Harlem Haiku Three

Corn rowed hustlers grow
Ghetto palms apathy sowed
Concrete roots won’t let go

Living hanging tree
Boughs growing stronger daily
Feeds on hip hop dreams

Black and Brown and Beige
Duke Ellington’s Ghost Swings Still
Between Stolen Beats

From Harlem to Red Hook

Saturday night leaving home for Red Hook to listen to Jazz, to watch Jazz being performed, struck me as just a little ironic. As my girlfriend and I descended the subway stairs towards our Brooklyn bound A train I swore I could hear muffled horns sound off, sax, trumpet, trombone, like an aural shadow stretching down the street toward us from St. Nick’s Pub calling us back, pleading with us, with me, not to spend the money on a set in Brooklyn “keep it in Harlem” it said. “I would…” I sighed, “Sometimes it’s just not up to me.”
We were taking the A train just not in the direction Duke Ellington had prescribed to Billy Strayhorn. We were leaving Sugar Hill behind us to go to the Jalopy Theater & School of Music on Columbia Street in Brooklyn. The A train to the F and we were in Carroll Gardens, as we ascended the subway steps I pointed out to my girlfriend my first apartment in New York just caddy corner from us and away from our destination in Red Hook. As we walked along the calm tree lined street that led us to the Jalopy I reminisced about living in Brooklyn and the calm the neighborhood had granted me. As we entered the Jalopy my happy mood garnered through our pleasant walk carried with me and the Jalopy soon nurtured it.
The smell of fresh popcorn greeted us as we walked into the storefront “I feel at home already” I thought. Just inside the door on the right stood an espresso counter along with a stand-alone fridge stocked with beers and the commercial corn popper responsible for the scent that had greeted me. On the left hand side of the room was a wall full of guitars, banjos, mandolins, packs of strings, and other musical accoutrements for sale neatly hanging above the frantic workshop and the mess of some mad musical Geppetto.
The Jalopy stretches towards the back steadily getting darker as we move away from the front and towards the stage—a true stage at least two feet high—with deep red velours mimicking a proscenium arch. Before the stage sit about eight rows of New England Protestant pews promising to punish… all square angles. The pews are flanked by rows of wooden folding chairs and on the walls above the audience chairs are hung various types of folk instruments including a hurdy-gurdy, mailbox guitar, turtle back lute, glass crate guitar, fruitcake tin banjo, cigar box fiddle, hubcap resonator, and dozens of others all part of an exhibit curated by Pat Conte of The Secret Museum. We chose a pew in the middle and we sat. The majority of the seats were empty. On the stage already was Bryan Carrott along with Brad Jones on bass and Reggie Nicholson on drums. They were chatting on the dimly lit stage tapping their instruments gently, Bryan running his mallets along his vibraphone while Brad Jones absent-mindedly plucked his bass. Soon all of the available seats were filled by a true amalgamation of New Yorkers young and old black, brown, beige, and white. The trio started playing.
Brad Jones and his driving incessant bass lines guided the evening as Bryan Carrott and his vibraphone colored it into a tapestry of bebop which included a cover of what they called Max Roach’s Delilah. Reggie Nicholson’s drums played primarily with muting mallets filled the little void left by Carrott’s four mallets in all syncopating the repertoire into a virtual wall of sound yet each instrument remained distinct into itself. After an hour of feeling completely fulfilled and overwhelmed by virtuoso solos particularly Carrott’s they wound it down to allow the headlining act on The Rob Reddy Quartet.
The Rob Reddy Quartet consisted of Jef Lee Johnson on electric guitar, Dom Richards on bass, Pheeroan akLaff on drums, and Reddy on soprano and alto saxophones. Rob Reddy and his quartet provided a stark contrast to Bryan Carrott and his trio. The Reddy Quartet seemed to feed off of each other as opposed to the feeding into each other I felt with Carrott. Reddy’s sound seemed almost schizophrenic with the bass not leading the way but struggling to catch up to a tempo led by akLaff and fueled by Reddy’s rousing sax. While Carrott and his trio painted Reddy and his group ran full tilt up and down a musical ladder for an hour. It was admirable hearing in Reddy’s compositions room for all the voices of his quartet particularly the guitar and drums while he stepped away fully content to just listen.

Leaving Harlem and trekking to a quiet corner of Brooklyn to listen to a frenetic White saxophonist play a gig did not sound appealing to me at first. My idea of where it was acceptable or genuine to listen to Jazz had been tainted by actual experiences which involved the ubiquitous small bolted down tables, two drink minimums, votive candles, and the perpetuation of those images in films like Mo’ Better Blues. At the beginning of Reddy’s set I was also resentful that a quartet that was fifty percent White was headlining over the caliber of musicians represented by Carrott’s more “genuine” trio. I have seen Art Kane’s A great Day in Harlem and the scattered Gerry Mulligans, Pee Wee Russells, Chubby Jacksons, and Miff Moles amongst Dizzy, Mingus, Monk, Bassie, Allen and Blakey. These seemed more genuine to me than leaders like the Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz’ of the world whose records I actually have bought and enjoy. More importantly I thought that today in ever increasingly gentrified urban centers White Jazz composers or bandleaders could be ill afforded while the nature of Jazz instruction has been high jacked by academics and those privileged enough to afford to live the life of “Jazz musician.” When listening to Reddy and questioning the validity of my recreating him as a racialized Jazz musician I decided I needed to grind my lenses. I walked to the fridge and pulled a Yuengling and stood at the back of the “house” to listen away from Reddy’s increasingly pink face as he strained against the alto sax. I stood and listened as the electric guitar continued keeping a rhythm as Reddy riffed on his sax again. I closed my eyes absorbing and relishing in the freedom and comfort of the Jalopy and the appropriateness of Reddy’s Jazz filling the room. I listened more and realized that perhaps this place this urban-post-modern-honky-tonk was what and where Jazz was meant to be or needed to be, free of static fetishized ghettoizations, away from European tourists seeking authenticity or jaded transplanted New Englanders seeking the same and also free of hyper commercialized Coca Cola sponsored spaces. This was American music after all an entity as dynamic as we hope this country itself to be. Reddy won me over maybe simply because you could tell he genuinely loves the music or because he dared to bring it to a folk/ country venue in Red Hook Brooklyn and because he brought Bryan Carrott with him.

Search Engine Words

These are the search engine words that have directed people to ChanceMedley the last thirty days:

Grape Soda And A Pack Of Smokes

Chance-Medley

Russian Orthodox Priests

40 Dollar Nikes

Urban Seduction

Seduction Ipod

What Is A Harlem Haiku

Where Can You Buy Weed Harlem, NY

Harlem Rant

Tonight I succumbed to my addiction. At ten minutes after midnight I left my apartment in Harlem to go buy cigarettes. This vice, this addiction is my only one; I rarely drink and don’t do any other type of drug. I don’t shop, or watch too much TV. This is it; I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I only smoke outside never in front of children, and in my kitchen by the window as I read the newspapers and wire services. Every morning begins with The New York Post to see how my dismal Yankees have fared, and if by the grace of God, somehow they have managed to bring Bernie Williams back. I follow this with the BBC and finally the New York Times. Four cigarettes. All four smoked ashamedly.

SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, And May Complicate Sense Of Self Loathing.

I walked out of the comfort of my apartment into the humid, leaden, night air. A few yards into my mission to cop some tobacco, I looked around at the houses and trees on my street, Convent Avenue, and decided that my block was one of the most handsome in New York City. I smiled at that thought, proud to live here, in such a graceful historic neighborhood. The feeling followed me to 145th street where I took a right and walked to the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue. By the time I reached the 24-hour, Arab deli-newstand-40oz.-Blunt wrapper-grape soda-tax free cigarette store, the feeling had subsided.

I was face to face with the demons who tread where my fiendish vice drags me in the middle of the night. The often thought to be extinct crack heads greeted me as I turned the corner and I began to doubt my addiction plagued judgment.

Despite the apparent perils, in a way I am blessed by the round the clock access I have to my fix. I do not have to resort to the ways others in less cosmopolitan places do to get it.

The Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) reported a story a couple of years ago about a woman who dug up her ex-boyfriend’s grave after ten years and stole his ashes along with a bottle of beer and a pack of smokes. Every smoker who hears this story knows that she dug him up for the pack of Marlboro Reds.

I walk into the deli and I see a boy about 4 years old, in long cornrows wearing hundred dollar Nikes and I think to myself ‘what the fuck? I turn down an aisle to the beverage coolers to add anything to my shopping so I feel less like a degenerate and more like human and pick out a 24oz can of Arizona Southern Style Sweet Tea. Real Brewed the can says… really brewed. I do this also to get away from the nocturnal boy; thoughts of his life are already haunting me. He is wandering behind the counter causing a commotion. As I steal glances at him I feel like an accessory to a crime. In the beverage aisle, a man wearing Bermuda shorts and a formerly white wife beater is examining a fistful of cash. He holds the crumpled bills inches from his face as he sways in a drunken, high, mockery of Foucault’s pendulum trying to discern which numbers go with which bills, I don’t know. I see crumbled twenties mixed in with ones, surely he doesn’t think his 40 will cost more than that. I think, “Sweet Jesus, this is the kids father.” What am I supposed to do? I go to the counter after the man gives me a dirty soul-piercing look; I am sure in response to a doubly dirty one I gave him. One of the guys who work in the store is now pushing the kid out from under the stores fluorescent haze onto the dark sidewalk. The kid runs back inside. He gets pushed back outside. I am crippled, half by a bout of urban self-preservationist none-of-my-business-itis and my now ravenous need for a fucking cigarette. I get a pack of Parliament Lights at about half the legal price in New York City and follow the boy outside. I look for someone who might claim responsibility for him. First I smell the acrid waft of weed smoke, about three doors down on St. Nicholas Avenue I see a midnight stoop gathering replete with baby carriages, and beers. I get angry and I do nothing. I get angry and sad and wonder where this boys life is heading. What hope does he have, already here at 4 years old what hope does he have? Fuck. I lit up, stared in disbelief and grief. I see similar scenes like this often, when I wander, or come home late, particularly in the summer when the city’s heat drives people to the street like methadone moths to a porch light and I forget them. When I finally abandon my vice will I turn a blind eye along with doing nothing? Will I hide in my middle class life completely. I don’t know what else to do but hide, where does one begin to fight this. I can’t imagine how one even starts to try to save something for this kid. How many days of his life have already been wasted over nights like this? Nikes make you a good parent in the hood surely his parents love him. Smoking makes me a witness with no fucking clue. I wander back to my street, my quiet, tree lined, Harlem street. I wish the boy a glass of milk, a goodnight kiss and I smoke.

© r.a.l.

I loved the Russian Orthodox Priest’s daughter.

I remember the first night we met
She catcalled me across the new lawn
I went to her and we left together on a campus crawl
I remember the way her hand fit in mine

Small, and chubby–a girl’s hands
It’s texture too, ingrained in my minds eye
I loved the Russian Orthodox Priest’s daughter

I can hold her still if I try
I remember the taste of her tongue on mine
Probing me that night in my dimly lit room

Are you going to fuck me, or what? She said
Did I conceal my smile? I hope not
A grown man’s masturbatory fodder
I loved the Russian Orthodox Priest’s daughter

girlbath-saul steinberg

©r.a.l

Harlem Haiku II

I

Swoosh in every color
Goddess Nike’s leather yoke on
hard court plantations

II

Black women’s backs bowed
over white tots on a stroll
Black ones pay the toll

III

Corn rowed hustlers grow
Ghetto palms apathy sowed
Concrete roots won’t let go

©r.a.l.

Seventeenth Summer

The first anxiously waiting fall
Townie, yet invited
To come breach Ivy’s wall

Walking across old campus
In Septembers waning sun
The ever-white gowns bloomed

Amidst an ocean o’ fall leaves
The rest of my world died
Or fell asleep at school bells call

Wishing summer’s rays
made one red or pink
Instead of brown

Fear, apathy, and loneliness
Wore wistful dreams
Of summer down

©r.a.l.

Harlem Haiku

I

Dark Broadway stretches
Blinking Bodega lights call
to Ghetto Moths

II

Loosies, Blunts, and forty ounce
dreams stir one from once deep sleep
into 2 a.m. wanderings

III

Stale bread,chips,grape soda
Lotto tiks and scratch off dreams on sale
Sustenance not covered by W.I.C.

©r.a.l

serendipity

Cooled heads prevail
Heated make-ups are blinded
A mistaken passion
Lives and breathes and walks and talks
Blessedly reminding of consciousness

©r.a.l

Lost

Is it for you boy
I am so lost in your blessing
Will your love sustain us
the weight of all my happiness
Can your smiles alone carry me

©r.a.l

Man’s Ballad

Countless nights since you left were spent drowned in tears and crying
Now countless more are spent chasing you through dreams and lying

Do you hear me call your name between moans in hushed soft breath
Another night and another lover taken brings me closer to death

Notch after notch looks for purchase upon my bedposts
To only find my heart a suitable whittlings host

During countless act of congress I make love to you in effigy
You and I are are right, it must be blinding why can’t true love see

Passion numbing acts betray my mind’s one true desire
Salvation and deliverance from this promiscuous quagmire

Through closed eyes I stumble during these furtive dalliance
Simply retracing your breasts imagining your every nuance

Bits of hearts and souls are stolen in these fits of sexual ecstasy
For the purpose of calling to you loudly and numbing my ennui

Do you smile at night held in others arms not really knowing
That it is me who caresses you with gentle kisses and soft breath blowing

©r.a.l

The Death Of Urban Seduction: I can’t kick it because she’s wearing a fucking iPod

Thrust together in the borough of Brooklyn
Rush hour intimacy
Un-decipherable announcments and clatter
Train is my song
Only the soundtrack of life seperates us
You don’t hear
Thin pieces of cotton protect you and me
I am blushing

Your head bobs to the off beat grinning
Your soundtrack
Electric arteries feed and carry a musical life blood
Thin white cords
Occidental women hiding unapproachability
Behind sonic veils
Burkas of extreme fundamentalist fashionistas
iPod killed my game

©r.a.l

F(r)iend

She followed me back to the city
Always with me, I let her
A crutch perhaps
A slow death mask
In her billowy shadow I hide

Every bit I give is not enough
She seems to always desire more
Ferociously she bides for money and time
I know her traitorous lies yet I stay
She keeps me anonymous and safe

We are forced to steal moments
Between playing with my boy,
Classes, places I need to be
Dollars and love spent, wasted,
Stolen, even from my son

So a once protector has
Turned now to a be my lone
Life’s tormentor, stealing
time I would choose not to
share she invades to remind me

I try to leave her behind
She follows and I let her in
Her stench on my clothes my breath my hair
She stalks my every waking moment
Will I ever know solitude again

Lost kisses I long to have back
Those moments though are gone
The taste of a woman
On my lips alone
Unencumbered unaccompanied

Two hands to hold my son
To caress. Today is lost, tomorrow though
More than time added to the end of life
It drives to free me of my nicotine fiend
My bitch lover, my tobacco queen

©r.a.l