4823. NEW

NEW

(a N.Y. morning, aug. 1967)

My rambunctious hustle : shatters glass

and breaks eggs, blows down doors and

knocks over walls. It can not be stopped,

and won't. Every whore and process server

along 27th street's angry dives and curves will

let me in  -  the midnight knows my name, the

coroner carries my number  -  and  -  engraved

like an Auschwitz memento on my old Polish friend's

arm, our survivor memories will keep us going. In

the early dawn of mornings long past, he used to

serve me coffee and gruel for a quarter. Lazslo

never really talked, just ran his little corner diner and

cried over his life : fucked-up Nazi numbers on his

forearm, and all the miserable moments that went 

with them.Twenty-five years later, there he was,

by himself, with no one, and never said a word

with so much to tell but no one to tell it to. 'Cept me,

but I wasn't interested then, nor was he interested in 

me. He's dead now : they buried that poor man in 

silence, on a small rise in one of those endless New 

York cemeteries that dot the Bronx. Or somewhere.

Me? I remember the little things, and now I wish him

back. Ten thousand things I want to know, with every

question comes another fact. With every question

comes still another fact.