There’s only one thing I know of
that can hurt you
I love girls with lipstick
and matching fingernail polish
and black hair with green eyes and the New Yorker,
on a fake café table
with slice of foreboding,
pecan pie and a cup of espresso
and endless stream of airships
from Coalbrookdale
This longing fills my much needed void,
the room I never knew existed
The proverbial butterflies.
The desire to have her think well of me.
The desire to lay myself out beside her.
The desire for the world to see her next to me.
The flittering conviction that she in fact is the whole world.
Tell me about your high heels
traveling through time.
Tell me how to stay in touch,
how to become a shadow, or a light spot.
I doubt our book selves
would’ve been compatible,
the boredom of your topless nights
on my bed in your red panties
reading Sartre
The bottomless nights of my girls of ill repute,
the improbable dreams
Our lives lack formative events,
our bodies were so thin
we got bruised making love
This is not the life passing you by,
it’s the city, breathing,
a light in the park burning
bright through my window
Burning bright, she’s wearing those stockings again
The metaphysical art of her
legs inhaling our asymmetric love
and she’s not paid to understand,
and her arms to hold my weight,
and love is always asymmetric
Burning bright, I heard her footsteps exhale
That was the night my handwriting changed
I’m lost to alcohol,
beauty and benzodiazepines,
my veins and neurons blocked, stimulated,
blocked a carousel of afflictions
(and affections)
When I was a kid I fantasized about this,
spending a weekend with a bottle of whisky
fueling some imaginary west wind,
dreams I didn’t have the guts for
Now I don’t have the guts to wake up,
the years have made me weak
but I’m trying to stay alive, to help
you survive,
someday save myself
maybe
It’s all about this city, its pseudo-random vignettes, not my whisky, stupor or improbable dreams, but
our microcosm in the machine:
109 west 45th street,
James Cagney affairs,
I taught my turkey how to tango
Everyone was practicing their routines and she felt she’d lost something. She checked her handbag for two sets of keys, BlackBerry and a Russian doll full of makeup. Her wallet and its credit cards were in the pocket of her leather jacket, the cabinets had all the pills in their places. Also, her collection of the Journal of the American Dental Association was intact. Finally, before passing out from all the searching, she went through her wine-stained teeth with her tongue and found an open cavity.
She e-mailed her assistant for an appointment.
It was February in an apartment in the Upper East Side. Woman opened a bottle of middle-shelf wine and stretched her hands out of the window. There was a slight scent of spring in the air (if only she could’ve smelled it through her perfume).
On the street she saw a couple fighting, beggar rustling through his pockets, an artist with fluffy hair and for a brief moment even a flicker in the sky (Jupiter, barely visible from all the incandescence).
