The Persistence Of Memory
Undercover cops
assaulted me as I was walked home from school activities that were designed to
build character or good citizenship. I suffered a concussion when one of the
cops forced my head into a brick wall that exploded with graffiti.
As blood crossed my face, they rifled through my belongings.
My bus pass and membership card in GO (General Organization
at I.S 155) drifted to concrete as one of them shouted,” F**k! It’s not him!”
They ran to their unmarked car, as I stood still in the middle of the entrance
of the building I live in. One of them stopped and looked back like he wanted
to say, “Sorry, kid”. Then they were gone. Quietly, I sat at the edge of my bed
with ice pressed to a growing head bump.
I almost forgot my homework on The Underground Railroad.
Years later, holiday vacation from NYU and homework to
create a tour book for the South Bronx began by guns pulled out by cops behind
squad cars. They yelled while I dropped a shoulder bag and lifted my arms up. I
was smashed against the back of a car and violently patted down by a white cop
while others looked through personal items. When he hit my crotch, I pushed him
several feet back with one hand. I turned and stared into the barrel of a gun
held by a black cop whose nostrils flared like a bull about to charge and gore.
I sensed an unearthly cold light of a stare from my mother’s other son, who,
minutes before, had tried to kill me with Colt 45 malt liquor beer. Had the
heavy bottle connected, my eyes would’ve been wrenched out, nose and teeth
shattered in a gruesome death. Possessed
by the demon Schizophrenia inflamed by Crack, he had ran with an awful shriek
to a coffee shop on Prospect Avenue where he told cops I had a gun.
The way they roughed me up was nothing compared to my
mother’s husband who belted me across my face and back when I was a boy. His
son learned this behavior so well he upset his father when he put me in a
chokehold and later attempted murder again that caused lacerations on my neck.
It’s hard to live in the real world that made me the captain of the USS
Escapism. Reality bitch slaps when his father tried to drown me in the bathtub
where I pretended to be Namor, the prince of Atlantis, a mutant from Marvel
Comics.
Once upon a time, I felt the mystery of life when I went
deep into the waters of Orchard Beach, the French Riviera of the Bronx. Unlike
other kids, I could hold my breath longer and went far for freedom. I saw
people as points of colors on sands of time and myself as washed up on the
shores of the future free from abuse, free to evolve into someone different,
someone who wanted to get others to where common sense was religion.
The oceans were near to flying in the heavens and second to
the mystery of the human brain that could eventually figure out how to walk on
water. Even though my mother is Catholic, I was never one of those kids that
prayed to a crucified Jew who suffered after giving people Universal Health
Care. I wanted to take The Son of God to the hospital and get Tetanus shots
like me when I stepped on a rusty nail that was hidden like a snake in the
grass in Saint Mary’s Park where I romped in my Lone Ranger cowboy hat and
silver cap guns, a gift from a merchant marine uncle who lived for the open
seas.
This how my holiday vacation from school ended and homework
resumes: I saw red-faced cops handcuffed my mother’s other son and take him to
Lincoln Hospital.
Merry Christmas, baby Jesus, and peace on Earth for children
of all ages.
Amen.
All Our Yesterdays, A To Z At The Library
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