Outside-in
When summer cracked the creek bed, blurred the tar and swelled our sneakers
there was nothing left to do but wait for wind or rain or night.
Sometime roughly five years after VJ-Day our downtown
may have looked less like a skimpy slice of crap. But I was born
into an age of “For Lease” signs and boarded windows, dirt lots empty,
guarded only by the crows that waited, barking, for The Rapture.
One large warehouse, labeled, “VINNY’S” had been empty since “The Love Boat”
set a course for (crap) adventure. White, like cruise ships. White, like Dover.
One summer Gary had a crazy, fucked-up idea for a party.
Asked his dad if we could borrow his projector from the classroom
where his dad taught drivers’ ed and used it to show films of wreckage,
you know, accidents and crashes, drunk guys with their heads exploded.
Gary’s dad was cool, divorced, and so he said, “Why not? Have fun.”
My mom was school nurse, so the librarian let us borrow all these old films.
That first night we watched “Citizen Kane” on the wall of Vinny’s warehouse.
Next night “Days of Wine and Roses,” and a few friends joined in with us.
“Casablanca,” “Grapes of Wrath,” “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,”
“Wuthering Heights,” “Duck Soup,” and “Giant,” “City Lights” and “Sound of Music.”
August broke, the rain and wind came, but we still had “sit in movies.”
Two-hundred plus with tarps and slickers, hats, or simply soaking.
Summer finally ended. Gary’s dad called back the projector.
No more Bogart. No more Hepburn. No more cuddling on the tarmac.
But passing Vinny’s warehouse, even now, long decades gone,
it’s white walls whisper not of dust, nor broken glass and crow shit,
but of music, life and magic
still sleeping in the asphalt.