New York 9.24.19
Mornings with you are sweetly bitter
With last night's partiers still sleeping while standing half upright
And your breeze chilling me before the bursts of sun between your towering buildings.
It's calm and empty
Ish.
Yet, for now, I have chosen you.
Or you have chosen me
Wishful as it seems.
Though you’ve given me little of the concrete dreams I’d hoped for,
Today I am awake early, and it could be the most beautiful day of my life.
Though, I just felt 4 mysterious drops of city juice.
Sigh.
You entertain me with your brilliant people.
The characters who seem detached from life,
Yet remind me that it matters, literally, which outfit I chose
I'll always be a little stranger than the guy to my right
And a little more normal than the 5 to my left
Perspective shifts,
Pigeons shit.
New York,
Your people have long legs and little capacity to interact
People stare
Me too, I stare back.
There is an honesty in their stance
An insanity in their ability to plug along living inhumanely humane.
I’d like to honor you, New York,
With just the same amount of craziness that you’ve gifted me
So sometimes I don’t brush my hair.
It must be the rebel in me.
Yet, this morning I am gently in love with your sweetness
Despite the vomit-lined streets of St. Marks
And the strange smells beneath the scaffolding.
I have decided to enjoy your human population
And your street performers slightly drowned out by trains and sirens.
And for now, I have even decided to embrace you,
Even though, I think this means that I’ll have temporary treasure hunts for the sun.
Hamster Wheels
Lord, this world is so full of broken people
with aching bones, seemingly heavier than they can carry.
It’s hard to differentiate the lies from the hurt in people’s eyes.
Deep wells of mirrored water.
You will float or you will sink
no stones needed.
Nor to throw.
My lists are filled with tasks undone
mostly dreams still being dreamt while sleeping
And what of those meant to be dreamt while living?
My mind races as a million and one rats run in my mind
upon wheels they stole from hamsters I’m sure
And the hamsters none the better, there's no dialing 911,
they stole them from tall white men
who’d mistaken them for ladders.
The climb goes on.
And none of us are good enough
Run on dear friend, mindlessly run on.
Time seems to mock us.
And not just the best of us, but the whole of us
because there is no separation in the human desire.
We are begging for a white flag,
as if we’d even be pleased with the package it'd arrive in.
There are stripes in my head that I study like
the flickering pupal on a locomotive watching the terrain
pass quicker than it can adjust.
And if we can not embrace our untamed hearts,
then, at least, let us acknowledge that the human condition
is human in need.
this was written Nov. 9, the day after 2016 elections