I want to be crazy. Yes, absolutely crazy
I want to be perfectly crazy
like we used to be,
way back in the day
before life took its turn
and age took away the chaos.
I want to be like we were
back when adrenaline and rebellion
would pulse through our veins
and back when our first and major function
was to be wilder than we were
the night before.
Young –
As in fit to be tied.
Fit to be wild and mad enough to be crazy
without a care in the world.
I want to be wild as ever and uncaring about the mild incidentals
and not worry about what comes tomorrow
or who cares
or who says what.
I want to feel that rush or that simpleness
of what life is like without a care in the world,
to stroll through the City
dressed in the style of my best nature
with every expectation to be great
or to enjoy the heat of summer,
or wait . . .
How about the corner of 14th, over by 9th?
And then of course, there was –
Chelsea, the Piers and the Hudson River, running like a sheet of black glass
and moving beneath a full moon and meanwhile,
across the river, Jersey seems like a different country.
In fact, everywhere and anyplace else in the world was a separate entity,
different or perhaps just unlike us.
I want to be like we were, wild, crazy,
filled with the sensational heat of walking along the Downtown scene,
and meanwhile –
as this pertains to me, I had different ideas and hopes.
I want them back.
All of them
I had different dreams. I wondered. I fantasized.
I explored and experienced and in the same regard,
I’m not sure I knew how wonderful
these wild moments would be to me later in life.
I’m not sure if I would have known
where my value for those moments would be stored
or how sacred this would be – or, maybe because I never spoke about this
or maybe because I never told anyone else (except for you),
maybe I just assumed this was only me
or just something in my head- and we all have something in our heads.
We all have ideas and hopes.
We all have dreams and ideas, desires and passions.
We all had our youth but some of us . . .
Well, some of us lived more than others
if you know what I mean
We might differ. We might not see the same things
but at the core, we all have something to us that makes us tick
or feel or have the need to howl and be wild –
even if only for one moment.
I am not sure what I might have thought about myself in my future life.
I’m not sure I knew what it meant to have a future
because, to me, the future has always been for old people
who talk about their retirement plans or their Roth 401k
or their health insurance or their problems with sciatica
Hell, at one point,
I would have looked at people of my age now
and, to me, back then
they would have been like senior citizens.
By the way, I’m still not used to having doctors
who are younger than me.
I’m not used to being one of the senior gentlemen in the room,
yet somehow, I am . . . .
I don’t want to force or coerce anything anymore.
But yes, I do want to be crazy.
And I mean absolutely crazy; as in the kind of crazy
to be uninterested in anything
other than the time and the wildness of our perfect moments –
just to dance or to sing or to see a show
and to lose ourselves (or myself)
in the absolute phenomenon of a perfect moment
that I will never experience again.
I suppose back then I never thought that I would reach where I am now.
I never assumed I’d be this age. I never thought that I would
think about things, like investing in my retirement plan
or working up until a certain age,
just so I can enjoy the rest of my life
or wear funny shorts in some retirement community.
I never thought much about any of this –
I never expected to get this far yet here I am,
further than I believed I’d come
and further away from who I imagined myself to be.
I think about things now in such different ways.
I think about the life I had and the life I wanted and as for the life
which I have now,
which is still under restoration
and while in construction of my new direction – my answer to this is yes.
I want to be crazy. Perfectly, absolutely
and, of course,
wonderfully detached from the worrisome dialogues of everyday bullshit.
Man – at this age,
I just want to feel alive again . . .
Not that I am so old or that I am too old
to understand what it’s like to dance the night away.
But more to the point, I don’t want to lose myself in the burdens of business
and laws or to the bogusness that comes with useless interpersonal banter,
just to keep up with a façade
and have my presence felt
You know . . . We get into this vehicle which we call life
and we take a ride, wishing that we had exited this crazy freeway
and made lefts instead of rights.
I don’t go back to that anymore.
I don’t like to think about those kinds of things
I don’t want to do this over again.
I’m not looking for any do-overs or take-backs.
I just want now, this body, this person,
and this moment to enjoy what I have left
because all I have
is what I have left of a substance that we call life;
and as we grow older, we start to recognize that time is always ticking.
Moments are fleeting. Life is eventual and inevitable,
which means inevitably, somehow,
we have to pull off our trick before the curtain goes down –
otherwise, we’ve wasted the practice on dress rehearsals
when in fact, we could’ve pulled off the real thing
live and in-person
I want to be crazy again.
Untouchable and unaffected.
I want to be uncaring about the bullshit bullies
and their contentions, their actions,
their character assassinations or their “after class, outside“ remedies,
which are no different from what took place in grade school –
at least not if you think about it
Only now, the legal and professional ramifications
are different from what they used to be,
which is why people take to their crusades with their mouths
and fill the rumor factories with meat to be churned
and spit out
through the gossip mills in some passive aggressive manner
to come out on top . . .
I don’t want this anymore.
I had enough of this when I was in the fifth grade
But more,
I want to be as insulated from age
the same as I was when I didn’t care about
how old I was or how old you are.
I want to see the sun come up and be happy to know
that the full moon hung around
just to watch the sky change
before saying goodnight to us in the morning.
By the way, I drove over the George Washington Bridge this morning.
I watched the sun come up in the east.
I saw the reflection of morning
touching the face of our town
and reflecting on the peaks of the buildings in New York City.
The full moon hung around for a while . . .
The color of dawn was a stretch across the land
and the Hudson reflected the buildings of two different states,
which used to be like two different countries to me –
one of them like the old Russia or the Soviet Union in Cold War times
and the other side, which has always been my side,
is my home –
I don’t need the angst back.
You can keep that.
I just want that feeling again.
You know?
To be crazy. Absolutely, perfectly,
undeniably, unforgivable,
and unforgettably crazy
Ah, the summer . . .
I know she’s coming.
Maybe I could take a trip into the Heights
and see if the old Dominican is out there
shaving ice with some Pina Colada mix –
His radio, playing 97.9 FM
from the bottom of his shopping cart,
Salsa, Toma . . .
Remember?
The Written Addiction 