Something Bordering on Esoteric

Get these kicks just right
we need a subjugation high light
reel in another junkie
I want to breathe in this Pac Man atmosphere.

Spinning like a top
trying to catch my lover
with a butterfly knife
and a conscious knowledge
of how deep the cuts run.

I’ve never been too good at coddling
never too good at reprimands
never too good, but decent at searing
glnces
and meat.

Glaze over my second chance
requiems,
those words
I never said and I just need
a
forum
to rattle out these words on another blank
canvas.

Sorry this is a little too late
a little too little
but in a few hours I will
forget how else to write this.
I will close another grip
around some nooses
and drunk drivers
just to remember how I got here.

Between the shakes and quakes
I emptied my Yahtzee cup
onto more parquet than I’d like to admit,
this time
it was sniper scooped on a singular momentum.

We spelled out your name in dreams,
I don’t remember how to do that without
those echoes
etching your remembrance
into my subconscious.

Lighting the end of another ash stick
just to try and contemplate in solidarity.
No reason to do so today,
but
someday
I can figure this puzzle out
its constructs got me stressed
enough to no longer see the silver lining
you forged
atop my temple’s fire.

Coalesce into another esoteric minimalist
attempt at resurrection of a past tense eulogy
for a still-heart-beating, limitless institution.
One day.
Just one day.


.

Another Deadened Regime

Don't eye me sideways
I'm going to sit here
Indian style
light this match
and do my best
impression of a torch.

She cannot save me this time,
a murmur in sound waves
spitting florescent beams
into splitting headaches
I cried your name
into a tornado and watched
it twist into a million
broken swords.
I swallowed each shard whole
let it occupy my precepts
and quiz my Desires
on what their intentions are.

I want to see my body made of ash
a mache of cryptic solitude,
glue me together dear,
you've always had the best fingers
they have flames dancing
on their tips.
You never did tell me how
they never burn your nails,
is it from the ash you borrowed
from my temple?
Is that your repelent?
Is that your secret?

Please just fight fair!
fightfair!

Sometimes
the drum kicks never
drown out your name enough
it sounds too god
to be uttered by laymen.
I will quiet your lament
and resist convergence
on another ocean portrait.

I am praying
salient
wake me up marionette strings!
I want to be cognisant today!
I want to see her
today...

My fingers
they burn
black
no ash can save them
no refrain
can quiet their screams.
Those flames waltz
across my nails,
they are cracking
like smiles,
at least today
that's what they look like.
At least today
I hope you smiled at least once
at least today
I didn't open my crisis
onto a bed of broken swords.

I have an itch in my stomach.
So I swallowed a mouse to fix it,
now I have an itch and a mouse
scurrying around,
so I swallowed my fears;
now I have an itch
and a rotting rat,
so I swallowed my doubts;
now I have an itch
and a rotting rat
and something rancid brewing.
Two fingers down an esophagus
ripping through
vocal cords
until I removed this bile.
Now
now here I stand -
spine straightened,
no longer under the weight
of another broken promise;
jaw clentched,
I have too many words
to utter to you
I want to have my strength then;
fists clentched,
ready to punch through
any wall that might pose
this
an obstacle;
feet firm,
I need better ground to stand on
so I gathered up my dreams
and mediation rants;
eyes shut,
rest now
so tomorrow I can fully see you
clearly.

Here
stands before you a once
broken child
smashing door frames
like tinderbox music,
i have grown since those miscues
those manic mistakes
and you want to test my gold?
Good,
I have a barrell of quaters
at your behest
and a shotgun chest
to climb out of
before that time
can commence,
but when I do
I will be
waiting
and ready
for you...

A Crying Shame

On this day
I saw you listless
and eyeless.
Cry me a simile
and I'll never see you smile.

Never before can I remember
how hollow you looked
the first time I saw you.
You stand
stocked and cocked
bullets bursting forth
I want to eat their lead
spit out their metallic
on another grand piano.

Swallow this moment
like a few shots
and let it warm your body
as a bullet warms its
exit wound.
Cry me a river
and I'll never give a damn
until we hold
a psalm
til it cracks
into a million smiles
and disintegrates
like the miasma
that was so beautiful
yesterday.

Hold me
I want to feel warmth again
a body of trouble
'neath
a waterfall of doubt
until I rip its ribs asunder
rendered useless and stagnant.
A rock
against another tide
of seamless oceans,
laugh me to sleep
before this endears me
to everything you can't stand
so that I
may
also
be reminiscent of their beings.

One day
I will see you standing at my door frame
and I will not flinch at your silhouette
at least
not this time.

From Whence It Came

When I was younger I cooked out of interest, out of a compelling sense that this was something fun, they were bonding moments between mother and I on the stove or my father and I on the grill (not to be too clichéd). Those were moments of love – unbridled, unequivocal, unequaled love. At the age of three I cooked my first dish in my memory (mac’n’cheese) and it was phenomenal. It was the beginning of a lifelong love, obsession really, that has permeated everything I do to this day. I travel with food at the apex of my thoughts – “where should I eat,” “what’s unique in this city,” “whose opinion can I depend on for my food queries.”
It, all of it, is built on a basis of love. Love for my parents, the love I see on my family’s and friend’s faces when they are truly happy with something I put before them; no one can mimic being able to parlay happiness with a well-cooked piece of meat glistening on a plate, with a sauce that took hours of constant temperament circumambulating the centerpiece; a few pieces of accoutrement just to set off additional notes of sour, sweet, starch, astringency or bite necessary to complete that singular dish. Executed, all of it, with the utmost care and devotion one would reserve for gems.
It is love and the catharsis therein that keeps me doing this, keeps me going. No one wants to open up in a kitchen – one filled with as much machismo as a high school locker room, or enough internal walls to start paying rent on. But, still, that is not a necessity of love is there. And if there is no love you, as a diner, can tell.
The difference between a good meal and a meal remembered for its depravity and off-taste is the emotional state of the person who cooks the meal. I must admit that I am a fan of music that does not necessarily condone happiness and sound thought while I cook, but still, even with that said, there is surprising differences in how effective I am depending on mood. You are the last table, the large one being boisterous and loud in the dining room, loud enough so I can hear you, as the minute hand ticks ever so close to marking midnight my ability to stay fervent in my love will wane. I know there are those out there who like to push those bounds: “I’m paying good money for you to feed me”; I get that, in fact I am probably more livid towards the matre d’ who sat you at 10pm in the first place. Still, it is hard for me to stay happy and love the food I put out at that hour. Those are the tables where I remember why I started smoking, and why I miss it so much now.

In my quest to become a better cook, to learn from those who have ‘made it,’ a loving kitchen and environment has become a must. Learning comes from two places: a place of vinegar or honey. The very old school logic is to belittle, to demean until your point sticks, or the way of the new school logic where a worker is not a slave – they are a logical cog in a greater machine that cannot run without their input.
That is what I want to instill. When one loves the food, their employees, their co-workers, and their front of house the food jump by leaps and bounds in quality. Everyone works better, every wants to improve, the impetus to grow is not out of fear, it is out of a sense of community: if you mess up you are not letting yourself down, you’re letting down your community, your family.
I currently work in a restaurant where I am an intern, yet I can give my input to our menu whenever I might be able to help out. That is the restaurant I want to work in the rest of my life, that is the restaurant I want to create. So often a restaurant is a place for the disheveled, the disgruntled, and the burnt out; this fosters an environment of pain and suffering, where respect is earned by home much torture you can take. This is not, by any means, an exaggeration.
As the times progress more and more restaurants will become ingrained in fostering an environment that is conducive to learning without extreme repercussions for a mistake. Belittlement does nothing other than make someone timid and afraid that they do not even want to take a risk and left to never learn, one never learns from mistakes rather they are accustomed to a set standard of experience that will never condone creativity or expansion of self.


With the ideology of love seeping into every facet of the cooking industry we are closing in on the pinnacle of what we, as cooks, want to do. Imagine a world where cooks and chefs and bakers have two days off a week, where monetary gain is usurped by quality and a constant eye on the relative happiness of their workers, and it is a world that can finally break free of the shackles of drug, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine abuse and the rampant increase in suicide rates. Stress is literally a killer.
I got into this industry for my love of food, love of the comradeship, love of the pace, and yet here I am a veteran of loveless kitchens, knowing that I will never go back into that segment of my industry. This too will change, this too will end.

Carrot Caramel

1/2 gallon of organic carrot juice

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons heavy cream



Place all the carrot juice in a pot on medium heat and reduce. Continuously skim off the foam that will form ontop. Once it reduces to a cup of liquid add the sugar and reduce the heat. Once it becomes very syrupy add the butter and heavy cream and emulsify. Strain and cool.

Cracking More Smiles Than Beers

It’s a metronome the way that spoon grabs a mouthful of bubbling butter, perfumed with rosemary and thyme, crashes with the pan, before it empties its contents onto a piece of unsuspecting protein. It’s rhythmatic, “I believe she’s playing 16’s over there!”


It gives a flow of cogency to what is left of a non-cogent world. The tapping, the melodious tapping; it is not annoying, rather it gives this chaos control in the same sense Los Angeles traffic signals conduct chaos like Mozart. She says nothing as she puts away her spoon into a water-filled quart container, grabs the handle of a tepid, coal pan and twists into a tornado until the small of her back explodes. Another spoon in hand, placing a cheek onto a pile of puree, arranging little polka dots of reminiscent sauces into Pollack-like arrangements on our newest plates – a sprinkle of braised pistachios to finish the dish. A quick nod from the chef to signify approval – the only wage we really require – before she begins the next dish.

Her hands they are road maps of hard work and pain: fingertips cracking under pressure, wrists bulging from carpel tunnel, veins like the Underground, skin caked over from splattered butter and blood, and, my dear, it is only seven o’clock – we are halfway done but we have barely begun.

With a yet-to-be-fading wherewithal she still places those fillets, those surgically manicured herbs, those perfected and refined sauces, those garnishes no one will notice until the real eater comes in and can appreciate the care and how much of herself she has put into every element. She smiles often, carries a pocketful of mistakes and miscues from past restaurants, and never forgets how to make a simile out of a parable.

In the corner I thinly spread a newly conceived sauce turning chocolate into a window pane, this day I did not make too many mistakes. My speed it is finally catching up to my brains and today it showed its resiliency even in the face of too many orders, I am careful to remember how my desserts looked like a schism and how, in fact, I needed to be more patient even if I can never see the goodly sensibilities of being slow – at times.

Cracked four dozen eggs tonight, their yolk and white caking under my fingernails and the bit that fell on the floor earlier slowly turning opaque in the relative heat of the kitchen. I did not have the thought pattern to wipe it up in time, just turned on the afterburners and finished the job that had to be done. In moments like this I wonder if my kin will ever take after me and I realize that I cannot fathom them being anything like me – why would they want to be?

I have too many scars to count and I haven’t seen the crack of 25 yet, too many cuts, too many late nights and early mornings, too many requites with a lobster and a rabbit; too many caffeine suppliers; too many unwise responses when docile would have sufficed; too many wrong decisions; too many head-banging, want-to-punch-puppies nights to cope with; too many times have I lost something precious, something held dear, something I would’ve fought for lost because I did not have the time to see the cracks growing; too many times I have woken up knowing I should never do this thing I’ve called life again, but I do anyways; too many times I have to remind myself what a cognizant relationship looks like, and fella, it does not look like that; too many times do I have to remind myself that…after two decades I have projected the rest of my life on a blackboard and can map out its route because, still, I can look in the mirror and honestly say that I love this.

In the same way I loved her, in the same way I miss them, in the same way I crack more smiles than beers just to keep a handle on life. In the same way that metronomic spoon keeps my chaotic livelihood manageable.

Reminds Me of Lobsters

“That smell reminds me of lobsters.”


“What smell?”



“When you clarify butter, it smells like that drawn butter crap they give you with your lobster.”



“Ok…”



“It reminds me of summer time in New En…”



“I got to cut you off there,” she interrupted. “You’re getting too nostalgic for me.”



“Why can’t I be nostalgic?” he retorted.



“Cuz it’s for pussies, that’s why.”



The conversation was dead in the water moments before he began its consummation. It was a vain attempt at small talk and, really, a summarized dissertation of how he felt. She was always too rough around a rusty shell of a woman, but he didn’t mind – in fact he loved her because of it. He returned to his whisking and she back to her occupational hazard of grabbing something hot with a wet towel. Got to make this right; she yelped in pain, her palm’s bordering on second degree; yolks are heating up, coagulating too rapidly, slow it down; he hands her his dirty, yet dry towel; seasoning’s off, pinch of salt and some acid; she removed the sizzle platter from the oven and the duck breast was better off fit for charcoal than consumption; shit, she’s fucked up again; she whips around and throws the entire thing in the garbage – she’s just not getting the concepts and all he wants to do is help.



She was the third angle on a sideways, culinary love triangle. Or at least to him she was. In all honesty there was no triangle, more like a line with two points; and, more precisely, she was more like a pivot point: she was the point in which all of his thoughts rotated; never allowing him to focus on what he needs to do, right now he needs to finish this sauce, but all he wants to do is grab every last ounce of burn cream for her.



It was that moment, that make-or-break analogy you hear every inspirational sports movie talk about: the girl of his fleeting dreams is sitting there distraught and without a soul to care for her, while you are already four tables behind just because you’ve been ogling her in sideways glances; not to mention that your sauce is about to break ruining the next few tables by pushing them; NOT TO MENTION that doing this would send an otherwise otherworldly calm chef into a mental tirade the likes of which should not be mention.



And you would do it all for her. For even a look back in recognition.



Kill the heat; remove the sauce; grab new duck breast; season it; review old tickets, cringe over new ones; four trout – one no butter, but EXTRA béarnaise, what the fuck..? – two NY strip – one midrare, one well –add on three more raviolis (seven all day), still four ducks barely working; start five pans over high heat…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, oil ‘em all; run, no sprint, to first aid; grab burn cream; don’t forget some ice too…



He plops down the burn cream and ice next to her, returns to his sizzle platters all lined up with open arms hoping grasp something beautiful.



He seasons all of the proteins, cranks the pasta water and tastes for seasoning (it reduced too much, more like the ocean boiling). He resumes seasoning, checks the temperatures of the pans and they too have their arms outstretched, smoke at their sides lapping the metallic overhang above.



TSSSSSSSsst…A sound every cook knows to listen for, when food kisses a pan just right the pan orgasms and you hear that noise. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…



He looks at the clock to see that the second hand tickles the 67th minute – it was foolish of him to do so. There will be many more ticks where that came from and to realize the time this early on was going to make the rest of the night drag on. For this is his only tamable woman: a three hour crunch where hundreds open up their festering jaws, teeth glistening in the fire behind him, just waiting, praying, and hoping he’ll be dinner.



And she’s still not getting it.



The hours roll on, the dinner rush slows, and his patience with a dysfunctional wait staff runs so thin it starts to look more like Kate Moss after a coke binge than the body type he fits. The night comes to a close; it was easier today, but still rougher than others. Why can’t these servers understand we have limited amounts of products? Still they order after we are out, still they make us RUSH, still we are holding back Poseidon with interlocking pinkies, still we fight forwards and hope it will all end shortly.



He buys her a beer at the bar that night neglecting to hold back all his compassion for being subtle; his inhibitions have been caught in the night breeze like a plastic bag – it’s somewhere down the road by now. They talk, they say nothing great or astounding, but at least they are talking. He wants nothing more than to tell her that she is the reason he no longer gets mad; she is the reason his last cigarette was four weeks ago even if the nicotine tastes less brutal than love; that she is the only fathomable thing holding together weakening fibers of his being; and he wants to tell her all of this even though she will never understand his mumbled, discombobulated attempts at romance.



He buys her a few more beers. He’s been waiting too long for this moment to let her lacking wallet detract her from furthering their conversation.



They talked about past lovers and previous attempts at post-work fornication in the walk-in fridge. She was letting herself be vulnerable for the first time in a long time; her rough-‘n’-tough attitude was quickly flying away the more she talked with him. She reminisced about how distraught she was tonight, how absent minded she had been lately due to some…blah blah blah, it was really just a pity party excuse, you don’t need to know what it was, just what it meant to him.



She seemed to talk for hours, and she did. He didn’t mind at all, rather enjoyed looking at the way her hair seemed to never be held back by her ear, or how impressed he was at the very simple fact that her hair was always so clean and so well kept even under the hell-like conditions she (they) dealt with.



She was always more striking than beautiful – green eyes hidden under sinking eye sockets that wore the lack of sleep worse than her personality; her eyebrows at perched at a sharp angle towards the outer ¾ of their length making her always seem rushed or in trouble at work by making her always look surprised; she held all of her weight on the insides of her shoulder blades, she complained about it often (he even offered a message or two, she always accepted), right where the two met and you could always see them stick out ever so slightly no matter what she wore; her hands were as kept as could be expected of a cook – her forearms and the top of her hands were littered with so many scars and calluses that they looked more like a battle field from an army that had just lost – but she was still able to maintain a sense of pride with her palms that felt more like silken tofu than skin.



He was holding them now, her hands, and he was happy.



They walked back to his place, sober enough for him not to feel guilty, drunk enough to poor decision making, and he was happy. She was happy.



The formidable shell of ambivalence, misanthropy, dissidence and an unbridled bitterness was melting the next morning. She was smiling, focused, and ready to part ways with the shell she had shed that night.



That day she seared a duck breast: Tssstt it went. That day she understood what reminded him of lobsters and faraway, past tense dreams; that day that noise reminded her of him and that, above all else, made her nostalgic.