Rich Baiocco

So I’m a huge New York Rangers fan.  Hockey.  Like, it’s my life blood. I run this Rangers website. They’re as strong and benevolent a force in my life as music and poetry and I can’t even qualify to you how appreciative towards music and poetry I am except to say a good song—even a good lyric—, an illumined moment that some exceptional soul found the words for, heard or read when you really need it, can without a doubt make your life come alive, be the only one who understands during dark times, pull you out of a depression and/or rocket you into love, or at the very least, decency.  I’ve been saved a million times by the bright waters of others’ songs and writing and I look at Rangers hockey like a perpetual river I can walk beside for the entire season.  (in the summer there is baseball, The Yankees, and actual rivers to walk beside)

Why would some greedy corporate swines want to dam up that river?  

For the last month Time Warner Cable has been in a contract dispute with MSG Network and since both sides are evil soulless pigs they’ve decided to pull MSG Network (and all Ranger games) from television so as to create leverage in this ridiculous money war.  Both sides are disgusting bastards.

In my area there are no other cable providers, my building manager won’t let us get a satellite dish, and I don’t have enough money to go to bars every game so instead I just listen to the games on radio or stand outside bar windows peeking in while people eat nachos and point and laugh at me.  Pretty fun.

I wrote this open letter  because a lot of people are getting screwed out there.  But I don’t think it’s enough.  That’s why I need your help:

I need a hex on these corporate fascists.  I know there are some goth kids out there on tumblr—I’ve read your poetry.  Some voodoo children, some black magik practitioners, some witches, some satanists, some conjurers.  Can you please place a hex on these motherfuckers?  They don’t care about us, they don’t care about anything except shoving as much green into their pockets as possible and humiliating hard working folks in the process.  I’m sticking pins in dolls over here, and am just tired of getting screwed around by The Man and having no voice and did I mention that the Rangers are in 1st place and having their best season in over a DECADE!  

Hex doesn’t have to be the apocalypse, but just something to let them know they’re not as strong and omnipotent as they think they are: blood leaking through cracks in the ceiling, bed posts go up in flames as they sleep, cut finger every time they slice a piece of cheese, credit cards all become demagnetized, all their cocaine and viagra ceases to work and winds up like BBs in their lungs making it difficult, if not impossible to breathe, get high, or have sex.  Things like that. 

Anyways, if you’re good with hexes and can help out to the cause I know all Ranger fans in NYC would be eternally grateful.  

Thanks,

~rjb

2 middle-aged men with no families at their sides sit about halfway back from the altar in the middle of the church waiting for the Saturday evening mass to begin.  They sit more or less at each end of the same pew.  People slowly file in around them and everyone appears to know everybody else.  The two men are in fact strangers, but that nobody seems to know them, they feel connected in a way like they know each other.  Each gradually slinks towards the other, refolding their coats on the seats, flipping through the gospel, clasping and unclasping their hands in loose prayer—they both really just want to be somewhere in the middle.

—What are you in here for? says one man.  The other runs his fingers through his newly thinning hairline.

—Balding.  You?

—Impotence.

Guy nods, cracks his knuckles. 

—I haven’t been here in a long minute, not really sure God’ll even recognize me.

—They say you always come back, or always keep running away.

—Yeah I guess.  I kinda just forgot over time. 

—Yeah me too.  

—But here we are.

—It’s good.  Place looks different. 

—The confessionals are new, I think. 

—New how?

—I think they’re darker. 

—How do you make them darker?

—The things we confess.  The things which we run from.

Separate Everything And Inspect:  Mother from child, patriot from homeland.  See them on their own.  As their own how do they react?  How do do they cope?  How do they forage?  How do they forge?  Separate love from sex, want from need, marriage from tradition, emotion from the situation at hand.  Separate the music from the scene in the movie and does it still work?  Do the actors deserve the acclaim? Does the scene still grab you, move your heart?  Separate your heart from your brain.  Separate your heart from your father’s brain.  

Separate Everything And Inspect.  Feel everything out, roll it through your fingers, smell it, lose it in a drunk evening, find it in the final hour of the morning.  Hold each to the sunlight, hold each to your cheek.  Separate wine rush from brilliance.  Separate caffeine brain from lyricism.  Separate yourself from your vices (just try it. For a day, for 40 days.  For some perspective) Separate that which you want for yourself from that which you are working on for yourself.  Separate and see only one is real.

-Separate yourself from the city.

-I can’t.

-Then baby, separate yourself from me.  

-So your last name is your Father’s first name?

-Yea.

-So what’s your Father’s last name?

-My Grandfather’s first name.

-So your name doesn’t run through generations?

-Nope. 

-I like that.  Tell me something else interesting. 

The girl tells me that the Ice Cream place on 78th has the best Thai Coffee and I say What’s Thai Coffee?  

And she says don’t worry, it’s strong, you’ll like it, it’s strong and sweet.

It sounds like hash.  Is it hash?

No, it’s coffee.  

I believed her it wasn’t hash, but I didn’t want to give Thai Coffee a try.  My girlfriend got me on Turkish Coffee for a little while and that was hard to quit.  She got me smoking hash too, a while back.  The first time I smoked it I loved it.  It was hard to find and easy to say and hit my head with the softest high.  I mean, I had a real romance for the stuff.  Opium too, so far as tars were concerned, but nothing I loved quite like hash.    

There haven’t been too many cold nights this winter, but on the coldest I sat on a bench between the ice cream place and the diner and ate a scoop of Butter Pecan like a baddass.  It was actually freezing that night, the ice cream stuck to my lips, but nobody took the cold like me—I’ve been on some mind over matter shit lately.

And was it windy?  You bet, and with the wind came this old guy with a long, ratty beard and cargo shorts and flip flops skipping down the avenue in his own world singing ‘It’s Been Written, It’s Been Written, That The Needle and The Dragon Were Smitten, Lover’s Once Bitten, Forever Smitten, Oh It’s Been Written Of The Needle And The Dragon, Yes It’s Been Written.’ (2x) 

He was a real shocker and he clutched a skateboard to his chest like a baby he was burping, and he was singing to the Avenue, ya know, like serenading the neighborhood.  It was a Vision board too, that old blocky Vision Street Wear logo.  Those weren’t even that cool back when they were popular, like some 20 years ago.  But he stunted this good trick when he reached the bench I was sitting on: he whipped a butterfly knife from his cargo pocket and finger-twirled it open, impressing me because my fingers were frozen and I was sure he’d slash his.  But he didn’t.  Instead he performed a quick surgery on a cigarette butt he found beneath the bench, slicing away its filter.  He re-lit it and walked on.

Nobody took the cold like him.  

I had an Alva back in the day—a Bill Danforth deck that Clancy Higgins had given me when I cracked my Caballero on a curb.  Come to think of it, Clancy Higgins got into heroin songs for a while too.  He was a few years older than me though.  Back then I was still trying to buy Spanish Fly out the back of Oui magazine.   

“Who hits the hardest?”  Ray Lewis—in his prime.

I would love to get laid out by Ray Lewis in his prime.  On days

On days when I were a pro football player

Id love nothing more than for footballer Ray Lewis to flatten me.

Not even in his prime, but now, today, when he is a little

towards the end of his career.

Maybe unsure if he could still do it, has only to prove

to himself he can—in a private moment, only once, between protein shakes

this doubt came to him and he swatted it away like a coward offspring:

how dare you’re the thought of A Raven you call yourself Ray Lewis’

Thought?

Not Ray Lewis who hits the hardest

—kept a franchise on his shoulders for 13 years;

what have you done?  Or I, the new guy coming up

on a field I dont belong, Id like to be stopped dead in my tracks

by SS Raven Ray theExpress.  I hope there is no wind left in my lungs.

See him hawking me in the backfield and i ll be disappointed 

if this doesn’t hurt.

I d like my teeth to rattle and all expectations to release,

my anxiety and dreams, 

like blood slowly out my ear. 

And If I can’t get up…

But I’ve been hit before.  I want to know where the line is drawn Today.

As I lie there collecting my mosaic reality

around the black shapeless unconsciousness and Ray Lewis slaps

his teammate’s hand from helping me up, spits ‘leave this broke rookie flat’

I d love that more than anything to pop up 

and take another hit all day

all days when I were a footballer.

hmm so i’m sitting in a waiting room and there’s a Nu Jorker magazine, the newest one, on the bench and there’s a story by that dead Chilean madman Herburrough O’lano and a poem by the esteemed Montreal crooner, Leynor Cone.  The O’lano story is too long for me to write down, but here’s the poem:

~rjb

Going Home

By Leynor Cone

I love to speak with Leonard

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd

{ehhh, lemme just skip to the better lines:}.

Going Home

Without my sorrow

GOING HOME

Sometime tomorrow

To where it’s better

Than before

GOING HOME

Without my burden

Going home

Behind the curtain

Going home

Without the costume

That I wore

HE WANTS TO WRITE A LOVE SONG

An anthem of forgiving

A manual for living with defeat

A CRY ABOVE THE SUFFERING

A sacrifice recovering

But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I WANT TO MAKE HIM CERTAIN

That he doesn’t have a burden

That he doesn’t need a vision

THAT HE ONLY HAS PERMISSION

To do my instant bidding

That is to SAY what I have told him

To repeat

{so then the “chorus” repeats, then the opening stanza repeats}

There is a maritime code that deals with cowardice: Thou Shalt Not Abandon Thy Ship.

What is a Captain who has abandoned his ship?  What is a person who has abandoned her dreams?  What is a poet who doesn’t believe in his words?  What is a writer who cowers in a life raft while the best ideas slip slowly out of focus?

The Washington Post published the transcript translation between Captain Schettino, commander of the Italian Cruise Ship Costa Concordia that ran aground Sunday, and Captain De Falco, Commander of the Italian Coast Guard dispatched from Livorno. 

I’m a playwright and I swear to you I did not tamper with, edit or otherwise embellish or dramatize the following scene.  You may think this is some Hemingway outtake, or some Melville shit, but no.  This is both a man and Humanity grappling with fear, with death, with cowardice, and with pity, of which there is none for cowards in the eyes of men at sea.

~rjb

—De Falco: “There are people trapped on board. Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There is a pilot ladder. You will climb that ladder and go on board. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I’m recording this conversation, Cmdr. Schettino…”

—Schettino: “Commander, let me tell you one thing…”

—De Falco: “Speak up! Put your hand in front of the microphone and speak more loudly, is that clear?”

—Schettino: “In this moment, the boat is tipping…”

—De Falco: “I understand that, listen, there are people that are coming down the pilot ladder of the prow. You go up that pilot ladder, get on that ship and tell me how many people are still on board. And what they need. Is that clear? You need to tell me if there are children, women or people in need of assistance. And tell me the exact number of each of these categories. Is that clear? Listen Schettino, that you saved yourself from the sea, but I am going to… I’m going to make sure you get in trouble. …I am going to make you pay for this. Go on board, (expletive)!”

—Schettino: “Commander, please…”

—De Falco: “No, please. You now get up and go on board. They are telling me that on board there are still…”

—Schettino: “I am here with the rescue boats, I am here, I am not going anywhere, I am here…”

—De Falco: “What are you doing, commander?”

—Schettino: “I am here to coordinate the rescue…”

—De Falco: “What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from aboard the ship. Are you refusing?”

—Schettino: “No, I am not refusing.”

—De Falco: “Are you refusing to go aboard commander? Can you tell me the reason why you are not going?”

—Schettino: “I am not going because the other lifeboat is stopped.”

—De Falco: “You go aboard. It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘abandon ship.’ Now I am in charge. You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me? Go, and call me when you are aboard. My air rescue crew is there.”

—Schettino: “Where are your rescuers?”

—De Falco: “My air rescue is on the prow. Go. There are already bodies, Schettino.”

—Schettino: “How many bodies are there?”

—De Falco: “I don’t know. I have heard of one. You are the one who has to tell me how many there are. Christ.”

—Schettino: “But do you realize it is dark and here we can’t see anything…”

—De Falco: “And so what? You want go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home?

—Misery is knowing that without being miserable i wouldn’t be anything at all.  

—Dread is not fully believing in what’s coming next.  Dread is the weight of the doubt. 

—Fear is a personification of love without trust.  ”But how can you have love without trust?”   “I never cared much for what’s good for me.”

—Love is a hard one.  I’ll come back to it.

—Trust  should be easy, but it escapes me right now.  Fall backwards and appreciate whatever catches you.

Woke up on my friend’s couch at 5am to the sound of a rat nibbling something near the garbage can by my head.  We went to bed around 3, but I was wide awake now.  I switched on the light and heard that chubby fucker scurry into a cupboard.  Scrawled on my arm in blue Sharpie was:

Dear 2012 Me,

Quit it with all the binge drinking, and go on some hikes.  You look like shit and so does your soul.

Good luck,

2011 Me.  

There was a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s ‘Night Flight’ on the coffee table—a thin turquoise pamphlet, 90 page novella about men who piloted mail planes across Patagonia during the pioneer days of aviation.  It lay amidst empty green 22s of Heineken and champagne bottles and crumbles of shake and ashed joints.  This pretty Guatemalan girl had brought it, was telling me about it at some point, and must have left it behind when the night got out of hand and she left before midnight, crying over some sissy guy who treated her like the lousiest lay of 2011. And maybe that was true, but I didn’t think so.  I saw her face really clearly and hoped, actually, that she was the one who wrote on my arm.  It was the kind of face you wanted to live up to, to get your life together for.  

I took her book with me and decided to leave before anyone else awoke.  I walked until I reached the East River and waited around for the sun to rise while pissing away the remnants of booze off a dock. About a year ago a friend of mine threw a knife in this same river, told me not to ask him why, “only the moon for witness”, said I wouldn’t want to know anymore. Same night I accidentally chugged a bellyful of broken glass from a hollowed goat-leg canteen my ex-girlfriend had sent me from Morocco.  Mouth full of blood and the only woman who ever tried to love me longer than I let her.  This past year there were books written and there were so many more books lost in lazy fires, pages and pages of unfocus and frustration, cackling cynicism and dead Americans.  

There was work to do and there was cowardice to hunt in myself and it felt good to have beaten the sun to the river.  It felt good to have beaten the golden blaze to the city, and to the morning as well.