“Leave your furniture behind. I’m giving you and your mother bunk beds,” said a fast talking Dominican ex-cop working for Paradise Management. He practically ordered us to move to another old apartment not rent stabilized. Without a lease we would be at their mercy for further harassment. The last time I heard an offer of free bunk beds was in Nazi Germany. This ghetto was aging my frail mother from the day the building was nearly set on fire by the previous Italian landlord Blue Angels arrested.  On a strangely calm evening, I opened the bedroom window that faces the funeral home across the street and sensed the sickening scent of cremation that traveled miles from Ground Zero.

 

It was the worse of times…

 

Any moment would come a barrage of furious knocks on our door and (due to flashbacks from a movie by Steven Spielberg) shouts of ATTENTION in Spanish would sound like hostile German solders. I’ve seen Dominicans throw out clothes and bric-a-brac out the windows of the apartments they were set to renovate in order for the landlords to hike up the rent to $2,800. Our mailbox was vandalized and they came in to remove our bathtub when I was looking for work and help from a city of illegal guns and roses.

 

Bunk beds can be also found across the river in Riker’s Island Prison.

 

I’m at our South Bronx Public Library Where The Wild Things Are and In The Belly Of The Beast.  I want to blog an artifact I found under old carpets. It’s a page from The New York World Telegram printed in the 1930s. I want to sell a story to pay rent on Earth.

 

I want to rage The War of Ideas.

 

The pen is mightier than the light sword, right?

 

Pick it up.

 

Defend yourselves.

 

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