Aren’t you cold?

I.
Me?

the wind swept up the solemn yellow leaves, along with my
solemn yellow feet,
and dusted off the crumbs of yester-was
and yester-would
from the hem of my puffer...

Well,
listen.

I hold your heart in my hand,
it holds itself in my palm,
my palm holds itself onto your heart…
Hold your eyes a bit longer and soon, you too,
can hold mine…

So, no.

(Silence. I shivered from the core, to no avail)

II.
Me?

Meanwhile, Amber October and Brown November lie like crumpled,
dryad carcasses beside my feet.

Hm, I said,

I lament!
the skin on my fingers have frittered away from
countless, dead hours
in colorless computers,
but alas, not from the cold.

(trite)

Hmm, I said,

the skin on my fingers
hangs like a nail.
Never have I thought an unwise flick of a wrist could render me an onion.

(Dear Lord)

A curt laugh, cheap,
cheap-cheap, like the swallows.

but yes,
I am
alright.

(Silence. We both shivered from the core, to no avail)

it's a big, dull throb out there
and there i am, thronging through the thick

we collide, ricochet, burst in each others' peripherals
we tangle and untangle, mesh and unmesh
our limbs, our lines of thought,
our lives, stuffed into one-liners

we pass by,
shoulders thump like halfhearted tongues and
barely parted lips, out drips a single glob of 'morning
and sinks in the air

our lives are too heavy
we continue to fall through the gaps
we cannot stop
we continue to fall through the gaps
our collision was at best
arbitrary, negligible, in the expanse of our lives
in which
we continue to fall through the gaps

why do we knot our fingers when we'll eventually die
why do i hold that gaze of yours when you're only passing by

i found myself,

waking like walking like talking and looking at morning like noon and like evening, and i think like i thought, like i think i will think-- through days like a dozen, or hundred, or nothing.

i wish like a wish never made upon,

want like a want and i don't really need,

do like i did and i will
and i will
and i will

and i guess (like i guessed)

"that will do"

so i walked like i walked

and never found myself
again

i was born in the act of falling,
the feeling of flight interlaced
with skin as tender as dawn,
a soft rippling of the face in the salty wind
as we become children of the sea

Outstretched is her palm,
forget-me-not pink,
gaily contrasting with her whitish silhouette and
honeyed lips,
so taciturn by nature

Perhaps it is that gently pursed habit that so draws me in,
the scent of promise and the
taste of paradise

She fascinates me
Dancing with men after most men have gone to sleep,
she later waltzes with the moon
until mortar and pestle have been
reduced to
skipping-stones

Her dress celebration,
Her laughter champagne,
Her manner a Sistine rendition,
“Joy Of Man’s Desiring”

When her lips do part,
not a single sweet sound emerges,
but the muted C sharp of a thousand golden sirens,
inspiring mutiny in men everywhere

And if blood is thicker than water,
honey is thicker than blood, so it is honey
which runs through her trickle veins!

Ludicrous? Perhaps. yet, O Lady
the corners of your sweet lips and fair face to me
betray promises of music,
of moondust, of honey, and

of romance, most devastating

Somewhere
in the middle of New York
a white-and-blue,
Pacific island:

...
sitting on itself,
prim and low
as if waiting for someone important, but
not wanting to seem so.

sitting on itself,
as if waiting for someone,
many boats go by
(no, not that one...)
(not that one, either...)

sitting on itself,
small and proper
proper and small...
(**** is wet)

sitting on itself...
I wonder How long
has he been sitting there like that,
won't his
feet be cold?
**** be wet?

The lonely island...

he wishes someone would come and sit beside him

sit close but
not too close, as if
friends.
in the past few lives but,
not in this one (yet)

he wishes someone would come and sit beside him

quietly for a moment
then turn to him and say,
with sparkling Pacific angel eyes
turn to him and say,

"The world needs you, Steve."

And Steve would continue staring off into the distant, blue horizon where
there's not much, save for a
distant, blue horizon
...

but pigeons are not gulls,
gulls are not pigeons.

and the Hudson River
is 315 miles long.

"My name isn't Steve."

"yo kid nice!"

Nigerian taxi-driver
peers through the grimy mirror,
fluffy pink snake-eyes bounce
behind tinted glasses.

Ogoga Taxi License
'Simon Okeke'
Expires 02/04/44

i opened my mouth
the car jiggled
nearly bit my tongue.

i tried again.

"him?"
nod towards brooding young male
comfortably man-spreading
three-fourths of the seat

"yeh"

"oh ha, he's not my kid."

I turned to him.

"sorry, your name?"

his head slowly tilted
eyes met mine
with a fantascopic sort of
flick-flick-flick

"you can call me
kid nice."

and his eyes
told otherwise

are you
satisfied
with yourself?

are you happy now? now that this,
this has happened?

look what you've done. look.

you've massacred social norms, you've completely demolished every existing standard of how people should behave. you've strangled the life out of Mr. Smith, and everything he believed in, from the very tippity-top of his upper-class Anglo-Saxon Puritan upbringing to the very tippity-tip of his well-oiled
nose.

you've blown our minds.

and you call this, what, art? self-expression? Psh.
*******

why can't you go do something, y'know,
useful (for once)? helpful to society--

become a doctor and save lives,

or become a scientist and find cures, heck,

even become an architect and create ******* roofs to put over people's heads, because,

honey

everyone would love to say what they want, whenever they want, in some abstract, convoluted way and put it smack in a gold frame and hang it up at the MOMA. then get applauded by men in pinstripes and handlebars and dainty damsels in petticoats...

or, shunned...

but walk away from the carnage patting yourself on the back for the mortally unfathomable machinations of your mind.

and we're the ones that don't get it? please.

it's you who doesn't get it--

wake up, man. And live as a functioning part of society,
please.

do not overthink,
(said the Over-thinker)

close your eyes
and see

shut out all sounds
and listen closely

reach out, grab it, tumble
into it, collide with your
fullest body and lick it, taste it
with your soul until it too,
can taste you

so be naked-- let the tender flesh of your mind
be cold and exposed to it

give yourself to it, and it will give itself to you

don't get me wrong
it's not you that i'm fond of,
it's definitely not you.

in fact, it may be your
chino pants.
they are of
exquisite material,
the type with creases that make you fall
deeply in love

or, it may be the tips of your hair
the craggy peaks of
period 5 physics,
they stand rigid yet leaning like
Smooth Criminal

perhaps your calculator
it's the same color as mine
as you've pointed out

"ayyyyy i like your calc--"

-- nope
definitely not you.

Sing from your diaphragm, she would say to me
sing low, sing low.

I think of
the subway system of my body,
of mice and men,
its systematic chaos and
deep rumbling, as
long silver serpents ricochet off endo,
cardi,
metrium (repeat)
(endo, cardi, metrium)

I am the whale, I told myself.
I am the whale that swallowed the city
in all its alabaster glory and
underground *******,
the Joes and ***** that ride them.

(i think) you gave me your love, yesterday,
when i turned to say goodbye,
planted it squarely on my stupid forehead.
yet of course all i remember is the feeling
of the corners of your mouth against my forehead
as you smiled, and i wondered
what in the world was so funny.

(i think) what you did was wrong,
yesterday because now
what am i supposed to do, and
say, what if i'm just not supposed to
do at all? what even-- how do you
love somebody? Hey Google...

the artist himself
was a man, i noted.
there he stood in the doorway,
pale as paint.

his shoulders suspended
from the door frame,
his elbows hinged.

a scarecrow in spotless slacks
creased to abstraction,
and an off white shirt
half-tucked in, as if to ask:

now sweetie,
do you really?

and yeah,
the whiteness of the man.

he seemed to
pulse transversely
in a space full of white static,
a sort of sacred
secret
stately man,
an artist chaotic,
a Jackson *******-Jesus.

and his face is as white as canvas
he draws on
a cigarette that you hardly notice,
pinched inconspicuous straw between his
Jesus-lips
on his
Jesus-face.

his eyes only grazed mine for an instant,
settled on the wall above me and

"well now
aren't you cute"

how could i have known
that a "humble life"
meant such darkness,
such suffocation?

your eyes
are too knowing of me,
and light the night road with an orange spill
(squeeze...crinkle)

i have changed.

now, i'd rather wander about
perfect darkness

(i'd rather be blind and deaf)

you came to know me
too well, that what i was most afraid of

that somebody
would get to know me
too well
(as i writhed)

but since then,
i have become
strange

i cant seem
to come
to hate you

                    i cannot
       hate. i cannot;
                    that sort of
       passion? there is no such
                    desire. there

can't be.
me?

i had to make you disappear
you, who follows me
is followed by me as i outstretch
my hand and in the darkness
***** blindly

my insides are not my insides,
as they have rotten away to promise nothing
ever again

i spilled out my insides
and left a flirtatious
stain on the sidewalk

sighs into mic*

i'm sorry
i don't know about you but
i don't think i could ever
love democracy
as fully
as wholly
as someone who once knew life without it.

like an immigrant.