3715. MAGNIFICENT OASIS

MAGNIFICENT OASIS

('ain't nothing like the real thing, baby')
All the portents of the best to come,

the wildest wager, the mountain's best

scent  -  they hang low on this sullen

horizon. I am in an 11th Street tenement

of mind, only now trying to break away.

Next to me, this place called Paradise Alley 

hides too its hordes. The Chicago Outlaws 

are lined up at the 1967 fence  -  they have

come to New York, with all these motorcycles

and girls, to try to take over the city. My own 

list of people grows outward: Andy Bonamo,

Billy Joe and Holly, and the rest of all those

hippy hanger-ons, who would mostly all 

soon be dead. That crazy Mexican giant we

all called Frito, he'd just killed his wife in

Colorado and was hiding out here  -  or 

so he said  -  he'd thrown her out of a

moving car, passenger-side front door,

speeding around a curve on a treacherous

cliffside road, got the door open and

just shoved her out, at 50 mph. He 

said she was 'dead at the bottom'. Yeah,

that story just went on and on. I remember,

he would talk to us in front of that stupid

factory freezer in Rappaport's Ice Cream

Shop on 2nd Ave and 6th, while, behind

him, on the cheap AM radio, Marvin Gaye

and Tammy Tyrell sang a duet. Well, he

was there most every day, until one

day he just wasn't.