He has a bench in Central Park,
a step on Seventh Avenue,
a corner on Broadway.
But home is a feeling rather than a location,
something those who have a lock and key and
a mortgage fee will never understand.
The gatekeepers tell him
‘That bench is for people to sit on’,
so he grabs his sleeping bag with beat up weathered hands,
and leaves the park,
realising ‘people’ is another category in which he does not belong.
Autumn is here
so winter is near.
A chance to rush to snowy mountains with Chanel scarves
to escape ‘dreary’ lives.
He takes his vacation
from park to doorway,
views aren’t as nice but it dulls the bite.
As night drapes over Manhattan, he zig zags between expressionless crowds,
invisible
like an unread word.
He seeks a corner just off Broadway (the bright lights numb his loneliness).
In soiled clothes and old scuffed shoes,
he sits on newspaper wrinkled by other hands
and watches passers-by with bloodshot eyes,
bills burning in their pockets.
A man with shoes shinier than dreams
soils his corner with a *** of spit.
He wonders,
do I belong everywhere, or nowhere at all?
And he pulls out his guitar and begins to sing,
October cough thick with illness,
‘They say
the neon lights are always bright
on Broadway’.

The buildings of Upper East Side swell with exhaust fumes
and the roads sweat foul-smelling tar,
while Central Park drips green and magenta,
as friends **** on strawberries
beneath the last of the summer sun.
Butterflies chase children,
children chase kites,
dodging marigolds
that suffocate between blades of grass.
Bird song and police siren compete for centre stage,
and clammy suited men seek shades of green on their lunch break
escaping their lives between midday and one.

In the sky
rafts of white cloud crafts the arrival of autumn,
the park drinks the last of September’s rays.
Maples blush as October lures in the park with a lullaby.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
form parachutes that glide
left  
        to
               right
and spill like coloured pencil shavings.
Warm currents retreat the advancing brisk amber sunsets,
submerging the park in an oily gold blur.
Clouds, swans, boats,
all float upwards
as Autumn peacefully carries Summer to its end.

I push the button,
3
2
1
The jaws of the train clunk as its mouth opens,
the 9am crowd surging through its hollow body,
eying up the row of sickly plastic benches.
The wheels tighten, I loosen my tie,
off to the office, I sigh,
as I pull out today’s ‘New York Times’.

My eyes drift towards the woman across from me.
A fragrance of citrus and strawberry drifts off her shoulder
as she plumps her pout in the screen of her smartphone.
A bead of sweat poised on her collarbone
glitters like the diamantes on her nails.

We slow,
screeching against the rusted tracks
before the machine-lady hybrid speaks:
‘East-
a split second pause
-Sixty Seven Street’.
No one gets off, so we simply sit
beneath the sizzle of electric bulbs,
their garish light numbed by ***** glass
that cradles the bodies of last week’s flies.

Like an aged rattlesnake, the train creaks and hisses through the tunnel.
I’m attacked by a river of thick black hair
belonging to an olive-skinned woman who yaps into her cellphone:
‘no, no, quiero ver Times Square!’
I close my eyes and listen as her tongue rolls and dives
taking a bite of my bagel from Starbucks.

‘East-
anticipation
-Seventy Two Street’.
Although preoccupied with different thoughts,
expressions
destinations
the bodies on the carriage drift and sway with the motion of the train,
as it stops
and starts once more.

Two children in uniforms twirl around the carriage,
their laughter more electric
than the current that bristles below our feet.
A man
tickled by the dreadlock that sweeps over his face,
looks on with jeans so baggy
his legs melt into the seat.
The Jamaican flag blares from his t-shirt.

Next to him, a man bakes in a moth-eaten waistcoat
clutching a wallet with quivering fingers.
I follow his gaze to a picture of a woman
black and white with coffee stained edges.
His wrinkles deepen as he smiles at his
wife?
alive?
I notice glittery pools of the past forming in his eyes,
perhaps not.

‘East-
my stop
-Seventy Nine Street’.
As I glance down at the platform’s monotonous shades of concrete,
and brush the dust from my grey tweed suit,
I think to myself
how colourful Upper-East Side is.
I shall never stop travelling on the 9am subway to Seventh Avenue.
Without it,
how boring my life would be.
Without it,
I wouldn’t be me.

Manhattan bathes in lilac-stained dawn,
patiently waiting for a new day to form.
Skyscrapers tickled by the flicker of confused lights
on
or
off?
Night
or
day?
they wonder
whilst light meets dark,
nodding heads
as they pass each other by.
Taxis creep around corners,
collecting the last of the night raiders,
breath sour and eyes wine-weakened,
allergic to morning light.
Cars groan and begin to carve today’s trails
exhaust pipes snoring
as they huff out polluted clouds into smokeless sky.
The 6.a.m. sun crowns The Empire State Building,
and glazes a million windows like honey-roasted ham.
Chrysler squints,
May’s rays bounce off her bronze-blushed walls.
Sleepless wanderers now sleepy crowds,
wine bottles now coffee cups.
Pigeons flutter between dragging feet,
pecking pavements,
catching the odd petal from the honey-blossoms
that stand like angels amongst grey steel.
A sea of suits cluster at the crossing,
people politely covering yawns
as they wait for the green man to give them instruction,
unsure whether the button has even been pushed.

And so the song flows -
a messy trace of barbiturate haze,
the song flows,
tinged with a red-eyed, cathartic
sort of sparkle about it in the dark,
like the backalley streetlamps by my window
at one in the morning.

July 1st-
I take a step outside, climb to the roof.
My eyes swell from the sunlight,
glasses steam up from the heat.
I have no need for lifting my *** off these sheets anymore but to write.
Manhattan rooftop, why did you have to betray me?
There was a time when
you were the glistening silvertoned backdrop to all of my surreptitious loves
as I sat on you,
idly humming jazz,
peacefully watch the go-and-come
of the synagogue pouring into the
streets below,
pitifully bemused
at the concept of dejection.
You once gave me a view of opportunity,
and ever-alert, always-foreseeing eyes that could have seen all the way to the buildings of Stamford.
Now I'm eighteen and terribly myopic.

What at all at this point is to exist
with implacable certainty?

Manhattan rooftop,
Tell me that
solipsism is the universal truth,
then I will not feel as alone.

6/5/2017

sinking into the white blur of my sheets
wondering if this courage is fleeting already
i was so brave sunday morning
to finally let go
secretly hoping if you can't reach me easily
perhaps you'll find a way
if it means enough to you
you'll float by
and toss a rock at my window on the sixth floor
of my nyc apartment
i don't need that

for the first time i laughed in manhattan today
the first time in awhile to breathe
the skies looked cold and harsh
but it is undoubtedly summer
"the best summer of life," you'd say
with you i felt doubt
in my pursed lips
holding my tongue with all the words
i'll only write down
it still has a chance to be

vanessa and i held onto the hours
to process and reminisce
when we were once students in a room full of books
you
working on your latest project
i remember the tie around your neck
the suit jacket you put around my shoulders
still thinking the same thought then as i do now:
one day it won't hurt and i'll hold my head high
as i unravel
become undone
become who i was meant to be
not thinking of you and a bottle of bacardi
with polaroids and pictures
burned to the ground
this fortress we built on unstable foundations

remembering
your body pulsing against mine
rest my head on your chest and laugh
your sheets
walk me out the door with no clothes on
before i say goodbye for good

this is day two of a life without you
a second go
if you want to make time
you'll see to it
today i will not let my emotions take precedence
over the rational decision to leave
stronger, baby

8th avenue ***
**** out on ground crankin one
Thanks de Blasio

racing across the train platform,
one hand on our heads keeping our beanies in place,
the other clenching each other's

we slid in through the doors,
catching our breath in between laughter
we make it above ground just as the sun is setting over astoria
and i swear your eyes turn golden

my favourite you comes out at night
we lose track of time, put away our cell phones,
and vandalize this whole **** place with our love

carve your name into my rickety old heart like you did the trees
near bethesda
kiss me long and hard, like the winters
just as refreshing when i open the door and seeing you,
my own wonderland

melt this ice pick inside of me
set me on fire, for all i care
everything is dying right now,
but for once, for once, it doesn't feel like it

i think about you all the time.

even when i'm asleep, i dream about your
fingerprints
and the way you snore,

and i have sad dreams where you tell me
that the sun rises & sets for us,
that western cities call to us,
and that june draws near.

but i wake up and cry without knowing why.

i think about you when i'm at work,
and when i'm on the train,
and when i'm watching racing droplets on the taxi cab window,
pretending we're the droplet that's going to make it to the edge.

and i think about you when i'm ordering coffee.
you like drinking it black because you think it makes you seem cool, and i tell you that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard - "you're basically drinking hot bean water then!" -
as i pour cream and sugar into mine, i glance up to see you smirking at me, lovingly.
nobody does that to me anymore, especially not when disagreeing.

i think about you when i'm washing my hair,
and when i stand in front of the closet,
and try to find a shirt i haven't yet worn with you.
it's a pointless exercise; they all have your scent on them.

i think about you when i'm making dinner,
and sometimes, it just hits me out of nowhere.
that i'm here, and you're there,
and my hands shake so much i have to put the dishes down.

it would probably be easier to not think of you at all,
to not be so familiar with how your fingers feel on my hips,
to forget the way you brush my hair every night before bed.

but i find myself deciding that i would rather know those things
and be in pain from the knowledge of your existence apart from me,
than to not know you at all.