In the Midtown bar, the blonde ignores surroundings, blithely chatting on a cellphone, like she’s home alone, or might as well be.
Unlike she, I’ve got no one to talk to. Sitting with the gloaming outside, loud annoying noise within. My head, the music bleeding, pounds right through me, thoughts (not there) receding…
Empty. I look up, and down. The room spins.
No one hears me fall.
by Jeff Glovsky
Writing on Blogspot
(and vice versa!)
If you’ve searched me by name, Jeff Glovsky, chances are you’ve wound up here. Welcome.
In learning the craft of writing, and of becoming (more or less) myself, I seem to have tuned into a few of the biggies … certain manna, and ticks and inflections of theirs, picked up by my young and thirsty antennae, all bursting with needing to take it all in.
… flying in the face of his own misguided logic that in some small way, an exit by overdose might be a good thing — its transmitted “message” perhaps being taken to heart, as opposed to being ignored or simply not received at all by other nodding junkies suddenly waking up, saying, “You know what? Philip Seymour Hoffman died. Let me quit.” —
Sadly, it’s unlikely that this became the case anywhere. Philip Seymour Hoffman just died.
Once I was sitting outside a jazz club where I used to mix sound. It was a beautiful spring night, and I stepped out of what was, at that time, the stereotypical smoke-filled room to gulp in some fresh air. It was during a bass solo … These always tended to go on forever anyway, so I figured I had a few minutes, at least, before the singer would come in again and start gesticulating (wildly) toward her ear, suggesting (none too subtly) that she wasn’t able to hear herself …
Elliot Rodger was a sick, pained soul. Stereotypically “tortured”, almost “poetic”, in his musings. His dark manifesto, had it been written, say, a century and a half ago … penned anonymously, and/or “discovered” … who knows? Might have become a literary classic, in the Dostoevsky or Knut Hamsun vein.
As a writer, I myself am tortured: panged with jealousy, twisted, unnerved, by the guy’s naive, sadly wasted talent!
When my dad turned 50 years old, he did a little ‘river dance‘ on his birthday cake. Sadly frustrated with life and years behind him to that point, and whatever present hassles he felt his family, (empty) wallet and failing business had been giving him, in a single swooping motion, he swatted his 50th birthday cake off the kitchen counter, and leapt upon it like Nureyev.
Last May, in the wake of the Donald Sterling nonsense, I commented — rather vehemently — about the old fella’s ‘mistreatment’ at the hands of certain “hating and seething” “thought police” … “angry, directionless ministers beseeching … already converted choirs” that Sterling was worse than just a crusty curmudgeon, left up to his neck in societal sea change.
I empathized with Donald Sterling …
Jeff Glovsky (Words by)
—Underground… feeling heat in the furious subway. Flipping through a candy rack and trying not to deal. I buy a pack of gum and turn to see what kind of juice there is.
They climb aboard at 49th Street. “Moe” and his two stooge companions, rocking the train with loud, garrulous poses…
—
In 2003, Le Spleen de Paris became the bowels of New York and northern New Jersey … and Slice / Life (annoyances, episodes) was scrawled.
—
by Jeff Glovsky
* * *
Four A.M.
Fellatial solace … Gloved in blowjob hands of peace. My streets are live, they pulse in code! With secret winks and messages which say they’re only dozing … ’cause Manhattan never sleeps, of course, but rests sometimes like I can’t.
Away downtown, my Christ Times Square! I’m photographing homeless people … Hungry, pissed-off, out there types and heinous Zero Overpaids (the problems and solutions which extinct each other daily). And the sex and drugs and nightlife crawling bat-like into slumber, as the morning breeze begins to hum and day begins to blow …
Down further still, Sixth Avenue, the flower shops are singing. Winking wide and hurling deft, stout orders all about … There’s trucks and vans a-hum and squeaking … racist, pig-thunk news shows splitting wounded, AM air … and garbage trucks and window men, and newspaper delivery vans.
A breakfast cart still further down, a little queue of mendicants: it pants, and wants its daily bread. A giant box of rolls is rent, a bag of bagels buttered …
There’s clouded, waking sky for contrast, sunning up these bloodshot souls …
I’m safe and all at home here, wizened friend to their old scene.
(night) notes from CENTRAL PARK
by Jeff Glovsky
more Word(s) in Progress Compendium: Selections from Underwear Woman Digs the Sea
Writing on Medium
Several decades ago— before our Facebook, cut and paste, “open-source” world — there were older siblings … also scribbling … pos(t)ing dreamily, into Barnes & Noble “journals” the size of granny panties, or contributing to Fray.
Not long after I penned my ode to the beauty and simplicity, and read-generator, which was Medium — it all fell away … Medium 2.0 seems to be nothing more than another tired social network: aggressively encouraging “likes” … encouraging peanut gallerists to chime in …
Swimming through the noise I cannot place, the curt, intrusive bleats — unbeautiful, like summer in a land-locked foreign country, or a desert… or a pounding rain — (an) army sucks and splashes past, hoof-thund’ring toward cerise horizon.
I think of the ‘ones who got away’ sometimes … those fleeting passengers through my life, who wouldn’t have reason to think of me, but nonetheless made their impressions felt and registered on my akasha.
There’s a guy on the ground, with a boot in his back: “Release me!” the guy’s yelling up, in English, to a man in green, one of Bavaria’s Finest. “Bullenschweine!” (the guy’s switched to German) … “Sofort!” he shouts to the boot in his back (and the cop’s deaf ears). “Release me!” he Englishes again, “Immediately!“
The Bavarian cop presses down in a Schuhplattler.
nicht by Jglo
They lean in … They’re too close to each other. Yet not close enough. There’s something off.
In pretty red, dressed like a Valentine’s Day, she’s all smiles, commanding attention and swaying … He leans in and keens, like a friendship example, and jokes that he’s handsome while screaming a little …
The volume of the music increases, in tune with his voice and the swaying of her body in the Valentine’s dress. And the wine flows, red, white and nobody’s blue.
From the snowstorm steps an embarrassed Yeti; getting warm as he stamps off his feet, and beard … underneath which he’s red-faced, alone on this day.
No one cares, though! Least of all, all of the others: the Valentine’s dress and the keening example, and me, alone also, enjoying this day …
from Slice / Life (annoyances, episodes) by Jeff Glovsky
The shouts continue.
“Extra caramel macchiato!”. “Grande, triple latte chai!”. “A ‘skinny’ decaf Frap, light ice!”.
“…three ‘pumps’, with extra ‘room’ please?”
And nobody’s embarrassed!
All these selfish inhalations, spoiled preferences, demands. How do they purge themselves? Expel such waste?
The stupid, herd-like slobs! All waiting docilely in line for “coffee”…filling up the popcorn store (…a ‘popcorn store’!), the yogurt shops…
Thank God I date alone.
ripped from ...
Taste her squirming, nighttime, on that park bench, midtown Broadway. Like her spice sweet happy smile, bright young laughing, birdlike eyes and hair all wild, like a porno morning after, or a teenager.
She’s 21.
* * *
Apple ripe and bursting wide tight seams, once secret places…and I’ve tasted. Like the greatest hearts and tongues of her g-generation…
I’m The Who. She’s heard of Paul McCartney once, or maybe…She’s a baby!
My grey nose hairs twitch.
* * *
Like two ships crashing down round the tip of an iceberg; meeting by chance in a hot summer rain, neither having umbrellas…Sharing some pain, laughter, loneliness…Nuns at a conjugal supper.
…Not sure what that means …
ripped from ...
Palm stretched over, purple leotard, and hair, blue-black and wine-drunk like the lips we bit and sucked on…Legs up, back against that fenced off lot near Soutine’s, off Columbus; legs a ripe mélange of ass and ocean…Panties in my teeth and spitting hair from out my nostrils.
* * *
In Buchs, in Switzerland, repeat the scene, but this time it’s a phone booth. We play Superman, and spin around and turn each other out…The Alpines ring us like disease; emasculate our selflessness, elaborate our flaws…
It’s cold here.
* * *
New York, you come again…We come. And meet again, and then…we shudder, coughing, roaring at the small joke of the world.
ripped from ...
When my dad turned 50 years old, he did a little ‘river dance‘ on his birthday cake.
* * *
Stamping like a person one-tenth his age in the frosting, and crushing “5” and “0” candles beneath his still shoe-clad feet, he ceased misbehaving only when my mom burst, literally, Lucille Ball-like into tears.
* * *
My friend Mike and I had been arguing that day over which of us was going to be Hawkeye Pierce … and more importantly, which one of us was going to go downstairs and eat birthday cake wearing the dirty bathrobe my brother and I had laying around the floor of our bedroom?
* * *
Just then, my brother (Major Winchester) burst in. “Dad smashed his birthday cake on the floor!”
I didn’t hear what he said at first — flailing, in a headlock, as I was — but eventually, as the words sank in — and as my best friend Mike released his grip — I realized that neither of us would be needing the bathrobe …
There wasn’t any birthday cake to be eaten!
Pieces of 'H' / 'R' You ... ? Members Lounge: some Random Poetix by Jeff Glovsky
here's some
It’s usually the cutie-pies who get me: The smiling-with-tongues-leaking-out-of-their-teeth ones; the gap-toothed-and-sunny-eyed dollop of heat ones…the sweet ones…the sad-eyed and vulnerable, meek ones…
Though sometimes, a freak ends up having to do.
* * *
Hannah was freakish, to be sure. Knees bent like a horseman, she swayed like a willow…Invited me into her heightened regime: Crook’d finger, then wagging it Mick Jagger-like…and then sshhh-shing it, crushing it up to our lips.
“Smell the finger!” I thought I heard her howl.
Hannah didn’t speak like me, though; freakish Hamburg Hannah only let on she spoke German.
* * *
See Hannah: Dancing like a horseman willow…Licking on her hands and fingers, beating on her skirt to stay down.
* * *
Hannah’s left alone now with her heightened, altered dreams. She sits there snarling, like she farted; spilling wine all down herself…I ask this bird, who’s flown, “You cool?”
She snarls at me, incoherent.
here's some
She tells me she’s Moroccan, and I dig this of her. French, some, too. She tells me she was born in France, in fact, it’s “just Moroccan blood”.
A powerful attraction dunes…Like sands whipped up by long millennia of dueling desert shifts, it sifts…
* * *
(O)ur Dutch-bound train rolls into Belgium…sad nether lands…a cemetery. Brussels comes, and I ask little Hind why she thinks things are so: “It could’ve been Paris, Brussels…no? What happened, I wonder. What didn’t happen?”
Hind pulls a cigarette and shrugs. “And New York is not Washington. Or Boston. Why, do you suppose?”
“New York, it doesn’t need to be! But I ask you the other way: How come Brussels, right? Did not become what Paris did?”
“There’s too much power…”
“Washington and Boston have their own things going on, in any case,” I reason (smartly). “But Brussels…must be frustrating!”
“Imagine being buried here,” Hind shivers. “One’s life ends twice!”
* * *
She’s standing on her seat now, Hind…and reaching up behind her, to her bag, up on a luggage rack. She finds it blindly, smiling at me…Tugs it so she’s got its weight and pulls it off the luggage rack…
Then bites a lower lip as the big bag with her small arm comes crashing down upon an old man’s head.
* * *
She looks down at her watch and does that pouting little French lip thing.
* * *
Our train pulls into Amsterdam.
whatever hol(y)days you celebrate, may they be merry
Pieces of 'H' / 'R' You ... ? Compendium: collected short "faction" by Jeff Glovsky
excerpts from ...
Now my social circle, such as it is, resembles a bit a Fellini ensemble: Comprised almost entirely of souls I’ve just met up with, there’s this homeless guy I feed sometimes … El Flaco John and Todd Sin Pelo, two sad sacks I revel in at “work”, this outdoor theater …
There’s bright Crystal, lovely! Eighteen! Topless!! Now, two German stewardesses … from night streets, separate outings – Why, on two diverse young evening jaunts!
Karola met and knot-tied with her Corsican Mann down in Mexico City. She sprekz well, das Spanish … The night we went crazed, after sucking down Fosters (she loves Australian beer, she said, and only sampled French parfum), I caught her peeping my way through a pair of Woodsy lenses.
* * *
Drunk when I met her, and heavy with child.
“Hi, I’m Delphine!” Delphine broadcasts. “You are?”
“Sit down, Delphine. Want a beer?”
“I’m Greek!” Delphine shouts, and she plops with a thud on a cat-scratched futon. “My love, I am hungry! Have you any cream cheese?”
There’s a woman on the Upper West Side, loves to dream …
Why, each night, catch her traipsing her mangy hound here, the two of them dressed to the nines, fit to kill!
… And Zorro flicks hair from a flattish sombrero: a dyed blonde, unruly and posthumous mane. Her little pooch cries out as well … the two of them begging, imploring attention.
“You framed, man? Man, you must be FRAMED!“I yell this to the homeless guy leaping out of the shadows at 78th Street … An empty wooden picture frame is swinging round his neck.
In true form, Ernest cracks with glee. “I dint do it! No,” shouts he.
No, “I was FRAMED!” we both yell.
an excerpt from ...
I’m watching Jungle Cali as she screams in with her vipers. Topless dancers from across the street …
She’s got this kind of jazz patois … Like, everything is straight, you dig? Like everything is solid, Jack! Like Wynton put some major foot up, David Sanborn far from sad.
I watch her now though, every night. She’ll scream in with her vipers when their shifts change, five a.m. … I watch them: Loud, she’ll scream in, claim their throne, commence to holding court, these vipers, caution to the wind!
She’ll flirt there, shout, caress meat thighs and wink at cabbies, me and all who, damaged, limp across her landscape … Jungle Cali laughs, we’ll cry, and die another year each night.
read some more
Wolf, howling nighttime, prowled the Upper West, growling and swearing to himself …
He was generally harmless, howling “Wolf”, and kept to the demons within his head … The last time I saw Wolf, he had aged – albeit gracefully, with a little salt and pepper, George Clooney thing going on (short on the sides) … His posture improved … Occasionally, he’d ask me “How’s the Mrs.?” as he howled.
Then I ducked, as he swung a tree branch at me on Christmas Eve in 2010.
Since then, at the holidays, I think of Wolf …
@Jeff Glovsky on Medium ...
by Jeff Glovsky
As I was sitting and having breakfast (trying), I’m privy to this overloud conversation:
“And it was just that hair, completely … unkissable! The way she carried herself, and that nose! I mean, the woman is just plug ugly.”
The Dutch roll out of bed like we do. Stuffy, they’ll throw wide their windows; chilled, then just their curtains, let some light in. In their red bathrobes…
They don’t have any shame, these Dutch! Red bathrobes, or red window dressings…All the same to them. White satin panties and a milk-fed grin…
The chair tips and the child howls…Bangs its head on the edge of a table.
“HaHaHaHaHA!”, staccato, high-pitched burst of another one. “That was funny!”
from Underwear Woman Digs the Sea and
SLICE / LIFE (annoyances, episodes)
by Jeff Glovsky
Jeff Glovsky INK 
