I wish I could live that panicked fever dream of being an artist in the fifties or sixties,

where I am writing, in Greenwich Village, in a barely-furnished apartment at three in the morning,
the aching howls of human animals and screaming sirens attending to laws and emergencies floating through an open window.

A black cat creeps in from the fire escape and jumps up to the desk, lazily, where I am sitting
with a bottle of something cheap next to an overflowing ashtray, and I am

biting down a cigarette, while clicking-clacking on a typewriter.
"Ding!" shrilling puncturing the air whenever I come to the end of a thought,
and thats when I pluck the cigarette out of my mouth, ash it, go to the next line,
and then fervently begin again.