Everyone knows Ed McMahon and Betty Davis
were son and daughter of Lowell — before
they traipsed the path to Hollywood and fame

Betty didn’t even bother to stay in Lowell
long enough to graduate from Lowell High
or  attend the college there.  Perhaps she hated
being from Lowell — perhaps she didn’t care at all?

Ed stuck around a bit longer, and even came back
to visit his aunt. Whether he loved Lowell or not
he loved his family — perhaps that is enough.

For decades, the two of them stayed
in Hollywood for the sake of career — and maybe
love. Love would be enough, I think,
but Love in Hollywood isn’t so real as there
in Lowell. It’s a plastic bauble that bends and breaks
to be quickly disposed of and forgotten.

Love in Lowell, that’s a courser object
made of heavier things — the weight of family
and history, the rusted scuffed up finish
that weakens the body but leaves the piece
more beautiful. I wonder how Betty and Ed
could be happy in a place where love means so little.

I suppose it doesn’t matter now, seeing as they’re dead.

Che wrote his mother a letter
apologizing for his unforgivable behavior
fully understanding if she never wanted to speak to him again.

Whether she did or didn’t,
i don’t know, I just know he was drunk
and out of his mind.  I know

he thought his behavior was an atrocity.
He was right (of course)
about the wrong behavior.

Long ago, who knows how long really, the Iroquois told the story of creation with all the world upon the back of a turtle swimming through the heavens. Whether it’s a symbol or a metaphor is somewhat irrelevant, and whether you want to believe in that version of creation makes no difference in my life.

Ultimately, I believe in something, I know I do, but I don’t know what.

Today, I woke up with the mad mad mad (very mad) (oh so mad) (please stop the madness mad) mad desire to have faith. Instead, I found myself (no small task) staring into a mirror seeing only a man vaguely reminiscent of my father (and his father before him) wondering if this is what a jellyfish thinks about too.

I am not a jellyfish.

At least as far as I know, I’m not a jellyfish.

What if I am a jellyfish?

I consider shaving for a moment, then I’m grateful because I’m certain a jellyfish never considers shaving even for a moment.

I don’t shave. If I shaved, then tomorrow I wouldn’t consider shaving and maybe then I’d have no way to know I’m not a jellyfish.

I stomp my feet a little to scare away the soul of a cat lingering on the edge of my memory, and head out the door into the city of Lowell. To be more precise, I head out into the Pawtucketville neighborhood in the city of Lowell and start walking down University Ave toward the Merrimack River.

If this were a better story, I’d be doing this with a better reason, but as it stands, I’m heading to a little bookstore to pour coffee. If one of the many gods  running the world is aware of my steps, it is left unclear.

I think of eleven people as cross the bridge then walk down Merrimack Street. None of them are aware I’m thinking of them. Oddly, I am not entirely sure this means they aren’t a god. I’m not positive thinking of them means I’m not a jellyfish.

Whether I am or not doesn’t actually matter. Whether I want to be or not matters even less. I decide to believe in something and wonder if Buddha wants me to believe in something specific. I don’t actually care. I’ve been a Red Sox fan my whole life and I understand the nature of suffering is desire.

Once I’m behind the counter, I find the cloth the with the sanitizer. I find the cups. I find the coffee. I find a lot of things, but not myself.

Not the answers.

This is how a day begins.

“Hey! How are you today?” I ask the stranger being as unstrange as a stranger can be.

She smiles as if she knows me, as if I’m not a jellyfish (is that proof enough?), “Not bad, you?”

I laugh, “best day of my life, best day of my life.”

With her right eyebrow arched her long blond hair bounced just a bit as she tilts her head, “Really? This is the best day of your life?”

“Sure,” I tell her, “of course it is. I woke up breathing.”

She rolls all the eyes she has and continues on about the conversation as if I were real. I wonder, is this proof I’m real? Do unreal creatures even wonder, never mind wonder if they’re real?

“What can I get you?”

She tells me her holy litany of latte — a chanted benediction of steamed skim and a squirt of flavor over well-meaning espresso. I accept this as true. I accept that this is her desire. I accept that without this she will suffer.

I believe something.

I draw espresso into a cardboard cup, smile and demand she have a good day.

There is a poem in this moment, I know there has to be.

I am definitely not a Jellyfish, but I’ll be damned if I know why.

I’ll be damned either way.

I laugh.

You never really tell me why
you are here — I figure because
you don’t really know, or care

that we are riding on a turtles back
through the heavens. If this is true
the only god that matters is the story

the only demon is the breaking
of the silence as we drift ignorant
about the void between the stars.

If this is a lie and some other god
— angrier and more full
of rules and complex rituals —

will break us when we close our eyes
to sleep cold and ready to embrace
the eyeless worm of time.

He is dead, of course
by choice or circumstance
we all think we know.

I knew him as a rainbow
when I was young
and he was full of drugs

as I grew older, I did not know him
except as a crumbling edifice
made of laughter and forgotten
to the wind.

He is still dead, of course,
and I still do not know him
except as someone loved

by those who knew him
best and at his best
and those who knew him

not at all, except as an image
of a man who floated above us
like a red balloon

seen in the distance
seeming cheerful
being high so high and so alone

I believe something
perhaps it is nothing
important — though
it feels like something
necessary. If it is
all creation floating
through an endless sea
upon the back of a turtle
that would seem absurd.
If it is all creation falling
through an endless void
that would seem meaningless.
Given the choice
between absurdity and meaning
I ride the turtle’s back
and hope it’s not a dream.

Today, the sky is gray and I am floating about my ideas trying to figure out what is relevant and necessary to share for you to understand what is important in my story. Before I tell you my story, I want you to understand a few things — understanding those things isn’t necessary, but it will be helpful to understand that you don’t understand everything and that somethings must simply be accepted or rejected without understanding.

Some things about my story are exactly the same as any other story. Throughout the story things will happen and things will be done by characters. This is a matter of standard form for almost every story ever shared. Stories have characters. This is the widely accepted truth about stories, as is the fact that Stories have a point of view. My story is a story about a person. In my story that person is an ambiguous “I.”

Don’t assume anything about “I” other than the story is about them. Eventually, they will either be real or they will not, but that will happen as a matter of course in the telling of the story.

The story is not told from the point of view of “I” — the story is told by a turtle to an audience. What you need to know about this turtle will be told as the story unfolds. What you need to know about the audience is nothing. The audience is irrelevant.

The main characters in the story also don’t really matter, but for those of you that think such things are important to a story, I will explain who they are.

I. I is a person full of possibility, impossibility, and most common human traits. The defining characteristic of I is that they believe in something.

You. You is both singular and a plurality. Read that how you will. Understand it how you choose. Eventually it will either make sense or not. I would caution you to reserve judgment on You. You deserves better.

We. We may or may not exist, but throughout the story, the other characters believe We exists and that is enough.

Che. Che is clearly someone who thinks something about something and acts accordingly.

If you find any of this confusing, I offer my apologies. I am trapped in my shell and find it difficult to reveal what is inside.  It is my hope that as I tell my story, things will become more clear and that in the end, you’ll understand why I’m swimming here telling you a story.

Good evening

I am the proud father of two graduates of Lowell High School, the first integrated coeducational public high school in the United States, and my wife and I know our children received a quality education at Lowell HS. They both went on to Boston University well prepared academically and socially as they thrived in the city.

To continue with and improve upon this high quality, there is no debate that the City of Lowell has to improve its high school facilities as soon as possible. I stand with the many people here tonight insisting that you put forward all 4 options to the MSBA.  

Ultimately, I am sure that keeping the high school downtown is the best solution for the city, and that the city council will take into account the deep and damaging impact that a move to the Cawley site would have to our community. We will talk about transportation costs, and downtown businesses. We will talk about alternative uses for development downtown. We need to, but we also need to recognize the irony of calling ourselves a city built on partnerships as we leave behind all the partners who have improved the lives of so many families in Lowell.

We talk about partnerships with groups like CTI, Girls Inc, the Lowell Community Health Center, the Career Center and many others, as we move their constituents miles away making access to their programs and services much more difficult.   It is vital to remember that for the dozens of ancillary groups, nonprofits and agencies that support the community — central access is key. We can not simply mouth the words of partnership and community taught to us by leaders like Tsongas and Mogan. The actions and decisions of Lowell must consistently and constantly prove this city to be the good-faith partner, the trusted friend and the unwavering champion of community.

We talk about the strength of Lowell being in its diversity and its arms open to all new arrivals, but at the same time we ignore the dissonance as we consider moving the largest facility supporting those same people and build a barrier between them and those support services. To me this is gross negligence of our responsibility to be good to those in need.

Tonight, I’m here to remind you of the voices that you can’t hear. I’m here to remind you of the thousands of families whose life will worse if you move the high school to Cawley. The families that are struggling to follow the arguments here because English is not their first language, the families who don’t have the luxury of a night off of work to come to a city council meeting because it’s more important that there is food on the table, and the voices of the many families who have yet to arrive in Lowell who will find it more difficult to access the help they need to assimilate into our community.

Then again, if you are counting voices for and against these proposals, shame on you — your job is to do what is best for this city, whether it is supported by the majority or not. If the majority wants something that is not good for the city, then it is your job to educate, inform and lead them. If they will not be led, it is your job to do the right thing, even if it might cost your seat on the council.

I am fully confident that the City Council will do it’s best to provide honest and complete answers to all the questions regarding the costs of development for the four plans and be good faith brokers, but I’d like to point out some of the things I expect to happen as an interested party.

The city council needs further answers as soon as possible on parking at Cawley (current plans show not enough). We need exact costs of building sidewalks and roads that will not be reimbursable by the state, and to do these things the city must DO a traffic study to see if that location is even possible.

Furthermore, the city must start to work immediately with the doctor’s office at 75 Arcand Drive the same way they are working on the article 97 changes to insure all options are clear, leaving no barriers to this project.

The council must deeply weigh the tremendous impact of losing the large size of the Irish Auditorium and the impact it would be to the art programs of the high school and in the community beyond. The size of an auditorium at a new location is limited by law to 750 seats. No small consideration when our city seal says, “Art is the Handmaid of Human Good”

The city council needs to be sure that any study of the economic impact of LHS in downtown takes into account far more than just the impact of students and faculty on the downtown businesses.

It is also about the parents who become familiar with downtown because of their children’s activities. It is about the many partners who hire the students with grants and economic development moneys from state, federal and private sources.

It is about attracting families to move to Lowell to raise their kids by offering an urban campus experience that none of the communities around us can offer. It is about keeping high-risk kids in school and helping them graduate to get better jobs and become a healthy part of the city’s present and future.

It is also about the multitude of other events, both education related and otherwise, that happen at LHS which show off our city and bring people from all around to experience the very best of our city.

If we fecklessly raise a generation of families afraid to be downtown, a generation who told we are moving the High School because downtown  is filled with drugs and homeless people, then yes, it will be a prophecy fulfilled and our downtown will completely die.  

I expect the city council to consider how incredibly difficult it has been to fill the many open parcels in the Hamilton Canal district, parcels that do not have the limitations inherent in a historic landmark. Developing the LHS site for alternative uses is not an easy matter of just giving it to UML, or selling it to a developer, or finding some big corporation to jump at the chance to be in our city. In all likelihood, LHS leaving downtown means many years of a slowly failing building  becoming an open wound in our heart.

I expect the city council to remember that the renovation downtown will solve the leaks, the cold, etc  – It will be a state of the art facility in the end, no different than the Cawley site. And I expect that the city council will understand that, while the construction period will be awkward and uncomfortable, it should not be a factor in determining the site for the high school for the next 50-75 years.

In the end, if a case can be made that our future would be better by making an enormous gamble on the Cawley site,  I’m sure our neighbors in Tewksbury will enjoy the new tax revenues that will be generated by Lowellians in their nearby restaurants and businesses.

all the city is abuzz with certitude tonight
the wingless bee ready to sting and fight
and die without regard for any day but this one

i feel both ways and neither about this sad fact
a scarecrow or a poet, I am both with each attack
i grow weaker and less certain what can be won

suppose I win the argument but lose your smile
or worse, the friendship we built o’er this while
together in this mean little dark little place?

what then is there for me but agonizing loss?
certainty, that covers the meat beneath a rancid sauce
and leaves us wondering why we said grace

at all. the raven circles about my empty head
cawing out the half-true lies every stranger said
with such confidence and recklessness

i square the circle or cube the starchy roots
it’s hard to tell am I with him or in cahoots
with the fantasy of a fawning press

this city where i live in peaceless peace
we yell for little things like hope and release
our demons on cardboard by the street

proclaiming ourselves as so little even
a sticker can reveal all we believe in
— such words (of course) are just conceit.

tell me, magic voices that dance on air,
do you perceive the tragedy of silence there?
Or is that noise so loud you can’t

find the path to a sweet benediction
of honeyed words and principled friction
as the opposition chants

the old man, you remember him
with the graying hair and bones
that remembered being tall?

he’s gone, I know, he was gone
long before he was gone, but
now it’s real. real as a dead dog

on the doorstep wanting
to come in from the cold
instead getting buried under a rock
behind the shed.

when i look in the mirror I see him
more than I see myself,
there’s no asking about the hair

even if there was asking,
there’s no denying the eyes
are fading quickly now too.