Times Square, the news banners circling like birds of prey. I walk with "Fat Freddy" our mobile watering tank to the triangle on 444th street we call the cabbage patch. In blues, reds and yellows the tulips are sprouting--some already smashed by a homeless guy trying to catch a morning snooze. He straightens up as I start to spray around him. I mildly chastise hm; he denies crushing the flowers; I let it go. Perhaps the news messages are not circling birds of prey.

Yet they never rest and always seem hungry. The flowers at least grow. Against a blue blue and so sun sunny sky. It finally seems like spring.

The neon-lighted night glitters--the price of gold also soars---let me juxapose to flowers--I think of Joanie an artist/bar maid I loved. A suicide, she fell on a heart I was trying to sew up. I wrote of her as if she was skating on glass. She never loved me-I was just sex--she was fixated on an older man, as old as the father she never knew. She had a breakdown and the meds they gave her destroyed her sense of proportions. So no more art, no more love, no more Joanie. I was way gone by then.Juxapose. In broken bar room toilets the hot house tulips are up. The neon-lighted night. Let the clouds shine with their little scars.

When in doubt ride the Staten Island ferry and I do. It is free, and,this morning, it is foggy-- the sun is limp and failing. The mist seems a comfort zone, a cushion, a blanket. The Statute of Liberty was half shown on the way over, invisible on the return to Manhattan. The docks were clear--reality the ramps coming down like giant claws. So definite, so definite. I smelled no machinery or engines or sea and the foghorn seemed impersonable too--like a sleepy yawn. I tried to meditate. What was beneath the Statute of Liberty's gown? She must be hiding something other than her torch...perhaps a pack of cigs or a deck of cards...such is America on a bleak and cool morn. Love it or leave it and I'm still here.

Today love's little pick-up truck honks down my street. The geese scatter, the chickens run. I travel on. Love is avoiding road kills. "God grant me,"my blue One Day At A Time book reads," the wisdom to know the difference between will power and willingness...." Okay maybe someone else is driving my pick-up.

And, in my church, God is a she. I think of my mother, always domininated by Pop but with her own fierce spirit. After Pop's death she said it was nice not having to balance the checkbook to the penny. And she said she understood when I didn't attend my father's memorial service.

Dr. Low, founder of Recovery Inc.,the great-granddaddy of group therapy, wrote that we take our own dear selves too seriously. Hurt feelings, he added, are opinions of self importance not shared by others. A keen observer was Dr. Low.

My friend John Calloway writes, along that line, that "Carsalekids are like children who sell cars,but to do it they have to drink a special chocolate milk so they'll have the perfect talent." okay John.

"Boing, boing boing" father blowing farts in the bathtub above middle sister's sweet sixteen party"what was that her friends asked? Mag her best friend, who lived two doors, broke up. She knew. Archie Bunker had nothing on Pop. They would have been,if not soul mates, blood brothers.

Magnolia tree, on West 29th Street, stands like a young girl in a pink dress. We note it walking to church---Chris and I--she remembers when it was just a bush. We also spot two robins, one of whom is very fat. I wonder where he spent his winter. Spring is still wet, cool.

Inside church I check out the stained glass window depicting a scribe,one with pen poised. No quill raised. His reds are more ruby than blood red. I procrastinate writing about the men I loved. I who have no homosexual leanings. Now, all seem father figures, though one was my age; all were kind and gentle. The sermon is given by a young seminarian who glows like the scribe in the east window to her left rear.

Another cool spring morning, the sky a dark skull cap with white around the edges. The cap will come off and the white will grow to fill the sky. Sun is forecast for tomorrow and it said it will be warm.

The Daffodils are up and jaunty, the Tulips are on their way. They will soon cup like the bottoms of young women. Sex and drugs and rock and roll. I was never, if there is such a thing, a hippy though I tried drugs, tried sex and loved rock and roll. This was all right before I came to New York from New Orleans. I came to NewYork in 1971.

Flowers, so called flower children. So slender their stalks. I was one of the few who truly believed in love.

Time to get a haircut. My locks hang without pauses and my moustache droops like dueling commas. My woman friend likes my hair long so I will just get a trim. She is busy all week writing a paper--she got to get that A grade. She loves dark chocolate and I will have some for her when we meet later in the week. With her I am not afraid to enjoy what is beautiful. We have similar slopes to our hills. And similar slopes to our backs...whatever that means....

Not that long ago I would try to "remake old wrinkles" by inventing new ways to "smooth the face" of my past by reinventing and rectifying things that happened twenty, thirty and fifty years ago.What, I would imagine, would have happened if I had known this or I had known that?

Now my hearts beats and pumps to laughter that fills my new red (with white flowers) Hawaiian shirt that I purchased for a friend's wedding reception. I do not expect to hula or take a drink of alcohol, but I will watch. And I will live in the Now. Move the muscles and the brain will follow.

Kenneth Rexroth reported that the clitoris of the female hyena is the largest of all mammals. I forget where he got that info but it certainly wasn't from Henry David Thoreau, who probably died a virgin.

I have a muse, one who I imagine as a woman. I have no idea what she looks like but she is always there for me. She comes to me in dreams, mostly as a prankster. My first breakdown I heard voices and I believe she was one of them. I channeled into a group of women who were hilarously laughing and who urged me to kill myself. I argued with them and chose not to. They laughed on and on;I thought them women liberationists, want to kill this male chauvinist. But someone stopped a garbage truck six inches from my chest moments before. I believe it was she.Funny, though I pray daily, I do not pray to her. She is just there. She is with me,though it took me years to realize it. Every time I take my own dear self too seriously, she laughs and zings me, reminding me that I am no hero.

The clitoris of the female hyena is the largest of all mammals-sez Kenneth Rexroth--forgot where he found that but it wasn't Henry David Thoreau. Speaking of females, I wish too discourse on my muse. I've heard her voice only once but she regularly spikes my dreams with humor.

I imagine her as a woman. As noted, I regularly lean on them for help--it started with my mother. More on her later. On my first breakdown, after I dared a garbage truck to run over me, I ran to Madison Square and sat on a bench screaming mostly obscenities. Then I heard voices, hilarously laughing--they urged me to kill myself--I was a huge joke to them. I thought them women liberationists out to whack this male chauvinist. Such were the times. I was a great, great, joke.

I walked and walked.Night fell. I blistered my feet after discarding my shoes. I hunted for the Garden of Eden so I could start anew, but I had no luck. I climbed the fence into scenic Grammery Park and sat on a bench but nothing happened so I climbed back out. Eden must be Washington Square Park I surmised so I traveled there.,this time throwing away my bankroll. No luck. I couldn't even buy my way to, if not heaven, to innocence.

Finally I went to my church at the time and got the minister to take me to Bellevue. It proved to be the next best thing to heaven. My muse has quite a sense of humor. She stopped the garbage truck six inches from my chest; but she is quite the prankster. I wouldn't have her any other way.

Dawn comes tasty, it's lemon pie with rose hued merangue. (It's a little cloudy) But come the revolution, come come the revolution!

Well, perhaps not. Ring around his neck, the cormorant dives for the fisherman. Yet the sun shines on them both. When I was thirteen my cousin and I walked by a woman who promised a New Testament Bible for those who took Jesus Christ as their savior. Except for Christmas I really wasn't interested in the old J.C. But my cousin wanted a Bible and I went along with him and so we took the pledge. I don't know about my cousin's Bible but mine was soon lost.

It was a hot July day.The Bible had translucent onion skin pages with the sins all in glowing red and it was peppered with thee and thou. We were two kids getting a freebee but I still remember my mawkish sincerity.

"There are only minimun wage jobs,"I said "Do it" she told me. One of my street smart rules is never to argue with women who have male oriented monikers. I worked temporary help agencies, until I got a lead on a Teamster job, one as a freight handler. Somehow I did that. But I had a hard time counting items, but when the foreman went on vacation, I made the seniority list and got a union book. Thank God for shop stewards--he saved my ass more than once. I started seeing Ronnie privately. And a doctor who was a poor fit sent me to one who was a perfect fit.

We have been together twenty five years. It's not that I love myself so much better (but I do) it'd that I don't hate myself so much. I once read that happiness is living a simple life, having patience with friends and enemies and having compassion for yourself. I'm learning, I'm learning.

"They are cutting out the Bay ferries but it's still not to late to get lost in Oakland,"Laurence Ferlinghetti wrote. Perhaps it's Lawrence, perhaps it's writes.

Although I had a few half-hearted attempts at suicide, including the almost obligatory wrist slash, I had only one serious attempt. It was with a Buck knife, a knife strong enough to open cans. I figured it strong enough to open my skull. I didn't want much blood, so I tried the temple, figuring that was the weakest point.Babies skin throbs there with every breath.

I jammed and jammed the knife but I was too thick headed to get the job done. This was during my last breakdown, the sixth. I decided (I was almost lucid) that if I couldn't kill myself I might as well quit fucking around and get well. So I went to my landlord and asked him if I could stay and told him to call my middle sister who lived in Maine at the time. My brother-in-law came and I told him I wanted to go to a VA hospital, that NYC hospitals were a merry-go-round.

Done. Togus ,Maine. Plenty of fresh air, trees and fields. And I got medication that cools my rage. I knew Ronnie from a Brooklyn clinic and I decided she was the therapist for me. Back in Brooklyn after a few restful months I saw her. She told me to get a job and I did, but not without protest.

I wrote on my dream softball team--Ezra Pound as catcher, T.S. Eliot as pitcher and way out in left field, Allen Ginsburg. I had woman players as well, though Barbara Guest was more interested in picking daisies than gathering fly balls. Sylvia Plath held down second base. Of couse Lorna Dee Cervates was my home run hitter. She feeds me. John and I are regulars in the Church of the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writers Workshop. We had some new comers, including a lovely young woman from a shelter who said that every birthday she writes a letter to herself. Not to communicate is death, Anais Nin wrote. I truly believe her.

Ronnie. She was the only one to get the coyote out of my basement. She was my therapist for 10 years, then I outgrew her. She got me working (so I could pay) and she got me to stop drinking. I wasn't gambling at the time. In return, she was supposed to love me for my beatific honesty. She didn't.

But I never really bloomed until I quit gambling by enrolling in Gambler's Anonymous. So much for me: "Vaseball," my friend John Calloway wrote,"is sort of like baseball but instead of hitting a baseball with a bat, you hit an old vase." I was vaseball.

Relationships--so many rust flakes that shown like corn flakes--never mind the sugar or the lickity wings music. Who? What? When and who was it? Was it love? I dunno. I was a bandito starting with my first kiss--a champion sprinter if I must say so.

Twenty years ago I tried to get some depth and spirituality by moving into a yoga center. It was helpful but I never had the patience to learn yoga, though I enjoyed the chanting. I stayed there for 3 years until it proved stifling. My therapist was surprised but applauded the move. Then I discovered the Daily Racing Form. I just had to master it and I would be rich and make up for all my failures.

Gulls, searching for garbage, arc swift parabolas behind the docking ferries. The sky is tints of blue and gray,but mostly it is the color of slate. Though warm it is not, as expected, sunny. Come a sunny day, I will board the ferry and,waxing on Walt Whitman, ride to New Jersey. But not today. Today I think of buying berries on my way home.

Love and hunger. "I'm never coming out from my cup of tea," Lorna Dee Cervantes writes. Later she continues,"it's a cul-de-sac for a joker drawing hearts."

My woman friend calls saying she is too busy to go to dinner. Keep writing, she adds, keep writing. And I will.

The sun comes begging smiles, as if it could be late. That old sun. It settles climates, seassons,moods; it even decides when the earth will be beautiful. Soon I will walk west with it to the Hudson river. Sunny and warm this morning, I look to the future.