162 City poems

Habits accrue in circular pattern and living occasion swollen among what the dead have to teach us So, ear, be an instrument for thought Tide, bring some little green thing to dust behind my eyes Touch the hotpoint and drag the tongue over the fat belly of a flapping fish Sticker book of farm animals Sticker book of ole timey cats What is life and how shall it be governed? With blind devotion and endurance in the impossible for guts in everything for roots in plain sight Share a lung Accumulate none Say hello to the crow There are certain chord progressions one should avoid

I am totally enamored of every person passing in this unseasonably warm mid-March evening near 39th and Park The young women, of course, with their lives in front of them, and the young men too, just standing here as I am, checking it out, hanging out, talking But everyone here, every age, every type, is beautiful, the moment, somehow, the weather, has made them all real and for this moment, before it turns to night, they're all fantastic The light is such that I can see everyone and can imagine what they are imagining for the night ahead, what dreams, what fulfilled fantasies of togetherness And the two guys who were here a moment ago, paused, have moved on, and the light is deepening, every moment or so, actually falling into a deeper stupor, which is night But if I look south I still see the pink flush of desire there at the bottom, the southness of all our lives, and it's okay that it's darkening here, people accept it as they concoct plans for tonight, Thursday Soon I'll have to go too, lose this spot, this moment, but some we've met and some experience we had somewhere else is becoming ever more important

He promises a canary dress, white gloves, says they’ll eat chops, thick as her thighs, that they’ll order doubles of the “finest,” see all the Big Names when they arrive. But it’s the thought of them dead: half of what they own draped around them, her head against his chest, his back slack against the headboard, all their letters unopened, bills not paid, long knocks, the notices tacked outside their door. It’s not knowing whether some smell would introduce them to their neighbors or a landlord wheeling them out into the hallway; the highboy he chipped on the drive up, the silver she inherited from her mother, her hatboxes, stacked high next to them like a wedding cake waiting to be buried. He heard that “up there” the wind had talons sharp enough to hook a grown man beneath his collarbone and carry him a full city block. He heard that you learned the months by measuring the length of their shadows and even summer was like a quality of night.

Use me Abuse me Turn wheels of fire on manhole hotheads Sing me Sour me Secrete dark matter’s sheen on our smarting skin Rise and shine In puddle shallows under every Meryl Cheryl Caleb Syd somnambulists and sleepyheads Wake us Speak to us Bless what you’ve nurtured in your pits the rats voles roaches and all outlivers of your obscene ethic and politics Crawl on us Fall on us you elevations that break and vein down to sulfuric fiber-optic wrecks through drill-bit dirt to bedrock Beat our brows Flee our sorrows Sleep tight with your ultraviolets righteous mica and drainage seeps your gorgeous color-chart container ships and cab-top numbers squinting in the mist

Use me Abuse me Turn wheels of fire on manhole hotheads Sing me Sour me Secrete dark matter’s sheen on our smarting skin Rise and shine In puddle shallows under every Meryl Cheryl Caleb Syd somnambulists and sleepyheads Wake us Speak to us Bless what you’ve nurtured in your pits the rats voles roaches and all outlivers of your obscene ethic and politics Crawl on us Fall on us you elevations that break and vein down to sulfuric fiber-optic wrecks through drill-bit dirt to bedrock Beat our brows Flee our sorrows Sleep tight with your ultraviolets righteous mica and drainage seeps your gorgeous color-chart container ships and cab-top numbers squinting in the mist

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor, for the eternal idleness of the imagined return, for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin! When I press summer dusks together, it is a month of street accordions and sprinklers laying the dust, small shadows running from me. It is music opening and closing,Italia mia, on Bleecker, ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper; it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water down littered streets that lead you to no water, and gathering islands and lemons in the mind. There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame. I would undress you in the summer heat, and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.

The landlord says we have to go. On the night the thermostat read seventeen below zero, and there was no heat on the first floor, the Massachusetts State Sanitary Code appeared in the landlord’s in-box like a spirit tapping bony knuckles on his window, and a letter appeared in the landlord’s in-box like a spirit scratching the words no rent in the frost on his window, and the landlord’s mouth foamed as if he’d swallowed detergent, and the foam froze on his beard, and the landlord’s plumber laid twenty-four feet of baseboard on the first floor, and now we have to go. The landlord keeps his purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo parked at the edge of the driveway, purple inside and out, paint job and upholstery purple, the color of emperors. The mad emperor Caligula assassinated his cousin, jealous of his purple cloak, and the mad emperor’s mouth foamed as if he’d swallowed detergent, and the foam froze on his beard. The neighbors report a moose sighting today. The moose charges from the woods, mad as an emperor jealous of a purple cloak, sees the purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo as another moose, and rams Caligula’s chariot with his bristling antlers, kicking the car the way a teenager high on detergent T-boned my leased Toyota Corolla two weeks ago, and so the moose claims his territory, this land without a gas station or a movie theater or a pizza joint or a doctor’s office, and gallops back into the woods, snorting foam. Now come the hunters tracking the moose, crossbows bristling since crossbow season is upon us, their vision blurred by a night of Red Bull and detergent, and see the purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo as a moose, firing volley after volley of arrows into the windshield, and the talisman of the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror does not keep the glass from exploding, and the jumper cables coiled in the back seat do not rise magically like electric eels, and the hunters explode in a cry of huzzah, waving their crossbows as if their arrows thumped the hump of Richard the hunchback king. The purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo is a dead moose, tow truck dragging away the carcass to a round of applause in my brain. The landlord will snort and foam, demanding to know why there is nothing left but his mutilated vanity plate stamped with the year 1976, and I will speak to him in Brooklynese, palms turned upward in the universal gesture of the uncooperative witness. He will keep my security deposit, his territory without a gas station or a movie theater or a pizza joint or a doctor’s office. I say huzzah.

Tha’ vahnahnah go-een to keel joo. Excuse me? Tha’ vahnahnah    ...    go-een to keel joo. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. O’ káy. Sô    ...    vahnahnah haf sostahnence, nô? Uh — O’ káy. Ees troo if  joo haf sostahnence, joo problee leev anothe’ thay? I suppose so, look — Alrigh. If  joo ee tha’ vahnahnah, joo weel be leeving ôp a-hed, righ? Yeah alright, so? O’ káy. Are joo thy-een now? What? Are joo thy-een now — a’ thees momen? I hope not. O’ káy. Ees troo    ...    ôp a-hed — joo thy some poin? Of course. Alrigh, sô, vahnahnah poosh you there. Um. Tha’ vahnahnah go-een to keel joo, baby.

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear, there are some

The line is long, processional, glacial, and the attendant a giant stone, cobalt blue with flecks of white, I’m not so much looking at a rock but a slab of night. The stone asks if anything inside the package is perishable. When I say no the stone laughs, muted thunderclap, meaning everything decays, not just fruit or cut flowers, but paper, ink, the CD I burned with music, and my friend waiting to hear the songs, some little joy after chemo eroded the tumor. I know flesh is temporary, and memory a tilting barn the elements dismantle nail by nail. I know the stone knows a millennia of rain and wind will even grind away his ragged face, and all of this slow erasing is just a prelude to when the swelling universe burns out, goes dark, holds nothing but black holes, the bones of stars and planets, a vast silence. The stone is stone-faced. The stone asks how soon I want the package delivered. As fast as possible, I say, then start counting the days.