March, 2022
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Kevin Garnett in Africa
When crossing the border
Which you do on foot
From Tanzania to Kenya
The sign that reads, “Welcome to Kenya,”
Which has seen better days
Also marks the start of a strange little piece of Earth
Where you’ve departed Tanzania
But not yet officially entered Kenya
Not until you reach the visa office
Some hundred yards away
And it is in this very space
That dozens of colorfully bejeweled and beaded Masai women
Some with absolutely stunning faces
Have established a free trade zone
Designed to separate the tourist
From any remaining Tanzanian shillings
Left pleading to stay close to home in his pocket
Their technique is masterful
As they grab dozens of colorful necklaces and bracelets
Hold them out to you by the handful
Offer them to you at genuinely low wholesale prices
Bracelets and necklaces you really don’t want
Which they are slipping onto your wrists
And hanging about your neck
As you worry about pickpockets and say
“No, no, no,” in English, German, Mesopotamia, and Swahili
As kindly as you can
“Then keep them as a gift for your wife,” they say,
“Your girlfriend, your daughter, your mother
Take them, they are yours.”
At which moment
You first notice the young tall African man wearing the extra large,
Green T-shirt with the number 5 on it
The word Celtics on it,
And the name Garnett, your favorite player, on it
Standing on the court as it were, here in no-man’s land
Wishing you had your camera
Which is still in some illegal pawnshop
On the wrong side of the tracks in Moshi
Hoping that you will rescue it
To take pictures with it like these
Of the incongruity of Kevin Garnett
Your favorite player
Here in no-man’s land
Against the backdrop of trailer trucks clearing customs
and bejeweled Masai women
When the man sees you looking at him
Approaches you
Asks what you are looking at or want
So you point to his shirt
To the number and name on it
To the words on it
As you say, “It’s my team, my favorite player”
And before you have put your finger down
He has pulled his shirt off
And standing gloriously thin and beautiful above his belt
Just like Kevin Garnett does
He hands his shirt to you,
Says it is yours
As you are saying “No, no, no,”
In English, German, Mesopotamia, and Swahili
To which he replies, “I am African, keep it, it is yours.”
And you want it
Want to give him some money
Or at least a young goat
But at the same moment
The bus driver has taken your arm
Hustling you toward the visa office
And a customs officer watching the event unfold
Is pointing at you,
Moving toward the scorer’s table,
Motioning that you are to give the shirt back
To the half naked Africa standing in no-man’s land
Maybe a little drunk, or a tad crazy,
Or someone with poor impulse control,
Or poor boundaries at the borders, you joke with yourself
Handing him back his shirt with regret
Enter the visa office
And exit ten minutes later
An official visitor to Kenya
About to get back on the bus
Greeted by the same coterie of Masai women
And one familiar Kenyan man
Wearing a black jacket
You cannot imagine where or how he found so quickly
How he grasped the situation so quickly
And is waiving what is clearly your green Kevin Garnett
Number five, official NBA T-shirt
And notwithstanding the bus driver
Trying to move you along
And a bus filled with Indian’s, Kenyans, Tanzanians, and Americans
Who also want to move along
You reach into your pocket
Giving the man your last ten thousand Tanzanian shillings
The equivalent of about seven U.S. dollars
As he gives you the shirt
The Masai women screaming at you
And at him
At the injustice of it all
The ridiculousness of it all
That you are paying for a dirty green T-shirt
When you could have a jewelry box filled with treasure
For even less money
And the bus driver is blowing his horn
And the passengers are waving you forward
And you climb onto the bus
With your new shirt
Checking your pockets
And waving at the Kenyan Kevin Garnett
Who has clearly made the winning shot at the buzzer
And is smiling.
Poetry
- 99 Gratitudes in 3 Minutes – A Yoga Chanting Poem
- A Poem is Born
- After The News
- Alan
- Alan Is Dead
- American Wedding, 2011
- Ask the Sphinx – 2 approaches
- Baggage Claim
- Beach Plum Jam
- Beau Dies
- between spiders
- Beyond the Fishermen
- Burnt Wood – for Bubi
- Cheerio Box Speaks of Love
- Conversation With A Ladle
- Coyote in the Headlights
- Coyote in the House
- Crow’s Songs
- Daybreak
- Death Factories
- Death of the Dolphin
- Furry Bug
- Gospel of the Redwoods
- Homage to an Unattractive Woman
- Insects in Amber
- It: In Honor of Dr. Seuss
- Journey to Standing Rock
- Kevin Garnett in Africa
- Life among the barbarians
- Long ago, perhaps yesterday
- Mandalay Hills
- Mesquite Dunes
- Miles’ Ashes
- Miles’ Journey
- My First Yoga Teacher
- One Drop of Rain
- Salton Sea
- Self Love
- She Has Loved 100 Men
- Shivering in Majesty
- Sunrise
- The Furry Bug
- The Love Life of Clams
- Throwing Away
- Turn up for Turnips – a song
- Uncle Sol
- What The Stones Say
- when spring arrives ice flows out of the bay
- Whispering Among The Gods
- Willow
- Winter Fog
- Work and Love are What Really Matter: a reunion poem for the BHS class of 1958 reunion

.. the infamous first entry of the New Year, 2022.
… though we weren’t ready for this, we have been readied by it … no matter how we are weighed down, we must always pave a way forward.” Amanda Gorman.
I am in a very challenging place/part of my oh so finite life journey. Profoundly alone at 81 I have done it to myself, dedicatedly and skillfully, with great care and persistence: living in Covidland, reducing my anti-depression meds, being abandoned cruelly by Joy, being genuinely bereaved by the loss of Kara, feeling ashamed, empty, fearful, depressed, being old, weak, in pain, less powerful, less. I can hardly get outta bed and no one knows it but me. I feel unattractive and unloved. I can barely bear these truths.
I justify this self-preoccupied writing as “practicing” writing, like practicing law – the same as practicing piano. No one need hear, just you and the piano. Just you and the keys, the notes, the sound and the silent spaces. Here we are awaiting words, ideas, images, pages. I’d like to be engaged in something deeper and more interesting than my own life, but it doesn’t come to me. I have been rejected by more than most: my best friends Steven, Craig, Isaac, Lyn Rosoff, Lyle, my brother, Larry. I am enraged at Joy … as well as understanding her rejection of me. I can forgive her and myself but choose not to. It is lonely. I miss human company/intimacy. I also miss the time and space the woman/partner occupied, what I had and felt w her, whoever she was.
I am trying to survive my life journey feeling as if I was one of those stone age men often found frozen millennia after their deaths dressed in animal skins with minimal tools (no matches) out alone in the mountains, a relentless environment encasing me. I’ve made plans to be away for 2 months in California, to be nearer my children and grandchildren, to travel as best I still can … alone. I have things to do to get ready! It is very expensive given my fixed income and limited resources, but it is also something I want to give myself… and if not now, when? I am immensely aware of my finiteness, my mortality, my ordinariness, my worker bee-ness, my fear. I keep coming back to the issue of my relationship with myself.
I’m not sure I ever looked at my relationship with myself in this way. I also never was 80+ and all that accompanies that for me. I judge myself negatively and critically. It is very unkind. It is my father and mother yelling at me, telling me I am not behaving as a man should when I’m 4 years old. To what extend do I actually like myself or accept myself? I see myself as an everyman and I forgive my ordinariness, non-success, and nonaccomplishment. I’m ordinary. Okay. I’m also quite extraordinary, just like every other transitory snowflake is unique. And I seem to mostly comfortably accept my limits, much in the same way as I mostly comfortably find defeat too easy to accept.
I note that behaviors consistent with biological age arise almost automatically. Behaviors becoming to us at a given age arise as our bodies and objective age/statuses evolve. I continue to imagine there is something called the future, something called here-and-now, and something called consequences, all a bit of a challenge to me, an acknowledged confused person living in great chaos, flailing about trying to find any stroke that will keep me afloat. And being public about my distress? Why not? I am the realization of a series of potentialities made manifest, some even the result of choices/decisions someone thought of as “I” made based on “options” I felt existed.
I didn’t choose to be 14 years old, for example, but it happened. I was graduated from public school in the Bronx. I entered into high school where I didn’t try and my grades confirmed that. Years later as a college freshman I registered for a Latin class which I failed. The professor who obviously saw I actually attended class every session but still failed wrote next to my grade “You cannot intuit Latin.” It said much about how I survived high school, i.e., just by going to class. No studying. No homework. Dressed a certain way. Had my hair cut a certain way. Played on the school soccer team. Was interested in girls, breasts, kissing, friends, sports, popularity, Israel, Cuba, Indians, Black people, cars. I became me almost automatically. I had fights. I went to dances, roller skating rinks, beaches. I was voted class vice president, I wrote poems. This was my first – on assignment as a freshman from the evil English schoolmaster, Dr. Manheim, who described my effort as “terse” and worth a “B” – see …
And now I am 80 – and I move as if 80 – a perfect enactment of 80. I even look the part which embraces me more than I embrace it. I am soooo much weaker, less attractive, less respected. Just less. I am also completely aware that nature abhors a vacuum and I have time on my hands. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Or even what I want to do next. Often when I see what I want next I am able to manifest it, but in my current circumstances I am adrift without the wind or direction, perhaps with no sail no oars, no compass. I am puzzled by my own experience. Why is this happening to me? Why do I think it is happening to me rather than that I am making it happen?
“You are a sculptor and you cannot move your arms. The marble stares the way desire waits.” From Suspending Disbelief While Brown, Part II by Hossannah Asuncion.