The Crazy Bunch

by Willie Perdomo

Good conditions to be in the dialectic of O Wow Ooo Baby O Shit Ooo Damn.

  The perfect weather to master the art of standing under a bodega awning, shifting crisis to profit.

  There’s always a dreamer who thinks they can race the rain to the building, who loves the smell of wet concrete, and uses a good downpour to be discreet.

  There’s always one toddler who quietly crawls off the top step, dodges a thunderbolt, and quickly becomes fluent in all things stormy weather.

  Story goes that Don Julio was swept up, ripped around the corner, stumbled & cartwheeled to the light post, but he never let go of his porkpie hat.

  An improvised ballet near an improvised rivulet.

  Shopping bags, pulverized by branches, contort into a new nation of black flags. Our block was our island.

  The manhole on the corner perked with popsicle sticks, empty beer cans, and the brown sole of a fake karate slipper as we started to sink & boil.

  The forecast, you said, was type perfect.

  At the Preparación

  Mothers will always ask about the state of your tranquillity.

  Every block had a cemi. Someone who wasn’t afraid of being taken from the present. Her name was usually Cuca.

  To get to the preparación you have to go on a mission. Nothing impossible, but nothing that you could repeat.

  When you get to the palm tree on the corner, back up and take a left. You know there are no palm trees in the street, so you take a right.

  A mute Siamese cat will dare you with a quick scurry into Gaddafi’s.

  Go left, again, but just a chín.

  Go right, again, but just a chín.

  Turn slow at the third corner, as if you were an uptown eclipse, an indecisive twilight, a fix ready to burn.

  When you feel a follicle of sweat grovel down your back, you have arrived.

  You will see an altar in the living room.

  The altar should be stacked with some

  things you might need to start your day.

  Tato Brujo will have his back toward you.

  Make sure that he’s facing San Lazaro.

  Make sure his chants trumpet the rain’s insistence.

  When the preparación begins, they will pencil your wish on a slip of brown paper bag, and one by one they will dip your real name in a mug of honey.

  You tell the Bruja, I could use a blessing. She pushes up and says, I walked a long way, left dust tracks on the road, all the poems you wrote are stories I done told.

  You’ve seen that moment: a clap, an instant, a jab, a pair of hands soaked in rubbing alcohol, a flame, a vicious blue.

  The fire you can make.

  The light, not so much.

  You swear that you can see through walls.

  As much as you know, you can’t know.

  Yo, Nestor says, tell her to leave me alone, man.

  Campeche’s painting of Jesús Cristo looks at Petey with a sketch eye.

  Throw this coconut over your shoulder, the Bruja will say. Make sure you throw it high, so it splatters into a million little pieces, and tell me which piece is looking back at you.

  Juice & Butter

  That was the summer we rolled deep in the pursuit of Juice & Butter.

  Juice was a wink underwater,

  a finger snap in a dark hallway,

  a backward salute across one

  neckline, a club of coded fists.

  Butter was weigh money, out-of-

  town connects, leather bombers,

  Virgin Mary medallions, Starfire

  rubies, a suite full of wet labia.

  The stink talk

  The legit blue

  The last outlaw

  The uncut raw

  The right true

  The bright cue

  Bundles & stacks

  Brims & kicks

  The fresh racks

  The new blacks

  The fly shit

  The clean hit

  Juice

  Could cut the line

  Could skip the line

  Could draw the line

  Could book you before

  You got booked.

  Simple. Front and discover that there’s no future in fronting.

  Fronting: like acting bigger than your true size, like having pretensions, like you ain’t really

  Nothing/nothing

  nothing/nothing.

  Like saying you know when you don’t.

  Like knowing, and still saying you don’t.

  Like saying you won’t, but you do.

  Like swearing you didn’t, but you did.

  Juice.

  Juice met you going up the stairs &

  left you swinging out the window.

  Butter.

  Butter recouped what remained from a

  guiso, and opened up the next morning.

  Juice threw two fingers up from three blocks away, chopped them off an avenue later & posted them first class the next day.

  Juice delivered, ordered, stamped & bagged.

  If you started a story,

  Juice was there to finish it.

  Dapper Dan Meets Petey Shooting Cee-Lo

  The forecast called for the rawness, a litany of daps & pounds, denim two-pieces, bucket hats, and velour tracksuits.

  This is before the world went 2.0.

  You used the word money like

  Pretty Tony I got money, I got money

  Or Tony Rome I want my money

  Or Kizack Wizack What’s good, money?

  Or like Rehab Roger, who upon dishing a concept would say,

  I’m giving you good money, man.

  Having just finished shooting trips, Petey gripped a palmful of Grants & Benjamins, and his pupils were dilated to the riches.

  Street games fade one dream into another: You bet on your best hope, and what you gonna do with all that scrilla fluttering in the oval.

  Angel sorted his ducats, kept the faces on his bills skyward.

  Phat Phil’s inside pocket was packed with penny candies.

  You always knew there was a price for head cracks.

  A legion of Old-Schoolers flanked the bank: Black Rob, Hollywood from A Bunch of Grapes, Krip & Spy, Kong & Papo Kong, steady flashing knots, still opening spots.

  By that time, Hollywood’s total net in dirty money had reached short of a million were it not for the million and one shorts he took.

  You had to be laced to loot.

  The clack of die, shoot.

  You stir-fry nigga, shoot.

  Hollywood said, I would if I could.

  Dapper Dan was just walking down Lexington, on his way to his shop on 125th Street, a fresh LV stitched into his Stacy’s, a clutch to match, and asked Who got the bank on a whim because the day always comes when you have to put the past up for grabs; where, really, you learn that sometimes you get dressed up just to lose.

  Guiso at Florsheim’s

  All you had to say was I’m down.

  A box of black Hefty bags.

  Wire cutters & a crowbar.

  Two ropes & a dirty rag.

  One bike, a getaway car.

  A collage of curious faces.

  A class in paying attention.

  The history of false starts.

  A displaced apprehension.

  Whistle twice if Teddy-Up stalls.

  Whistle thrice on a backup call.

  Wire. Cut. Step.

  Repeat.

  Wire. Shit. Step.

  Repeat.

  Wire. What. Step.

  Repeat.

  Wire. But. Wait.

  Repeat.

  Wire. Oh. Shit.

  Repeat.

>   A double-headed light exposes the cracks in the planks, an assembly line of breaking & entering, rats hurry back into their holes, a spiderweb as big as a building—click, the alarm rings the song of the shank through barbed wire.

  Cut out, oh shit, let’s dip.

  Cut out, oh shit, boom bip.

  Cut out, oh shit, these don’t fit.

  Cut out, oh shit, size five or six?

  Hefty bags bombed from the rooftop like parachutes filled with British Walkers, Clydes, Chuck Taylors & suede Ballys.

  A reception squad waited at the bottom, and just like that a new shorty becomes down with the vanguard.

  A rumble down a fire escape, screen action hero jumps off a ledge, synchronized landings, no soundtrack, and if you asked us, that night we learned to find our way in the dark.

  THE POETRY COPS

  PAPO: Check out my blue suede Clydes.

  COPS: Is that a Chi Modu photo?

  PAPO: Check out those fat laces. That was guiso booty.

  COPS: I love the symmetry in your poses.

  PAPO: Funky funky fresh with the funky style.

  COPS: That looks like the old triple X Times Square.

  PAPO: Yeah, man, all kinds of deep throats, but that’s the Deuce of 7 Grandmasters, 5 Fingers of Death, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

  COPS: That sounds like the beginning of a poem.

  PAPO: We only saw like a third of the flicks that night.

  COPS: Maybe if we talk about the Dreads.

  PAPO: When you left your apartment today, after your coffee with two sugars, after your morning paper, did you think, Shit, this is it, this might be the day I check out of the Friendly Motor Inn.

  COPS: Okay, so, let’s get back to what you and the rest of the crew found when you returned from Times Square.

  PAPO: I can’t tell you what happened to Nestor. Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you.

  COPS: Well, why not just tell us what you saw.

  PAPO: Sometimes that phantom has a way of pulling up in front of the building like one preview too many.

  Triple Feature

  Triple feature at the Deuce, extra-butter popcorn, a grip of loose joints & a quart of Olde English 800 to chase the Snoopies.

  The trip was just starting to seek real estate and the glee in our marquee was sold out.

  Time to find your Drunken Monkey style with Brass Monkey swigs.

  Express to Grand Central, electric boogie past that old hot dog stand, past the new-release Fania records, past the diva’s neon wigs—better rock your Lees right, boy.

  Novelty nunchakus, the grip of tar & bubble gum on your sneaker sole & the right script for the right role.

  The dazzle of the erotic.

  The quest for the hypnotic.

  The Doo-Wop bombastic.

  First, flicks.

  Then, flicks.

  On the way back to the Block we booked free rides on the Shaolin Shuttle.

  Lip-synced sound effects, hopped off two-seaters, snaked around poles, swung from straphanger to straphanger,

  You have offended our block (lip-sync),

  and it’s time (lip-sync)

  to get (lip-sync) fucked up.

  Petey laughed fun-house hard, and popcorn trickled from his lips.

  Skinicky was in between cars, crying & laughing at the same time.

  Petey, Nestor said, your teeth are falling out of your mouth, bro.

  When you’re trapped in the middle of a divine comedy, sporting permanent creases, there’s no one to show you the way out.

  Angel said, Yo, I feel like this train is falling, but it’s falling up.

  Nestor said, Stop. Please. This is a dream, right?

  Then we laughed harder, and every blanco looked like a death wish logged into a diary.

  C’mon, man, stop playing, Nestor said.

  Later, the Block heard that Nestor ran all the way to East Harlem, nonstop, humming Lisa Lisa’s “I Wonder If I Take You Home.”

  There’s a flick from that night: a crew of us rocking name buckles with styles that couldn’t catch up to our faces.

  SUCKER FOR LOVE ASS NIGGA

  THE POETRY COPS TALK WITH PHAT PHIL

  PHAT PHIL: This one? This one is at Josephine’s Sweet 16. The party was at El Maestro on Southern Boulevard. We didn’t rock with the BX like that, but we went on the strength.

  COPS: Skinicky says he fell in love with Josephine at the party. Is that accurate?

  PHAT PHIL: He was in love with her way before that. He just didn’t know it. Sucker for love ass nigga.

  COPS: No one wants to talk about Nestor.

  PHAT PHIL: What’s there to talk about?

  COPS: There has to be closure, no? There has to be a resolution.

  PHAT PHIL: All I know is that Nestor ran all the way to 123rd from the Deuce. All the way. Without stopping. Put that in your notebook.

  COPS: How do you know, Phil?

  PHAT PHIL: Because he told me, nigga. And call me Phat Phil. Nestor stood lamping on the Block, and Petey was holding him down. That’s what we did. We held each other down.

  COPS: I guess you had interests to protect on the Block.

  PHAT PHIL: C’mon, man, stop with the Willie Bobo. I saw Nestor and I saw Petey before I got on the train to go to Josephine’s party. That Snoopy they dropped had them twenty thousand leagues under the city with the woo woo woo.

  COPS: Let’s talk about Josephine & Skinicky, then.

  PHAT PHIL: Cool, because that’s where I was. I was at the party. I was trying to get with Nena, who is now my wife. You can ask her. I was at the party all night.

  COPS: What do you remember about the party?

  PHAT PHIL: Not for nothing, honestly & truthfully, I remember dancing with Josephine’s grandmother and Skinicky yelled, Spin her, spin her, spin her!

  Josephine’s Sweet 16

  By the time we got to Josephine’s Sweet 16 there were cheese doodle fingers everywhere.

  Phat Phil was already deep into his fake Pachanga.

  Skinicky, Angel & Dre set up a snap shop by the cake tiers.

  Josephine’s eyes were lit like strobes & glitter, her silver dress hardly fit her, & because Angel was still tripping, he saw sequin in everything: quinine in the ice cream, a fork & spoon standoff; he even saw his fate in a rack of plastic champagne glasses, bubbles big as balloons released into the sky all at once. C’mon, bro, you can’t mess with a man who’s wearing a tuxedo, he said.

  Cubes of cheddar & guayaba sat like Zen masters on the spheres of Ritz Crackers.

  Josephine’s brother kept adjusting his top hat because he had to give away his sister. Told us to stay by the roundtable just in case she tried to roll out and get reborn all of a sudden.

  Josephine graced her gold-plated throne. Her reinvention was imminent.

  Put on your cake face, Angel said.

  What we thought we heard Skinicky say was, If Sekhmet created the desert with a breath, then Shorty Bon Bon split the Atlantic to death.

  Party over here, party over there, and this rite you get to take with you.

  The grown-ups spent most of their free time in the bathroom, and whenever the DJ played El Gran Combo, we all sighed & dipped to the staircase to make out, roll up, or add up.

  Little Joe, Josephine’s uncle, tried to call us out on our stagnancy—nondisciplined knuckleheads, he’d say; and, as a way of offering evidence, he’d point to Phat Phil, & there was Phat Phil crashing into the VIP table. Almost made Josephine’s abuelita spill her rum until abuelita threw him a lifesaving turn, and spun Phat Phil back into his sea.

  There’s that moment right when the flashbulb flashed on Josephine’s smile, where your sense of lottery & random tries to reason with you, and, yet, there’s just enough chance to survive more than one fres
h hell and emerge without taking shorts.

  At the Battle

  There’s only air & opportunity between

  you & the world.

  Some crews fight for corners.

  Some crews fight for blood.

  Some crews fight for love.

  Some crews fight for rights.

  Some crews fight for flags.

  Some crews fight for brags.

  The Old-Schoolers used to send us

  back to fight, so you never ran.

  Hearts had to be certified &

  prepared for daily pop quizzes.

  Had to be ready for that sweet

  place in the sun to say,

  You fuckin’ with the wrong one.

  Sure enough, we weren’t the only crew thinking about crashing things, & heroes were for extra-mustard hot dogs on Sundays at the Cosmo.

  Even if you were good with your dukes, you still had to Up Rock against cats from the Boogie Down, and when they crossed the Bridge, they always thought shit was over before it started.

  At the battle, you could detect which rhymes were bit,

  which rhymes were counterfeit, which bars were

  written & which top-five rhymes were freestyled.

  Nothing bloody, but you could tell why we talked with our hands.

  An ex–Savage Samurai stepped in between Papu and Freeze and said, Y’all just can’t stand there and look at each other. Somebody has to swing.

  Harlem Cowboys were still part of the air, still drawing on who’s left to talk about the last face they saw before it all went down, before you left town.

  The legend held that myths made the music and rush hour made you rich, but this was a different decade.

  The cipher of testimonies were correctional legacies, a stitch to make a vest, and someone to regale with that day’s events.

  Silly rhymes were like petty crimes—nothing at stake but city time.

  You could be rich in battle but poor in moves, so you had to flip medieval fast.

  Play yourself, & get slayed from first to last stop.

  Papu synchronized his shell-toes with a gangster head nod, spun revolutions with a Kangol bell at peace on his head, & went and turned his legs into scissors.