In the bright yet seemingly so dim evening lights, the crowded city's empty.
It is lonely here without you. And yet without you I wouldn't have noticed that.
Funny how the city oh-so crowded can be so hollow.
Empty.
Void.
Blank.
A white canvas.
(Opportunities?)
You overflow all that space with so much vivacity. So much life. And love and warmth and playfulness! So much of you takes over so very little of this.
And lack of you is a surprise.
It completely surpasses me that I'm just about to hit a lamppost, that I'll crash into people walking the opposite way.
But the realization of this absence causes me to lift my sight, making me aware, perceptive.
It's hard to realize, but it is needed.
one foot after the other
feeling the dreams that fall under my feet
my heart and brain in your hands
feeling the city envelope my everything
the lights and noises filling my cracks
lifting me up
throwing my dreams into the clouds
cart-wheeling through the pain
screaming through the happiness
giving you the world
and wanting nothing in return
that is of desperation
to be loved
to love someone
the light that falls on my skin
it only stays because you allow it
I am a city
the greatest of all
But just like the others
the greatest will fall
Messages around me
coming in, going out
Solving people's problems
is what I'm about
My powers are fading
I'm tortured by quakes
It makes me unhappy
my sanity shakes
Now people know me
but in a few years
they only will know me
as "drowned in his tears"
when i read translation, i poke around the words,
not at them, guessing at a reality not hinted at
but encoded by some prisoner from another world—
nobody's perfect; but i relish the quest for the
peculiar nature of some original writer, un-
known to us but through his function: images
thoughts perhaps of trees cows judgings ravings—
oh i'm an impotent feeling self-important fool—
consume the country, become one with it, i say to myself!
and becoming one with it belch and forget it!
no more nervous city twisting and coiling of coffee
and smokes, no more routines, schedules or lack of them!
what the fuck!— i'm internally shaken by these
desperate thoughts, my hand sticks in my throat,
they say there's this city ordinance against wandering
I'm guilty
Ignorance of the law is no excuse but I've seen NO PARKING signs
NO SPITTING signs NO SMOKING signs lots of other NO signs
but I've never seen a NO WANDERING sign
yet
thank god
the dictionary says wandering is: a roaming at will; traveling
I say it's also a way of life
open to the world
like a sea anemone to a rich green wave
I absorb the flowers and the faces and the words
I devour the multitude, swallow the universe
and all and everything of it becomes myself
the wonder of the world is my most essential food
my absolute and alchemical body would starve without it
Screeching NYC
macaws
clothesline to oblivion
Move to Hollywood
get up in the morning
jump into your overalls
chop down your own fruit trees
I walking on the railroad ties
I am on your legs sometimes
I am using your eyes
to see
The mussle shells cracked and jammed
Between the pilings
Father to see
Blackberry vines naked and rusty
Pushing up through concrete and
Around the fence posts
Enterweaving earth and sky father
Pushing back the city
With your legs and with your star eyes
With your hands of rock and moss
Laying her to seed in crimson sage
Again making her to seed the highway.
She was a country girl
With a city heart
A city mind
And a city soul
She wanted nothing more than to get away
But the people around her would never understand why
And I'll continue dreaming on looking at the city lights burning bright even when the night sky is filled with no stars.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The farm house lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
This city was not a matter for men,
But its river was, as were those who therein dwelt
Much to the surprise of its waters.
If cobalt were the purest of colors,
The Tigris would be not the river of purity,
But the form of purity racing to the sea,
There where it dissolves among
Shipwrecks and algae,
And the great bull whales
That swim southward should the world of man
End there,
There where dawn, no longer part of the night,
Is born.
The emperor thus knows
That in his birth there was a river,
A dream of sweet waters