WTC

Its hard to make believe I'm really there at all while automatic doors chomp rubber gums and I think of the streets and the wires and the tubes full of bile above, and just for an instant the iron beams and lofted welders held up to the sky: an offering; the crowds of coveralled laborers clam morning at the crosswalk and the sun still hid by earth and earth lit by reflected light sponged up by clouds, unearthly as believing in towers built and then tumbled.

Assorted Sadnesses

The sadness of straight lines
The sadness of transferring trains in the dark
The sadness of feeling joy for a new pair of shoes
The sadness of things being one way and not any other
The sadness of spent time
The sadness of uncertainty
The sadness of disorientation upon waking up at eight in the evening
The sadness of scuff marks on new shoes
The sadness of an underground train
The sadness of suitcases
The sadness of not knowing what a single person you know is doing right now at this moment.

Simpsons Philosophy

I thought in the arms of a girl I might love that our bodies are servants who think they are sons. The mind is the master who looks for a ruler and finds only love and the concept of god (which we've ripped from the pages, devoured.) Hegel lies unread since college. Poetry is snack food. We write to believe in a God. If god isn't real then it's real and it's true: we are the gods of ourselves. I knew this since age 17 and it's truer with each passing year. With each passing year the time til I'm godless, de-bodied decreases. The concept of age is a construct death made. Was there ever a time before time? When watching The Simpsons, when Bart makes a universe, tiny, complete, by leaving bread mold in his bedroom: I cried.

Metaphors for New York City

I took her to the Flatbush Farm (more of a barn)
and dined on Bumble Tea and buttered mussels,
on a puck of pungent cheese and on pecans.
Beneath the strung up lights and fire escapes we
traded made-up metaphors for N.Y.C. It's a bowl
of broth with a fork in it. It's a stack of seashells
far from the sea. We filled in the blanks
that we left for each other and I stuck that stinky
cheese into my purse. Forgot it there for days.
Wrapped in waxed paper, it didn't smell at all.
Maybe it's a metaphor: for the city, or for love, or
for evenings steeped in something fragrant and forgotten.
Then forgotten. It's true what she said: I wish I were
more present. I'm lost in those alleys smirked
with graffiti; among silhouettes of friends pinned on
the sky blown blue with silence. I'm here and there,
there, there. This city is a patchwork of those bits
stuck in my mind and I am so hung up on her,
on metaphors and mussels; every corner of this city.

Killing Insects

I killed the bug with a shoe and she snapped a picture while I danced my fingers inside the sole to make sure the body was crushed. Months passed before we saw another. One another. We smashed it in a two part act, she finished it off, scraped the guts into the trash, and I told her all the things that I hadn't. Like who I met for drinks and what I did last Saturday and the story of my secret life I never told myself or anyone. We wrapped ourselves in silence like a plastic blanket: sterile, smothering. I touched her back. When I asked are you asleep she shrugged.