Raw Bronx roar. From Zerega Ave to the Via Appia. While sheltering-in-place alone, I jerry-rigged an audio cave with a sleeping blanket thrown over a lean-to, in my living room. I started talking to the walls. Produced by StreetCry.

In this talk show series on zoom, we tell stories—taking the issues of the day head-on through the prism of our lived experience. With one hour we weave a magic carpet of monologues, poems, stories and song, with interviews with guest artists and healers. Produced by CityLore, and StreetCry.

Blue corner mailboxes are portals of New York stories. As Bronx kids, we sat up there all night. In this clip I lead the audience down the Bowery onto Prince St to one of my favorite mailboxes, sit up there then instigate everyone else to get up there. One passer-by tries to interrupt and finds himself at the center of the action.

“Look past it,” my father told me when I was four, “if you directly at it you can’t hit it.” It was a Zen lesson, to be one with the ricochet. The speed bag continues to be a percussive transportive meditation for me. Rhythm, repetition, motion, the closed hand pounding leather. I sing the Ave Maria when I punch, the speed bag offering syncopation to my prayer. Videography: Audrey Kindred.

“How’d you survive domestic violence, and how’d you let go of resentment and regain your sparkle?” I asked my Mom these questions. Her answer stunned me. The video opens as she gives me a manicure, mid-conversation about a woman who was trying to escape a violent marriage. You’ll hear her tell me, “Relax your hand,” which turns out to be not so easy. Produced by CityLore Documentary Institute and StreetCry.

Sing an unsung hero! Joe Zito, heroic elevator operator who saved so many lives during the Triangle Factory Fire of 1911.

“a’Schapett!” is the act of breaking the heel of the bread and wiping circles around the plate or pan to soak up the juices; to savor what is left at the end of the meal.  The dregs, the best part.  I instigated, directed and performed scenarios in the market catalyzing merchants, shoppers, neighborhood residents and kids into song and dramatic argument. In this video clip, you’ll see I brought a piano right into Mike’s Deli, where opera singer Deb Karpel inspires a shopper to belt her Napolitàn songs. The woman who sings, refused to tell me her real name. Videography: Alexandra Hartmann.

My formula of creative investigation was to create pairings and trios of artists, merchants, and shoppers. In this clip, trapeze artist Tanya Gagne brought to life butcher Mario Ribaudo’s day dreams in “How to Cook a Heart” at Mario’s Meat Market. Gange silenced the cash registers; quite a feat.

I spin and shatter a 200 pound block of ice in white hot side light, while meditating on the icemen in my family, especially my father, and all he suffered as a child laborer and U.S. Marine in WWII in Operation Iceberg.

For more info on the history of icemen, see me in the film, “The Barese Icemen of New York” by Carlo Magaletti.

A praise poem of my childhood expertise. A skill I learned on Saint Raymond's Avenue, off Zerega Ave in the Bronx. What do adults do with useless expertises?

After a 2018 book tour through the mezzogiorno, I came back and waxed poetic about the rigid clock kept in Italy and the iconic drink, the Aperol Spritz. I premiered this monologue "Ladder of Time," in my solo show "Feed Time" at Dixon Place, 2019.

I bunk heads with time. I face the parking meter as memento mori. What is this strange act of feeding time? Metaphors abound. I ask the coin-op parking meter: Does an hour cost a quarter, or does it cost you your life? 

My Grandma Rose broke eggs like nobody I’ve ever seen, slamming one egg into the other and never getting a shell into the egg or breaking a yolk. So, I filmed her here breaking two dozen eggs to a soundtrack of church bells ringing. Eggs & Bells— a meditatation on the harmony and correlation of wholeness. No eggs were wasted in the making of this video! We made a beautiful frittata. Starring Grandma Rose. Videography: Audrey Kindred. Background barking by Scaramooch.

I wrote this song to honor the teenage immigrant girls who perished in the Triangle Factory Fire of 1911. The song is inspired by Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” After a few performances the meter of my recitation took on a tone, yell, and cantor all its own. Performance by Annie Lanzillotto Band at the Judson Memorial Church. Adeel Salman on guitar, Rose Imperato on Sax, Artie Rothschild and Carmelina Cartei on drums, Lulu Lolo on tambourine. www.rememberthetrianglefire.org

My mother was patient zero of Frittatagoraphobia — the condition of being afraid of leaving the house without a frittata in your pockabook, in protest of high prices and filthy conditions of "eating out" in the city. I coined this phrase in the mid-90’s after a trip to The Met. See my podcast “Frittatagoraphobia.” Then in 2001, I performed it at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in the "Food Tent" curated by food voice writer Annie Hauck-Lawson. Then in 2008, Dr. John Gennari, inspired by this story, joined me with his percussion and kitchen skills and jazz sensbility to create this "kitchen jazz lazzo" duet for the book release party for "Gastropolis: Food and New York City,” edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathon Deutsch, for which I wrote the chapter: “Cosa Mangia Oggi.”

These songs came to me after a journey to New Orleans. As soon as I arrived and emptied my mind walking the streets, the songs poured out. The first line was, “I been north too long.”

To create this album I collaborated with guitarist Adeel Salman. I sang him my songs and he came up with rhythms for my melodies to ride on. Listen to Adeel’s adept riffs and driving rhythms, and Rose Imperato’s tenor sax ribbons and Erik Van Batavia’s pulse on the drums, and Lori Goldston’s ethereal cello on Shelter - you never heard cello like this.

The title of the album comes from my Mom herself. It was the best wisdom anyone ever told me.

I made my film debut with a cameo in the sexy lesbian mafia comedy “Alto,” written and directed by Mikki del Monico and gorgeously shot by cinematographer Valentina Caniglia, AIC-IMAGO.

I feel most at home sitting atop a blue corner mailbox, telling stories and listening to stories. As part of the book tour for “L is for Lion,” we made a procession in the East Village led by CityLore’s POEMobile driven by Steve Zeitlin. I sat atop mailboxes where scenes in my book took place. Projectionist Chris Jordan projected my poems onto building facades and the audience and passers-by joined in choral recitations of the texts. This project received a Franklin Furnace Award, and was co-produced by CityLore and StreetCry.