i could be that girl
whose voice is low and melodic
and coats your mouth with
acacia honey
whose eyes are the color
and depth of
midnight
whose presence is thick like
new york summers
rosy like
los angeles in early spring
if i braid flowers into my hair
if i write enough poems
if i learn to show the skin of my essence
but remain an abyss—
i will stop making art
when i become it
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 2:20 PM UTC
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
Walt Whitman
walks by me
somewhere in 1891
I nod to him...he nods to me
lost in himself
Clinton is being inaugurated
Brooklyn Bridge
saunters by
dressed in the summer of '67
the subway
wears its best graffiti
the music of trains and Coltrane
the Flatiron Building is jaywalking
the Empire State
chats him up
a child's hopscotch
almost washed away
a moment's masterpiece
Robert Moses
looks across Long Island
longs to build the city only he sees
he gazes into my future
I look into his past
I pass Robert Mapplethorpe
a man in a white suit
nailed to the darkness
by so many stars
an old saxophone player
busks Rogers and Hart in Central Park
"...I didn't know what time it was..."
two obese Chinese
take up most of the sidewalk
both speaking fluent - Irish
Leaves of Grass
lies scattered across the road
read now by the wind
a car caught in traffic
blares out Joel's
"New York State of Mind"
I laugh at such
a happenstance
a walk-on-part in my own movie
escaping the borders
of the body
I walk through times
I am all the times
of the world
they intersect in self
Walt and I
sitting on a park bench
waiting to go somewhere else
an 1990's rain
falls on an 1870's NY
they are beginning Brooklyn Bridge
I meet my self
coming and going
an older and a younger me
time held prisoner on the wrist
I turn and walk away
into this the newest of centuries
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 2:19 PM UTC
Suddenly, I understand it all.
Yet the world is a mystery and I am lost in it.
Ages are a time and emotion.
13 is mid afternoon. Lagging and energetic.
15 is the morning sun. Rising groggy and regretful.
17? 17 is the night.
17 is the span between 11-1.
When you aren't wild yet but things are certainly different.
17 is the city lights and no seatbelt.
17 is the teenage cliché,
shadowed by the unknown of what is to come.
17 is crying in the hallways and stargazing on the lawn.
17 is having a bottle of ***** under the bed,
but being too scared to drink it.
17 is Ribs and loneliness,
As you watch the night slip away and the knowledge hits you that you now have to wait for morning.
17 is the unknown.
17 is taking risks.
Not because you are brave,
but because you don't have anything left to give.
17 is to be lost,
but to be okay with that.
17 is slowly coming down from the high of growing up,
Reflecting on all you have lived,
As you patiently wait for your life to begin.
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 2:09 PM UTC