-glass
waiting for busses.

At first I was nervous
about going up into buildings
but that changed as the morning progressed.

I walked through a bread line
And watched a Mercedes and a Jaguar
glide by a