pinstripe suits
believe it or not i grew up wanting to wear a pinstripe suit no not the banker hew i wanted to wear the pinstripes that adorned my baseball heroes those new york yankees legends of the long ball running the outfield that skirted my bronx birthplace you see i was born in the shadow of yankee stadium just down the street where bronx hospital rocked with the muse in daily delivery march 31, 1948 what a day and i was born so bad that i slapped the doc and pinched the nurse no one touches my butt without permission but oh i wanted to wear that uniform put spikes on my feet and run that infield grace the house that ruth built and dimaggio reigned and mantle owned these gentlemen of baseball dressed in their sports regalia as if it were religion they pursued and not homeruns they wore holy roller pinstripes crossing their bats and hope to hit cutting quite the dashing figures a divinity of four baggers holy trinity of ruth dimaggio and mantle sporty zoot suits worn by the elite of baseball and i longed to dress in locker rooms and hear my name called on public address systems look into the sun and catch fly balls and pound my bat at the plate making ready to be the next sultan of swat yankee clipper the mick yeah i was born in the bronx lived above a dry cleaning store not part of any charming baseball dynasty i had to play catch with myself as part of the jaffe clan of neo-immigrated but less than migrant workers inhabitants of day jobs a blue-collar bunch not an athlete in the crew and i grew up wanting to dress in pinstripes wear that yankee suit i could never wear a tie without feeling enslaved i wanted to roam centerfield not a factory or an office and if i couldn’t play baseball then obviously i had to be a poet © 1999 lgjaffe
i would love to tell you the history of my peoples but they don’t seem to have any they seem to have miraculously set up shop in the bronx of our new homeland having escaped prosecution of pogroms¥ and prenazi purges the various entities of my respective families did not know each other or of each other funny how jewish geography only seems to work for children where we all seem to be related somehow but the empires of russias where one of my grandfathers derived and the empire of romania are distinctively different and the only histories they kept were in their heads and their memories did not allow repeating they left no tracks they were very clever covering their footsteps so no on could follow them and they came to this country with the streets paved with gold to make their fortunes and one side did and forged that gold into business the other side sweated with their brows to take themselves out of that gutter my father did he lifted himself up by the bootstraps of his working man shoes and took a stranglehold on life and with my mother removed us from the ghettoQ to a safer plantation filled with green apartment buildings growing to skies littered with promise and then yanking and struggling they wanted the american dream to be lived by their children so stretching their arms wide to encompass suburban earth carried bag and baggage in a station wagon of love to the new found land of long island manifest destiny for these first generation non-immigranted souls related to survivors of holocausts bought the american dream hook line and stinker moved their love and quiet ambitions for safety harbored neighborhoods to finally dock their station wagons wanting so much for their children to stride where they had not gone leaving their marks on this fertile ground that grew wheat and potatoes and cucumbers that were destined to become pickles for heinz had owned that land and meted it out one housing development at a time with no variety let alone 57 and the growing fields turned into playgrounds and schoolyards where children grew instead of crops and we did not grow too wild in our suburban cocoon of our parents dreams many just stood at home fitting right into the tongues and grooves of parental carpentry and not too groovy for their times we lived in boxes without heritage despite brilliant attempts to tether us to the values of ancestors that we never knew harness our desires to ancient dreams they tried valiantly but vainly to anchor me with family and these well worn manifestos but i never knew how to breathe inside air and traveled my own reckless path like my grandfather before me searching for my america did i tell you my father in his search for historical identity found the ship's manifest that carried my grandfather to these lands and his name was carefully inscribed in the hands of the captain of that noah's ark that eastern european mayflower that landed at ellis island overseen by the statue of liberty not just another plymouth's rock and there were no so-called indians to pillage they were already herded like my grandfather's peoples into reservations american ghettos of isolation and corralled historically chained to events their minds drunk on tears and the slaves were said to have already been set free yet they wondered if ghettos were contagious cause indigenous peoples never seem to keep to their own lands where was the america that i sought my grandfather running away from mad russians while i was running away from a parent's love that in its own way kept me alien in my homeland and i looked for ways out taking this shining manifesto to the streets seeking freedom for myself and other assorted loved ones that i found in fast food outlets and chain stores i wandered through states and cities neighborhoods and apartment flats triangulating on loveless promises of my heart beating in my soul was i searching for my history or searching for me drinking first blood of morning dew while carrying my burdens in mental backpacks my only prized possessions were of dreams i had yet to dream and passions i had yet to feel that I thought I should be paid for or at the very least reimbursed this was not the white man's burden it was the jewish son's burden of pathos and guilt worn like long underwear purchased in penney's and only coming in white i don’t wear that white underwear anymore my briefs are black and i don’t shop in j.c. penney's i wear calvin klein or jockey or nothing at all white underwear never looks clean once you have worn it and you can never tell when you might be in that accident mother predicted much to a mother's dismay i turned out to be a poet and not a doctor but she was only looking out for my best behavior and no one can blame a mom for that she was singing thoughts of care and love while i wandered isles of self pity in this supermarket and got stuck in the frozen dreams section while i worked to carry out this manifesto of unjust causes that i wore proudly like merit badges of honor jousting with windbags instead of windmills i grew my children up to be not completely content with whom they are so that they would always be ready to change for themselves but not another and as i watch these generations pass by my eyes the fore and aft speeding through time without einstein's theories to hold them down cause a thought is quicker than the eye and light don’t travel as fast as spiritual understanding i wonder about manifests and logs keeping track of peoples and ages the homeless and the homed the loveless and the loved huge databases filled with inconsequential consequence i no longer wonder why i am here © 1997 lgjaffe
i have always loved to watch an artist work whether on canvas piano clay or in a factory at a sewing machine or a saw where work becomes art on a basketball court or a baseball field where sport becomes art i love to watch the movements of fingers doing what they do best or a voice that captures passion and the lust of life the litany of a head cocked just so in the full appreciation of themselves and their work so much there yet no effort even the sweat glides from their brow oh how i admire these artists and take delight not only in their creations but in their creating i had the opportunity to see another artist with his fingers at the keyboard in virtuoso performance interestingly enough it was me and if that makes me cocky then i am cocky if that makes me vain then i am vain because tonight when i woke up in the middle of the night to pee i then sat down at my keyboard and wailed the words went flying from my fingers in song my eyes crying salt from self inflicted wounds no more i had arrived for myself i could see the expression on my face i could see the rhapsody of my work in my fingers i could see my face mirrored in pavarotti's i felt good i felt like miles on the trumpet i felt like herbie at the piano i felt like picasso at the canvas i felt like mj or dr. j. soaring to the hoop like mantle at the plate mays basket catching infinity and like my dad at his workbench i felt like me and lest you take umbrage with my tale i felt good damn good and the words oh man the words like notes drifting soaring singing cutting like laser beams in the night notes slicing through alabaster the birds outside my window singing to me telling me their stories in thousands of warbles and i understood every note and they knew as i know that i was born again an artist © 1997 lgjaffe
For Giovanni
Through moments of desperation Through timeless ventures into the unknown A soul walks many miles on their path An ongoing journey from the stars and back again A journey of survival and existence Mixed with pain and pleasure Moving from one lifetime to another Discarding worn bodies like old clothes A soul reaches across the millennia To touch others he has felt before Welcome back Giovanni Welcome to your family Wherever you have gone before Whatever stops you have made This is yet another part of your journey No doubt this world you enter has lost some of its love Perhaps you will put back some of the missing pieces No doubt this world is more than a little crazy Perhaps you will make it somewhat saner Earth is not the garden of Eden but we nurture it still So we welcome you Giovanni with open hearts and arms We will try to make this stop most enlightening Most peaceful and loving So welcome back little one Welcome back from your weary travels We welcome you Giovanni Welcome you to our family © 1999 lgjaffe
i looked at the boy blood of my blood spirit of my spirit his eyes consuming me with love i am the son of your daughter he tells me i am the son you never had i am your boy i will wear your baseball mitt on my tiny fist i will shoot hoops with your dreams i will catch touchdown passes with your passion i am your grandson your boy © 1997 lgjaffe
miles davis lived around the block from me deep in the upper west side of manhattan island and he played like one man could be an island living for his horn that paid his daily bread and living in this house made of gingerbread on west 77th street while i lived on west 76th and would see him every now and again going into that brownstone that his horn built i got to meet miles walked round the block round the clock where miles stood outside his homestead proud as peacock he told me how much he liked san francisco women cause their bottoms were so round not flat from riding subways all days he said with smile nudging me guyhood joke you know what I mean he said with trumpeting grin tickling ivories we went inside past the new york façade and into his musical domain headquarters for lonely horn players miles still smiling at this stranger then he showed me his horn the purity of miles’ trumpet leans into me he sings it blue my eyes tear uncontrollably he has touched melodies that riff with magic i escape egos with this horn it is evolution of life in notes counterpoint my fingers feel broken in comparison they want to make the same sounds with words that staccato lip thing that makes the trumpet merge with man he showed me his horn in this house of stalactites hanging upside down from ceilings made of sugar coated dreams when i was a kid i dreamed of playing trumpet wanted it more than sex but i wore braces on my teeth and they said i would cut my lips to ribbons and bleed on my horn i looked up with tears and thought miles always always bleeds on his horn © 1999 lgjaffe
have you ever watched loneliness walking drifting by your open bedroom window trying to sneak in when it appears no one is keeping an eye on these lonely sparrows of despair loneliness looks to get between the sheets with you under the covers and hide its naked face on your pillow right next to yours eyes closed pupils vexed by the light of your forgiving nature and your mercy have you ever seen loneliness walking as you drive down the street like distant smoke signals looking to be seen faraway eyes like plumes you watch as barefaced souls gather their momentum for a final run at good luck but what u really see are these shackles and yokes a man who cannot be free wears signifying his brotherhood in the family of man here walks the embodiment of slavery embroidered into society like the nike logo he wears not so proudly on his tattered feet and across his bedraggled mind have you ever felt loneliness walking wandering into your dreams an open book sitting on your lap taking your every breath as if it was his own consuming the beats of your heart in sometimes staccato sometimes languid style loneliness wearing your clothes till they go out of fashion the only criteria comfort are you too comfortable with your loneliness you sometimes wonder out loud and that is even more frightening then the tendrils wafting from your morning coffee that you always seem to drink alone have you ever noticed loneliness walking a shopping cart his only mode of transportation and it was not made by bmw or mercedes but he can honestly say he has wheels that carry him to and from what appear to be pointless destinations but not to loneliness to loneliness it his occupation and he is preoccupied with his nonexistent wages consisting of empty coke cans the currency of the economically challenged packed in designer luggage made by glad the history of the lonely safely waterproofed from the elements and the cruising passerby have you ever heard loneliness walking as he kisses your forehead in the darkness smiling so vainly into your eyes with a mouthful of scars betraying his arousal you feel loneliness like a blood relative pouring into your wounds so brittle and frail he creeps through tight muscled thighs cramping your fists into the unmade bed creasing your palm with anticipation loving you more than he loves himself or so he tells you or so he tells everyone and yet you still lie there with leftover smiles preaching to yourself childhood hymns and awaiting the arrival of your one true love or so you tell your friends and so you tell yourself have you ever listened to loneliness walking the footsteps of his life crammed tightly into his backpack as he tours the indigent streets where you live you can see his overgrown haggard face and he reminds you of someone you know or at the very least someone you wish you did not have to know but must anyway he hangs around waiting for you on street corners his hands are not outstretched yet you mistake his vigilance for panhandling and he mistakes your concern for sympathy you both turn shyly away but you cannot get him out of your mind loneliness will not let you he prints his memories in your daily newspaper you read them over morning coffee and why should loneliness bother you so he does not live with you now but he does make you wonder if graces of god looked the other way would you be he and you are uncomfortable with loneliness the silence of empty voices slowly creeps nocturnal drinking combustible memories as you back away into solitude and wonder how priceless your loneliness is to his but the odor of loneliness lingers deeply in the soul put there by unseen hands that strafe your conscience as loneliness walks by your open window © 1998 lgjaffe