In reflecting recently on rare occurrences, I remember meeting only once a fellow named Joe Lobel. A friend of mine who was a social worker introduced me to his boss from the agency he worked at. They worked together at Gracie Square Hospital. Joe sparked an interest in my friend for several reasons. Firstly, Joe, many years earlier, haunted the streets of New York City to turn tricks to get money for his habit. He now lived a reformed life and worked as a skilled social worker. He brought to his job what they call “lived experience.” My friend, Terry, was fond of Joe. According to Terry, Joe remembered all of the details about his clients/patients and cared greatly for all of them. He was steadfast and unwavering in his work.
Secondly, Joe wrote poetry and through his poetry, captured the intensity of his life as a survivor. He was of the beat generation and recited much of his poetry in the beat rhythm with a thick New York City accent. His lived experience was boldly expressed in his poetry — his turn of phrase and dark imagery consistent with the intensity of living on the edge. To me, his writing and voice captured the dark undertow of life in the city, or in imaginary places beyond.
One evening in February 2009, I invited Joe to my recording studio on 38th street. I spent several hours recording Joe reading his poetry along with a few extemporaneous remarks as intros to his work. Joe came with a brief case of typewritten poems. The session lasted several hours. Afterwards, we took a walk through Times Square where Joe recounted nostalgically his experience of the bygone Times Square of peep shows, prostitution and porn shops.
Several days later, I organized the recorded readings, thinking that I would create a short video as a tribute to Joe’s life. Joe, too, looked forward to what I might do with our recorded session. Many years passed. Joe died and the recordings were buried in my server. I never saw Joe again. 15 years later, I rediscovered his recordings on my hard drive.
As I embark upon Eye of the Whirlwind, in an effort to resurrect my own creative work, I remembered the recordings. One night late, I retrieved them and brought them into my editing program: 10 poems and hundreds of portraits of Joe that Terry shot of him that evening during our recording session. As I listened to the audio, I thought of Thomas Edison “spirit phone” that sought to talk to the dead. I listened to “the ghost in the machine” as Joe came back to life. I never did create the work that I intended back in 2009. So, 15 years later this entry pays tribute to that one occurrence of crossing paths with a reformed addict, a social worker and a poet (all in one) who represents to me “a real New Yorker.”
POSTSCRIPT
As I prepared this piece, Terry shared with me a letter that he sent to Joe years ago. Terry had already left the agency and moved on through his own “lived experience” to reside in the Bronx. In this letter, Terry echoes back to Joe, in his own poetic voice, the harsh reality of living and dying souls lost and forgotten in residential buildings.
Hello, from the Bronx!
In my building,
A drunk strangles his clarinet for hours,
murdering it, murder most loud,
a loop of hell drowning out
the hip hop hopes of the lottery buying poor.
The same tune growing louder,
the drunker the drunk creator.
Someone throws a cherry bomb
or tunes his Glock
and all the car alarms join in.
C.C. nods soberly.
His liver,
Reaches terminal velocity.
‘I’m going to quit drinking. I have a plan.”
He will be dead in a year
along with Dwight, the crackhead out-of-work actor,
cast as ghetto trash on Law & Order,
or as a dissolving vampire
chasing Wesley Snipes.
Dwight looked like a bog man — black leather
skin fit like a bad suit on a dead man.
Then we lost the nice Hispanic
with intelligent diabetic eyes,
and legs once full of feeling,
died in bed, his arms spread for his cross,
cellphone in hand, feet nailed to the floor.
The Watchman, wrapped in silver jewelry like a chief,
Small, voluble, until they changed his medicine,
Grabbed me like ghetto quicksand to talk about Time.
He loved his chronographs.
I told him, like the human body, too many working parts to go wrong.
We talked on Tuesday.
He died on Wednesday.
all the dead dear ones.