Second Acts
The Time: 24 hours before The Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan.
I was a few minutes away from a symbol of freedom across the Hudson when I saw a taste of the good life inside the gutted belly of a garbage bag. It was filled with green and gray long boxes of sliver topped aluminum thimble shaped packages of espresso.
Finding art in trash delighted me to no end like a kid on Christmas Day.
In contrast, the garbage truck driver I worked with exploded in a near psychotic fit of rage. “Do you have an espresso machine,” he yelled point blank range. It was less a question and more intimidation most likely generated from envy over a free lancer being genuinely happy with the little discoveries in life. In his unreasonable and violent eyes, I saw my mother’s adulterous husband about to lash me with his belt across my face and back. I saw myself at the age of 14 about to cut my wrist in the bathroom with a Blue Gem razor to end humiliation and physical torment by him and other bullies.
Before I could forever fall asleep, I caught my eyes in the mirror become curious with a thought: If I kill myself I’ll never know how the story ends. I labor to pick up sharp words like a surgeon uses a laser to remove brain tumors or prevent heart attacks.
This is a medical report after the autopsy.
O, Danny Boy, ye hardly knew your abilities. Yes, the patient died but the operation was a success. I can’t regain his lost life. I can’t recover years stolen by prisoners of mental or spiritual poverty in a universe that wastes nothing like Albert Einstein believed.
Ashes to ashes, dust-to-dust…
The truck driver threw the garbage bag into the chopper that crushes like depression.
What I saved gave me a chance to smell the coffee.
I saw sun come up Freedom Tower.
It’s morning in America…
End of Act 1
The Big Dipper By Daniel Angel Aponte
HP Scanner Work using Adobe 5.0 installed in Win98
The Time: 24 hours before The Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan.
I was a few minutes away from a symbol of freedom across the Hudson when I saw a taste of the good life inside the gutted belly of a garbage bag. It was filled with green and gray long boxes of sliver topped aluminum thimble shaped packages of espresso.
Finding art in trash delighted me to no end like a kid on Christmas Day.
In contrast, the garbage truck driver I worked with exploded in a near psychotic fit of rage. “Do you have an espresso machine,” he yelled point blank range. It was less a question and more intimidation most likely generated from envy over a free lancer being genuinely happy with the little discoveries in life. In his unreasonable and violent eyes, I saw my mother’s adulterous husband about to lash me with his belt across my face and back. I saw myself at the age of 14 about to cut my wrist in the bathroom with a Blue Gem razor to end humiliation and physical torment by him and other bullies.
Before I could forever fall asleep, I caught my eyes in the mirror become curious with a thought: If I kill myself I’ll never know how the story ends. I labor to pick up sharp words like a surgeon uses a laser to remove brain tumors or prevent heart attacks.
This is a medical report after the autopsy.
O, Danny Boy, ye hardly knew your abilities. Yes, the patient died but the operation was a success. I can’t regain his lost life. I can’t recover years stolen by prisoners of mental or spiritual poverty in a universe that wastes nothing like Albert Einstein believed.
Ashes to ashes, dust-to-dust…
The truck driver threw the garbage bag into the chopper that crushes like depression.
What I saved gave me a chance to smell the coffee.
I saw sun come up Freedom Tower.
It’s morning in America…
End of Act 1
The Big Dipper By Daniel Angel Aponte
HP Scanner Work using Adobe 5.0 installed in Win98
