Return to Whenever

I didn't know about the Scientology until this afternoon. All those years in college dorm sent into space via Chick's percussive chatter on the Fender Rhodes and the Moog (the Bronx Science Moog) I didn't know I was hitching a ride on L. Ron Hubbard's spaceship. Oh well, it wasn't quite as tawdry as being squeezed into the fried-clams world of the Blue Note for the Latino-Hippie All Stars, otherwise known as the most recent edition of Return to Forever, starring Chick, Eddy Gomez (Boricua!) and Airto Moreira. Corea, with his subtle Chelsea, Mass. accent, well it's never been clear whether he's Portuguese, Cape Verdean, or Brazilian. We do know his real name is Armando. Still the Where Have I Known You Before traveled at warp speed from starbase Ryles at Inman Square all the way to 75th and Broadway in the depopulated '70s of my youth. Moreira's New Orleans human beat box took a left turn somehwere around Who Are the Brain Police. Sure Chick stuck to the Bud Powell translations but saved the weirdest Rhodes sounds for the end, producing an echo-y rejoinder to Airto's rainstick, and visions of hookahs ran down Eddie Gomez's fingers to the bottom of his bass. "We are all aliens," concludes Moreira as Chick shrugs as if he had invited us to his black-light postered basement with no munchies left in the refrigerator.

Somewhere slinking down 86th Street is my memorything
Parading ghostlike flush against wind-chill factor
Is the wavy wiry blast of unruly shag Puerto Rican flag hair that was
My adolescence, brooding and happy to be against everything

Subway downtown snaking past the green-tentacled memory
Of an exploding Impressionism, Van Gogh growing wild like
Weeds in a skanky Bronx parking lot, passing the cheap red wine
And foaming fuming at the already-dilettante waves of resistance

Oh upper Broadway the sirens of transvestite secanol slurping Lark smokers
Gusts of gray, of Berlin skies that failed the physics finals
All fading but not disappeared by the Barnes and Noble coffee catastrophe
I see the mist clearing, revealing the fine young hands before me

Neither Yahweh nor Moloch nor Beame or Lindsay obscuring
These alleys and platforms of no-spitting elegance are black as
My warmest thoughts, always the spring of subway mildew
And rotting buildings lift my heart in the song of soot surrender

Maybe I was the shadow I just saw flashing past me
Claiming the concrete vomit where all the stabbing and shooting
Was cremated, ashes spread on my forehead in Lenten longing
Walking those crack-filled sidewalks with broken boots strapped for cash

Catching the guilty glimpse, there she goes, vanishing and screaming
Down the filthy steps to manic panic underground bliss
That’s where this queasy city and I shared our first kiss
Oh that you could have walked and wailed like I did, liquid souls careening