The Crackhead

It didn't happen in a Crack-house

nor with the flick of a lighter

I called him a Crackhead

-I had no choice

It's been 28 years since Crack hit the streets

when I called my friend a Crackhead

I doubt he knew about freebasing, snowballing

or burning it on a spoon

or how it could melt in lemonade

But the notion alone of being called a crackhead made his body shake

His young hands shiver with fear and anger

I suppose his reputation, pride joy of being

Made Public and Private

I saw it -almost- yet unbelieving

like a crack of a whip he went into a funk

His eyes burned crimson

Like after an overdose of Ginseng

His back appeared to breathe

In the vein of a Dragon lizard

or an angered little boy

He was in a state of fusion but it felt like fission

He was in a state of turmoil as a mother-in-law

having a dark vision

And then as his hands gripped my throat -but we were friends, weren't we?

It could have been a toss of a coin to guess who would crack-up first?

As my breath shortened I felt the Crack get longer!

Deeper and more perilous

with no return in sight.

My memory floated back obscurely to l984, living on the streets of Harlem

Where my landlord, running his cold-wash-only laundromat, sold single cigarettes

And Crackheads selling little bags on my stoop

I laughed in the dim as I approached the threshold

The dealers jived me with light chuckles

looks were exchanged

and I pushed the door open with a screech.

The Crack

Expansive insulation
thermic foam
seeking out unconventional air-hidden cranies
and going through a molecular dance
where new hardened foam will
expand 39 times its size.
Not lightly nor without forethought
did I trustingly and confidently inject (using masculine
resources I suppose),
My heart was so full of hope that all sonic echo would be eliminated
those horrid bouncing sound waves that kept me awake at nights
constant thumping emerging from our heavy heeled upstairs biped neighbor
No matter, I thought, this isothermal molecular expansive foam was about to put
an end to all that thumping
And so blindly and almost with a stomachy chuckle did I inject.

The following morning
after a deep slumber
quiet as the desert and peaceful as a baby's sleep
I awoke to the sight of a swollen bump
-a bump with a crack to be precise
My ceiling had gone pregnant and now
intoxicating foam cells were having a party on an
expansive mission to no end!
What to do? How to react?
The Crack stood in front of my fixed retina
Proud, unabashed, daring.
What to do? Eliminate it? Call it a Tate crack and call it the day?
Or make it into a sculpture - a giant pig's belly with a coin coming out of it or
just another whale...
My instinct was weak yet finally I reached for chisel and hammer and decided to
unbump it.
Under the influence of a Sienese painting, 'The birth of the Virgin' by Pietro Lorenzetti
where Mary looks ever so comfortable and relaxed on her big, checkered bed


I worked away, fearing not the black hole experiment that was soon to take place at the Cern and swallow all of humanity up, to paint l3th century silence rays that would silence all impact once and for all! The work went well, but the evening of the final execution 4 U-haul trucks parked at our door and with great anxiety I awaited to see if the heel-stomping family would depart. Yet even worse, I imagined that they were to be replaced by a fluttering tip-toeing ballet family!
That night each hour I awoke in a silent sweat knowing, not knowing, that my insulation odyssey could land me with a Penelope saying in a Brooklyn accent: "So vay did ya botha with all that?"