August 2010
12 posts
all written at a midtown deli:
everything that new york city isn’t
there were things
besides money that
you were looking
for, things the city
won’t give up
/
you looked around for a while and
maybe you got a taste of something
without an end,
something massive without dreams or hope
/
now you live in
the office on
madison street
and weeks go by
like the bridge
from that song
sandstorm,
smooth
...
a poem that goes viral
would be on
a slender shy topic.
would be written with
words that sound like
dream chicken wings
and LSD. round and
smooth and polished
dreams. this poem
would mean nothing
to everyone. it would
be cruel and almost
silent, yet tare
through people’s
faces in the mode
of delicious new
kinds of breakfast
cereal, well marketed
nyc post-tv
when i moved to
ny i was thinking
it would be like
SNL circa 1995
with lots of
things happening
in dense media
spaces. but now
i get it. nothing
is happening
anywhere now.
especially here,
where time square
shines like confusion
and affordable sex
after years of being last to leave
everyone emptied
out on to the sidewalk
ashamed of their
prolonged stillness at
the bar. nothing is
ever going to happen
again, i think. so i pay my
tab and walk past
a jamacan bouncer
who for some reason
sounds exactly like
oprah winfrey.
i look up to see
metalic dogs circling
in the sky
alive in america
i look away from
my phone and
media buy
implant dreams are
pushing me
across the
williamsburg
bridge at noon,
massive unthinkable
bright shapes from
inside glass caves. i
peer at midown
distrustfully as
a man straightens
his american flag
tee shirt, a woman
coughs into a
tattered bible, and i
know i am
alive in
america
