With Sadness

 Farewell, old friend. Ninja 1999-2017

Haiku (Love doesn't die)
Long time I missed you but now I understand you were always with me.

copyright 1985

Flagler

     It was July when they hit Miami. The merciless humidity could melt the skin off your face. A long span of street known as Flagler was indolent, lined with squat, bleached buildings. Papo got off the bus and started walking like he knew where he was going. Juanita followed him because she didn't. Neither one of them knew anyone in Miami  except Papo's brother, and he didn't want to know them....

For Michelle, Gina and Amanda

BREATHE

Out of the house
Blackened, broken house
Honeycombed with secrets
Wandered the spirit
It was lost.

Into the day
Screaming morning light
Desert dry cold
Staggered the spirit
It nearly died.

Through the deep,
Dark waters swirling
Bottomless night
Swam the spirit
Rudderless, pale.

Somewhere above
Shone the light
Faint at first,
Almost not there.
Spirit kicked free
Toward the light.

Trees sway with breeze
Musk of earth
Music of sky
Spirit sighs, rustles leaves,
unsettles dust.

This will be continued...

copyright 1994 CD.

A Poem

FOR JERRY

In a garden

A place of life flourishing

Of trees and flora

And steel shimmering in moonlight.

Blood spills, mixes with mud

beneath the street.

A life

Ebbs away before it began:

the full moon witnessed all,

I would forget it if I could.

It grips my heart

like the terror

must have held you

At your sentencing

and your execution.

On a summer night

The still hot air

charged with hatred

sentenced you at 21

to die

For being you.

copyright CD 1985....2013 "Sunrise In the Cornfield" 

THE RIDE

C D

Copyright 1992

The Ride

Maybe I shouldn’t have been hitchhiking that night, but I did, and there’s no going back now. I was a hippie, a sometimes stoner, a street punk; young and broke. At night I slept in an empty apartment that I climbed up a fire escape to get into. One thing I wasn’t doing that night in late 1970 or early ‘71 was getting high. I was straight as an arrow that night and I’m very clear on what happened.

I had just turned eighteen. I’d been warned by well meaning friends not to hitchhike in certain parts of the city, but I was broke, not to mention homeless, so I got around the best way I could. That night I’d been hanging out in the Square, then a major hippie haven. It was my social life, I guess. My survival skills weren’t much—yet. I had grown up in a sheltered Catholic home. But there was trouble behind the scenes, and after graduating high school at age seventeen, I split for parts unknown.

Life on the streets was bad, but not bad enough to send me back home. Two gay guys I’d met told me there was an empty apartment in the building next to theirs. They showed me how I could access the vacant apartment by walking through the alley and climbing up the fire escape. The apartment had sky blue walls and a mattress on the hard wood floor. The lights were on and the shower worked. What more could a homeless flower child want?

This became my home for awhile, and I guarded its location. It was my shelter from the too friendly predators who offered a place to stay in exchange for instant intimacy. It was a safe place to unwind and regroup for the daily battle of living on the streets of a major metropolitan area.

Secondary to a roof over my head was food. I lived on junk food, scrounged from the leavings of fast food customers. Sometimes groups of us spread out and panhandled in the square: roving, ragged, child beggars.

Sometimes the money went for food, sometimes for a high. The steady diet of junk food took its toll. At age eighteen, I developed acne, something I’d never had during my middle class younger teens. To those moms who nag their teenagers about eating too much fast food: keep nagging, your concerns are valid.

By day, I carried my clothes around in an army back pack, just in case the empty apartment got rented while I was out. By night, I hung out in the square, connected with other lost souls, took trips to other places, and other states of mind. Buses were unknown to me, and I only occasionally rode the trains. When I needed to get away or get home, I hitchhiked. It was a common way to get around back then, and the world was very different. It was dangerous enough then; I wouldn’t recommend it at all today.

It was a mild night. I don’t remember if it was spring or summer. Nobody was around, and not much was happening on the street. It was peculiarly quiet, in fact. I decided to go home early, to my blue sky apartment.

I got a ride right away. The car was an older white sedan. The driver was a middle aged man, forty to fiftyish. Or maybe he just looked older because of his hair. His hair was the first thing I noticed about him, not that I really paid him that much mind. I had hitched dozens of rides before. This was routine stuff, I thought.

He was no hippie, but his hair was wild: all over the place. It was dark, maybe black, and streaked with a lot of white: Bride of Frankenstein hair. He was a white man with Don King hair. It was electric, charged—like the air that night. I was not paying attention. I thought he was a middle aged man who would give me a ride home, and I turned my attention to the street ahead to give him directions. He knew where my street was—he was driving that way—and he passed it.

“Hey, you passed my street,” I said.

That’s when he speeded up, and I noticed his eyes for the first time.

In the moment I looked into them, his eyes told me everything. They were black and bright, and--this is no judgment call, just an observation—they were truly crazy.

 Then I saw the knife shining in the darkness. It was probably a hunting knife. The blade must have been six inches long. The fear settled into me like a long winter cold. Time raced, and it stood still. Absurdly, I reasoned he would stop for a red light. I scanned the street for a red light, but ahead of us in the nearly empty street, like a string of carnival lights against the black sky, stretched a long line of green lights. I put my hand on the door handle, and he spoke with desperation in his voice:

“You can’t jump out. You can’t.” His arm reached across the front seat, holding the knife in front of my neck. “Get down!” he ordered.

Stalling for time, I tried to show cooperation. I slouched a little in my seat, keeping my hand on the door handle, while searching the blackness ahead for red lights. There were none. He drove faster, heading out of the city.

“Get down,” he said again. I knew if I went to the end of this ride I would not get out alive. I lifted the door handle. The door flew open, and I hurled myself through it. I rolled in the street a few times, before I landed in a roadside ditch. A Volkswagen van driving in the other direction slammed on its brakes, and stopped in the middle of the street. The driver asked if I was all right. I think I said yes.

The people in the van were long haired hippie types. I knew instinctively I could trust them. I’ve always distinguished between two kinds of “hippies:” the health food eating, working for positive social change types who had jobs and places to live, and the drug addicted, wandering, burnout street people types. The people in the van, I surmised, were the first type. They brought me safely to my “home.”

I didn’t go up to my apartment that night. Somehow I just couldn’t be alone. Instead, I went to the next building and knocked on the door of my two gay friends, who were already sleeping. They welcomed me into their tiny one-room apartment, made tea, listened to my story, looked at my scrapes, and then one of them shared his narrow twin bed with me. Through the night he held me, like a mother holds a child. In this world you don’t have a fighting chance unless you have a mother or somebody who loves you.

Weeks or months later, I saw a newspaper article. They were calling it the “Hitchhike Murders,” or something like that. I didn’t go to the police with what I knew. I must have been too far gone, too absorbed by my own problems. I guess I thought then that they wouldn’t believe me anyway.

You probably wonder why, after all these years, I’d write this story. Actually, I’ve written it dozens of times in my head, and I’ve told it scores of times to others—women and men and kids—to warn them. It’s because he might still be out there, never caught, that I write this, and because I wonder how many others before me and after me, went on this ride and never came back.

This is a true story.

If there are any lessons here it’s these:

1. Listen to your inner voice and always trust your instincts.

2. The driver had no gun-- that I saw, and he would have killed me.

-end

Classic Bob Marley

Why People Don't Like Government Agencies

Today's mail brought a surprise. A letter from the County Expressway Authority. It contained a toll-by - plate invoice for $3.75 for the license plate I surrendered in November 2010.

I don't own a car. I had a bike, but it rusted. I still like bikes.

I turned the license plate in to the tag office where I signed over the car to the current owner. That was in the fall of 2010--before November 2--because November 2, 2010 was the date my car insurances policy would expire.

I asked the woman behind the desk at the tag office for a receipt, and she said the surrender license plate notice would be mailed to me. It was. I have it.

The expressway is taking photos of my old license plate (if that's even my old license plate number; I'm still investigating that)-- on some unknown car driven by an unknown person. I want to know who that person is and why they're driving around with my old license plate, and why I got their bill from the county government that oversees such things.

And btw- even when I did own a car, I never ever drove on the Selmon Expressway.

So I went to the website listed on the invoice because of course, government offices close at 6 p.m. (or earlier).

On their website this is what I found:

21.   What if I get an invoice for a license plate I no longer have?

If you no longer own the vehicle, you will need to contact the appropriate vehicle registry to correct their registration information. You will also need to provide an affidavit verifying that you are no longer the vehicle owner. This affidavit form is available by clicking this link: Affidavit Form. ( don't click on it--it's corrupted)

Mail the Affidavit Form to:

THEA Correspondence

PO Box 22806

Hialeah, FL 33002-2806

Unfortunately, when I clicked the link, the Affadavit Form could not be printed, copied, saved or emailed, because..."This operation is not permitted."

So tomorrow I'll try the phone number. Stay tuned. More fun to come.

Another government screw up. Although I contend that behind every government screw up is an individual with access to a government computer--an individual either incompetent, lazy or malicious.

An individual that fuels the anti government fire.

Those individuals should be doxed.

So it turns out that one letter of the license plate was "mis-typed." Funny that, because "U" and "Q" are far apart on the keyboard.

Also, according to the courteous person known as "Laz" at the Expressway Authority in Miami, the photographed car was a Toyota Avalon. I've never owned a Toyota Avalon.
To digress for a minute...
I tend to regard suspiciously those career politicians that stomp 'n' holler 'n' campaign vigorously  for elected office because they want to represent "The People." These are the same elected officials who won't answer their phones when "The People" come calling. This is you too, democrats.

In the end it is exactly as an embattled southern factory worker said back in 2000.

When he was handed a campaign leaflet showing Al Gore and George W. Bush with the caption "Who will fight for working people?" this wise citizen said, "Nobody. We fight for ourselves."

Oh hey, government, ever wonder why tea partiers and other citizens are so fed up with you?

Inhumane

Nine month old Scruffy, beloved cat of  Daniel Dockery didn't have to die.

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20111228/NEWS11/111228016/Animal-lovers-angered-over-euthanized-cat

A few years ago, a woman I worked with stated she thought the Humane Society would rather put cats down than allow them to be adopted. because her friend's application for pet adoption had been turned down with no reason given. That wasn't the first time I'd heard about this happening.

In 2008 I expressed concern to the Stevens-Swann Humane Society about a pit bull pup that was kept chained to a tree in the back yard of an unoccupied rental house in Utica, New York. The dog was left alone all day and all night for days at a time, through summer heat and pouring rain. It cried constantly. My landlady called the city codes department. I called them. The police were called. The landlord was notified. Nobody gave a damn. There's big money to be made in dog fighting. Epic #FAIL

All those donations from caring people; what do they pay for--TV commercials? Or hiring P.R. spin doctors like the one hired by the humane society after Scruffy was killed. And isn't it interesting that Daniel, a "recovering heroin addict," takes responsibility for "failing" Scruffy upon himself.

It was NOT Daniel Dockery who failed Scruffy.

It was a huge organization that has too often shown itself to be heartless.

Here's another viewpoint from inside the shelter industry.
http://consumerist.com/2011/10/animal-shelter-manager-reveals-horrors-of-his-job.html

And here's my experience. In 2001 I was unjustly fired from my job because of a health issue. Although I was eligible for unemployment benefits it wasn't enough to pay my rent so I moved out. When I became homeless, so did my dog. During a two week period, in November we spent days in my car and at night slept wherever we could. During those two weeks I called (among others) the Humane Society and asked them to find a temporary foster home for my dog until I could find a job and a new apartment. I let them know I could pay for his dog food, shots and whatever vet bills he might have. 

On November 10th I called the Humane Society at 9 A.M. I told them I would pay for my dog's food and any vet visits he needed, but I needed a temporary home for him. The person who answered at the Humane Society said to call back at 10 A.M. and ask for "Pam." I did-- twice . Nobody picked up so I left a message. My calls were never returned.

Two days later, the animal police came banging on the door of the apartment where I was using somebody's computer to send my resume. I got a ticket for ANIMAL CRUELTY because somebody had reported seeing my dog in the car in the early morning. He was, with all four windows down all the way, the car parked under a large tree, and his bowl of water on the seat. If the nosy neighbors were so concerned about my dog, why the FFFFKKKK didn't they open the car door and let him out?  He was leashed. He wore a rabies tag. The windows were wide open, with manual locks on the doors.

BTW, he was in the apartment with me when the animal police came knocking.

When I went to "animal court" to answer the ticket, I started to read off the names and phone numbers of all the people and organizations I had contacted asking for help to temporarily shelter my dog. But when I got to humane society, the judge abruptly cut me off. Apparently she didn't want this information entered into the court transcript by the court reporter. Whatever. It's entered now, right here. She then reduced my ticket.

Where were the animal police when I and my co-workers reported the dogs locked in a van with the window cracked an inch in the extremely hot, airport parking garage? The engine was not running; the ac was not on.

My dog was a happy, healthy ten year old when we became homeless due to job loss. By the time I found work nine months later, and an apartment six months after that, he had developed significant health issues and his fur was flecked with gray.

Rest in peace, Butch & Scruffy.