A DOG NAMED PAINT

A DOG NAMED PAINT(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) A DOG NAMED PAINT

I remember the loft,
riding the roaring subway
and boarding the Staten Island ferry
floating at 3:30 in the morning just
to eat a burger at St.George's diner.

There was a tawny dog named Paint
the wagging of its tail fanned
bent barrel staves
glued till they shined
shaped into blades
and angled antennae
labeled tongue in cheek
minimalist modern art.

Evan then was ensconced
in what was a warehouse
in those early seventies,
he squatted there for nothing
except the cost of the electric,
before they were discovered and gentrified
by speculators and tax breaks and suckers,
by the late eighties those same wrecks
were converted to condos fetching millions.

In the decrepit decay
he slept, worked, and crapped
but Evan never ate there,
warehouses didn't come
with stoves or refrigerators,
when he got hungry
he'd buy wraps at the old world bodega.

His canvas, easels, palettes,
tubes, sketches, oils and brushes
complemented the leftover derelict machines
moored in a morgue of dungeon dust
adorned in the long gone garment gothic crust
mired in the anchorage of ancient machines
too dead to auction off or repossess.

I noticed the tap water
sputtered and gasped
when the subway
shook and stirred
the beat up streets.

He lived and I briefly stayed
on the fifth floor up an
obstacle course staircase
of deserted furniture
and forsaken file cabinets.

From the water tank roof
in the early morning grunge
I saw bums stoking fires
while other bums slept
on color coordinated cardboard
beneath a plague of abandoned buildings
with the usual telltale symptoms
of broken windows, boarded doors
and mystifying graffiti on smoke charred walls.
Above and beyond all that muck and misery.
skyscrapers like apathetic monolithic aliens
stood up to the wind as they cut off the sun.

My suburban virgin eyes noticed things
which barely fazed the jaded denizens,
oxymorons like the Palm Beach slick murals
luridly plastered ads gazing down in merriment
at the cold gray harsh dumped upon city
of closed down employment agencies,
bail bondsmen, locksmiths, bouncers, bag ladies,
and pawn shops, pimps, and pay day lenders,
and especially the brown spindly fire escapes
rusted leeches clinging to every worn out structure
like the fractured rib cages of fossilized monsters.

The reckless lemon yellow taxis
stopping for nothing except fares
made me cautious about stepping
into the streets as full of danger
as rivers infested with gators.

My hesitant and hyperbolic paranoia
caused me to pause and stare
at the discordant school of
glamorous losers and ugly winners
as oblivious to each other as a rainbow array
of dour exotic fish circling in an oxygen depleted aquarium.

A magician made magic with a hankie and a wand
while unpaid actors staged and mimed
an impromptu performance in the middle of Washington Square.

In Penn Station I was accosted
by an oil slick con man
flattering me smoothly
as he tried to cajole
my last few dollars
for a cellophane wrapped package
full of everything he swore I could ever desire.

All types, all hours
of the day and night,
bohemians, hipsters,
corn fed refugees,
college dropouts,
naive starlets,
pickpockets,
and pickup artists
on the make
around the music
at the Ocean Club,
over frothy beers
at frenzied Fanellis,
smoking sweet hemp
in the upstairs cavern
of the Acrobat Lounge
then hitting an eerie eatery
a make believe joint
in chatty Chinatown.

At the soup can galleries I mixed with the wanderers sipping bubbling Champagne.

And between the shows
ever more people
even goo goo eye girls
milling at the in crowd parties
through the late night din and sin,
I was amazed by their sense of irony,
their degree of street smart sophistication
and under the laughter, perhaps real happiness.

And so I took much from my brief sojourn
to the financial district, Soho and the Village.

In the end I sat mute with Evan and his creative friends
searching the weary faces and the mad man eyes
in the shadowy sway of the underground
for something I couldn't quite find,
a fix among the minions of New York.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
July 2010