From marble and granite to steel and glass,
we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class,
was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties
the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s,
the boroughs teeming with immigrants
from the round earth’s imagined corners,
Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we
Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will
be ok or not, the recombinations which make
prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong.
On the avenue God speaks by spewing
toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge,
the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge.
The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers
overwhelming for the human body and mind.
I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it.
Gandhi said What you do may not seem important
but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant?
Linda said Why does God always have to be a man?
I said He could be a she but She’s probably really
a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!

There's sanity in watching you sleep at night
My anxiety sometimes doesn't let me
but watching and listening to you breath
  breath after breath
slow and soft and unconscious breathing
it's enough to melt everything else away for a while
  it's enough to make me sane again
I don't get to see it often
only when my house is closer to point A than yours
or I ask you to come keep me company
But I know soon point B will always be our apartment
We feel so lost right now
  trying to find a place to call home
But I believe we'll find it
It'll be overpriced and small
I don't know where we'll put all your shoes
  or all my camera equipment
I imagine our clothes will be packed in our suitcases forever
  because there won't be any closet space
We'll be too close to the freeway and the trucks will keep us up at night
and our upstairs neighbors will be breakdancers or something
  and they'll always be on the wrong timezone
but none of that will matter
as long as you hold me
and as long as every night
  I get to hear your breathing

Snakes with legs
Walked through skyscrapers
Up
      And
              Down
             Elevators
With pairs of slither sneakers

        : Discombobulated :

They were wearing fat laces
         Like the breakdancers
And they shook
With Sidewinder moves

Ghetto blasters played tunes

They mastered

I heard KRS-ONE
                               The Teacher
And the BDP crew

             Playing
Jack Of Spades

And behind my shades
        My eyes were red

But I was cool

             In the Big city
While smoking a fatty
With some Grand Daddy
               And Bubba kush

I saw a girl
Lookin like
A La Peregrina pearl

... She was
                   shining on!

And like that Lennon song
We all glowed along
       To her vibration

        And loveliness

Snakes with legs
Walking along!

The boulevard

Without
             Slithering

I met a girl
That glowed
                    In the dark

     She was a violin
       In  a cello song
And she made us all

                Sing a song

                 Of harmony

Snakes with legs
Walking along

All day long

                   ... Slithering