ALSO BY WILLIE PERDOMO
The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
Smoking Lovely
Where a Nickel Costs a Dime
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Copyright © 2019 by Willie Perdomo
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Perdomo, Willie, author.
Title: The crazy bunch / Willie Perdomo.
Description: [New York] : Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2019] | Series: Penguin poets |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018047501 (print) | LCCN 2018049478 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525504627 () | ISBN 9780143132691
Classification: LCC PS3566.E691216 (ebook) | LCC PS3566.E691216 A6 2019 (print) | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047501
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Jason Booher
Version_1
for NERUDA PERDOMO
CONTENTS
Also by Willie Perdomo
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
The Poetry Cops (Consolidated Poetry Systems)
In the Face of What You Remember
In the Face of What You Remember
Bad Habits
The Day of Our Founding
Head Crack Head Crack
The Poetry Cops
Some Things You Might Need to Start Your Day
We Used to Call It Puerto Rico Rain
At the Preparación
Juice & Butter
Dapper Dan Meets Petey Shooting Cee-Lo
Guiso at Florsheim’s
The Poetry Cops
Triple Feature
Sucker for Love Ass Nigga
The Poetry Cops Talk with Phat Phil
Josephine’s Sweet 16
At the Battle
The Poetry Cops
That’s My Heart Right There
Sucker for Love Ass Nigga
The Poetry Cops Talk with Josephine
The Poetry Cops Talk with Nena, Cachita, Shameka, and Rosie
Close to the River
How It Went Down
Not for Nothing, Honestly & Truthfully
When Teddy-Up Rolls
No ID
You Lose Something Every Day
You Lose Something Every Day
Revival
Where Did We Find the Laughter?
The Poetry Cops
Freshly Dipped
Each One Teach One
Forget What You Saw
Forget What You Saw
Forget What You Heard
The Poetry Cops
Forget What You Heard
Brother Lo on the Prison Industrial Complex
The Whole World on a Subway
Bullshit Walks
Drug War Confidential
A Spot Where You Can Kiss the Dead
Breaking Night
On Sundays
Trago
The Poetry Cops
The Poetry Cops
Killer Diller
To Be Down
Bust This, Run That
They Won’t Find Us in Books
Ghost Face
The Poetry Cops
Shout-outs & Big Ups
About the Author
“. . . to be our own, to be electric, fresh . . .”
—Walt Whitman
THE POETRY COPS
(Consolidated Poetry Systems)
COPS: That’s you and who else in this picture?
PAPO: That’s me, Phat Phil, Nestor, Petey, Dre, and Angel. That was a Friday night. We were lamping in front of 2026 Lexington Avenue, near Gaddafi’s all-night spin counter. The Bruja on the second floor was arranging a preparación for us. You could call it a freedom party.
COPS: Preparations? You mean reparations?
PAPO: You know, like protection, spirit guides, caminos, higher powers, pigeon-chasing.
COPS: Twenty twenty-six. That’s where you found—
PAPO: Yellow tops, back-to-life summers, “9½,” first kisses, cop chases, catch-n-kill for real. Twenty twenty-six was the beginning, the end, lingua franca, the hill & bottom.
COPS: They called you Skinicky. Is that right?
PAPO: They still call me Skinicky.
COPS: Bagging up bricks and writing poems Skinicky?
PAPO: I wrote more bricks than poems; bagged up, all together, less than a brick but came out with at least half a book.
COPS: But it’s true you were writing poems.
PAPO: Bro, poems were falling from the rooftops, flailing out the windows; sometimes you’d pick up the corner pay phone and a poem would be calling collect.
COPS: Can we talk about Josephine?
PAPO: Beginnings should come with a starter kit. Sometimes I feel like I dreamed Josephine. Like for real.
COPS: We thought we could help you remember.
PAPO: Man, had to be at least five presidents and a breakfast since I’ve seen Josephine.
COPS: You were the first one, she said. To find Nestor.
PAPO: She didn’t say that. Angel was the first one to find Nestor. But I was there when Dre decided he wanted to be an archangel. Every age requires a new lens, at least one pair of dress pants, and a dope whatever you need to witness. I’m saying, we gave Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five their controlling symbol.
COPS: How so?
PAPO: You know, broken glass everywhere. Street games before the rules changed. We’d line up empty pints, fifths & quarts on a plank, walk twenty paces to a five-gallon bucket brimmed with small chunks of Manhattan schist, and we would commence to slinging them shits; testing our angry range, our winning-shot fantasies, developing a penchant for target & aim, beauty & blame.
COPS: How long were you down with the Crazy Bunch?
PAPO: I’m still down with the Crazy Bunch.
COPS: Let’s start with the Bruja on that Friday night.
PAPO: For some of us, telling a story, or hearing one on the humble, meant clearing a path, booking a cruise to self-knowledge, and for others it meant getting some ass. No passive thinking. You couldn’t be caught blinking when you told a story. Question is, who’s left for the telling and who tells about the leaving after they been left.
COPS: So, who’s left?
PAPO: What set us off is the same thing that set us apart, you could say. That weekend our endings were paid in full. No matter where we went, the search for a loving eye was in effect. But there’s some shit I promised to take to the grave. Y’all know how that go.
Tell me the story
Of all these things.
Beginning wherever you w
ish, tell even us.
—Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
“Tell it. Tell it for real.”
—Brother Lo
IN THE FACE OF WHAT YOU REMEMBER
In the Face of What You Remember
You remember, that was the summer of Up Rock, quarter water, speed knots, pillow bags, two-for-five, Jesus pieces, and Bambú. The Willie Bobo was turned up to ten, and some would’ve said that a science was dropped on our summer.
The summer that was lit with whispers of wild style, Rock Steady battles & white party plates made all kinds of moons on the playground foam.
The summer the Burner was used to eat & mandate, inspired Sunday sermons, became a literary influence with humming climaxes, a bribable tale, a dub tied to a string & squashing beef wasn’t an option.
The summer of fresh shrills, and a future somersaulting off a monkey bar; a future placing bets that all us old heads, desperate to find a new cool, could not flip pure.
That was the summer that our grills dropped to below freezing.
Back then, Palo Viejo was thermal & therapy, bones were smoked in the cut, and you had to expect jungle gym giggle to be accompanied by buckshot.
That was the summer Charlie Chase hijacked megawatts from Rosa’s kitchenette, found gems in a milk crate, spun his one & twos below rims that still vibrated with undocumented double-dunks.
The same summer we became pundits & philosophers, poets & pushers; that we all tried to fly, but only one of us succeeded.
The summer that Papu turned up to extra status. The only one in the crew who had reduced fame’s window by a fifth when the camera panned his Cazal-laced Up Rock in the Roxy scene of Beat Street.
One could say we gave the Block gasp & gossip, body & bag, a folktale worth its morphology.
That was the season we had reason to rock capes & wings, chains & rings, some of us flew Higher than most, and tricks were hardly ever pulled from a hat; all that, & a bag of BBQ Bon Tons was enough for at least one of us to say,
I’m straight.
Bad Habits
Petey liked to twist the right end of his mustache when he was listening for updates. (Y’all remember Petey. He was always on that chuck chill-out tip, but most days he didn’t get to choose.)
When he ignited a squabble, Chuna would slap his right thigh to get every syllable out with a violent scansion.
Tommy Lee threw rocks at unsuspecting pigeons.
Dwight kept his right hand tucked into the crotch of his Lees, steady stunting on some bollo.
Angel bit his tongue when he wanted to ask a question.
Max counted his money and his money counted him.
Brother Lo liked to whistle “All the Things You Are” when it rained that Puerto Rico rain.
Chee-Wa’s nose used to break out into an anxious table of contents when he was skied up.
Nestor hated the words Stop, I was only playing.
Loco Tommy blinked three times, convulsively, and then tapped the right side of his face against his right shoulder blade.
Jujo spit and spit and spit and spit.
Popeye had a villainous laugh.
Dre loved to crash revivals.
Chino Chan did back handsprings from sewer to sewer whenever he received good news.
Georgie could scratch his ankle straight through a graveyard shift.
The first thing out of Skinicky’s mouth was always a feeling.
The Day of Our Founding
Dwight was going to the D, the mighty
D, where Rosie, Sonia, Debbie, Cachita,
Shameka, her sisters, and Josephine’s
cousin from Wagner liked to castle &
smoke, swear & secret, share hoops &
slap their Bostons on the chess tables.
Slick Vic, Tyrone, Junebug & Heck Collect
had set up a Florsheim guiso. There were
two plans to crash Josephine’s Sweet 16.
Nestor, Dre, and Petey got freshly dipped,
& went to the Deuce to catch & take flicks.
Almost twenty-five deep chillin’ on two
masticated benches, and Nestor said:
TCB. The Crazy Bunch.
By that age, Nestor had groomed a full
beard, rocked all kinds of captain, 52’d
his way through an apache line of Down
Brothers, & we were all there when he
flipped a half-pike off five cake-stacked
mattresses that shimmied with blackouts.
Naturally. (You have to recall, that day
was puffed & passed, and Skinicky said,
Naturally.
Purple City hollered, You heard this
nigga? This nigga just said, “Naturally.”)
The spliff was choo-choo’d, the guffaw
lit—shit, you laughed too, so naturally
Dre, who had a boom decisive left hook,
only two words to say at a party minus
two steps at a jam, who was the only
one to draw one-on-one with Nestor,
nodded his head, cosigned, and said:
Word. The Crazy Bunch.
Head Crack Head Crack
Zoo Bang
Auld Lang
Brick City
Fly Ditty
Drug War
Street Noir
War Fat
Bank That
Sneaker Box
Check Account
Get Fresh
Stay Fly
Night Pool
Old School
Stash House
Corner Store
We Cool
No More
Smoked Out
Player’s Ball
Okey Doke
Flat Broke
Hang Out
No Doubt
Black Out
Death Count
Dwight Gone
Tone Gone
Petey Gone
Body Shot
Chop Shop
Black Hole
Myths Sold
Break That
Like This
Black Cat
Death Kiss
Power Move
Move That
Krush Groove
Dope Shit
Step Back
Get This
THE POETRY COPS
PAPO: That’s Nestor at the preparación. He didn’t like messing with saints & songs, and shit. But he went anyway, on the strength.
COPS: What’s wrong with his eyes?
PAPO: Nothing, he’s just in his truth.
COPS: Did anyone else get prepared that night?
PAPO: All of us. One by one. Starting with Angel. The Bruja told Nestor she saw something, but Nestor said, Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Better to unknow and find yourself in the knowing, you know what I’m saying? But look carefully at the Bruja. Look at the background. How many hands you see?
COPS: That looks like a blur in the exposure to me.
PAPO: You could call it a “blur,” but that same hand might be touching you right now.
COPS: Could be the raindrops on the window too.
PAPO: All I know is that I stomp the floor three times with my right foot whenever I take a shower.
COPS: Who was under the bedsheet?
PAPO: That was me. By that point, I had already left the living room. My heartbeat was big that night. Cold Crush big. You could fit thimbles in my nostrils. I still have a piece of the coconut that I threw off the roofto
p.
COPS: C’mon, stop with that chicken blood voodoo.
PAPO: I’m just saying, man, the Bruja wore white for a whole year. Can’t fool with someone who wears white for a whole year. Let’s say you see a trail of cigar smoke streaming down Lexington Avenue—you know where there’s smoke there must be a past. I don’t really believe in ghosts like that, but, yo, if you stand on the corner long enough there’s some shit that you can see coming.
Some Things You Might Need to Start Your Day
An egg yolk
A dollop of white sugar
A broken scissor blade
Double palm strips
Coconut oil
A stick of yage
Pull the shades up
A fat Buddha
Two dream crystals
Some dirt from Utuado
A peculiar heart
An old movie ticket
Yellow collares
A crown of bananas
Red collares
A mini notebook
Green collares
A tiny pencil
White collares
A miniature glass clown
Two fish bones
A love letter from Rikers
Four white candles
A cut ribbon
An old photo
Your baby shoes
A pineapple
A bowl of seedless grapes
One tangerine
A puro
A bowl of daisies
Clap three times &
Let the work
Do its job
We Used to Call It Puerto Rico Rain
The rain had just finished saying, This block is mine.
The kind of rain where you could sleep through two breakthroughs, and still have enough left to belly-sing the ambrosial hour.
Blood pellets in the dusk & dashes of hail were perfect for finding new stashes; that is to say, visitations were never announced.
A broken umbrella handle posed a question by the day care center.
A good time to crush a love on a stoop, to narrate through a window, to find the heartbeat of solitude, and collect gallons for the Bruja’s next baño.