Still saddened by my good friend Hector’s sudden flight away
I soon decided naught could keep my sad farewell at bay
and wandered downtown past the bustling city’s heart
to see him off.
The day was sparkling clear with glistened rain
to wash the scent of urine from the darkest corner parts
of each and every building; vomit, a dog turd’s melting stain,
and cigarette butts washing out to sea.
New Bedford home
for him now.
Having spent his whole life on Manhattan Isle,
it seems too late for mid-life changes, new hungers to roam.
And as I walked, I wondered: All the times he’ll whittle while
here crucial moments pass with every breath, and moving out
to such a dismal place will only advance spiritual death and gout—
how could he ever come to such a lowly, sad effect?
And, more essential—the apartment’s lease is free, correct?
A cabby, busy, loaded boxes from the curb nearby
and Hector leaned against a lamppost smoking at the sky
dissected up above in squarish shapes and grayish hues.
He’d give that up, I thought, for what?
I wondered, how?
New Bedford offers only gray depressing views
all year, and even when the sun bursts through the constant clouds.
And the sky!
The New York sky!
To see its metered space
is to see all blue skies of the wide earth, so blessed by extinct gods
that once smiled upon each and every bird and stone and face,
when the Delaware and Mohican children danced backwoods
atrociously gone.
We’re left with nothing but each other
and, looking round; none of them really worth the bother.
Anonymous Hector, you want your person to be known?
The people there shall see your self-illusion of importance blown.
And Hector couldn’t hold his tongue.
“Since there’s no place in the city
for a modest man, and no reward for kindness and honesty,
and since my bank account is drained to dust and flinching mites
for several years now even though I drudge three middling jobs,
I’ve made my mind.
I’m going fair New England way, where nights
are cast of blackness, silence, not the neon’s glow and lowing sobs
of endless sirens cutting from the streets below.
I go
before my looks have left me full and my knees don’t mind the steps,
and my wood still works, while my heart still bounds in blood’s flow.
New York, good-bye!
Let fools and suckers linger on if they accept
this false and wicked place where substance suffers constant death
for posture, seeming, lies and bloated egos, the wafting breath
of our decline.
It’s such a constant bother—this life of attrition
beyond prevail—that flight becomes my critical mission.
“Just from the tourists!
Standing slack-jawed beneath rising heights,
so unaware of locals trying to survive the sights,
and looking, pointing, dressed in Midwest hues, fairyland
before them standing planted firm, blocking the goddamned sidewalk.
No true New Yorker goes Times Square way unless a wary plan,
some vital sale, a Broadway show, or tax-free weekend bids them flock
among the fools.
Believe, if the tourist stays planted firm
and dumb, your truest native will throw a gentle elbow
amongst the fatted ribs—the tourists quietly confirm
that rumors among them so true.
With faces aglow
it’s hard to fathom why they come… just to smell success?
But it stinks here, and all I see is blatant uselessness
and squandered lives ground down to dust between these same buildings
inspiring awe amid their childish want to live like kings.
“What good am I in New York?
To myself or others I cannot lie.
If Juvenal saw this false shadow-Rome he’d likely spit, as I—
Phttthu!
How can you or I remain among such ample emptiness?
I cannot smile for a dollar’s wage, nor fake an idea is all the rage
just for a slim promotion at some bootlickers job of impress—
expensive suits while still a whore beneath, my apartment a cage
where every penny goes.
And since I cannot lie—
to slave!
To slave the days beneath my thoughts and mind
mixing drinks or serving food or an honest college try
at selling streetside baubles, my degree in English maligned—
such lesser beings all!
You look at me as if I’m crazed
but listen, friend, I’ve come to know this city must be razed.
Small wonder, though, after our city’s greatest tragedy,
they didn’t continue the cleanup mess past Trinity
and up the Village east to west, where all the bags of air,
posers, artistes, trust-fund babies, mill on other’s money
and live amongst the bustle because their frail hearts and care,
the motions of their own minds, sow weak discordant harmony,
and from the void of self they wander kitsch, posing facades,
inventing import.
More pitiful than the starving children of the world.
With nothing in heart or mind, they continue, talking along gray esplanades
of therapists, their dogs and friends, best espressos; thoughts curled
about such things because they have so little otherwise.
Their only redeeming quality—that I can surmise—
is that they live in New York.
Without this metropolis
their lives would show beneath their soul’s debauched necropolis.
Yet so much better off…
It is the fate of many here
perpetually floundering between pleasure and fear
of making it through one more day—that’s the only pleasure.
A sudden alley knife, or straying bullet, shoved on the tracks,
these are what waits for us all, if we play the odds and measure
our days of endurance—prostitutes sprawled on aching backs—
still working on until a sudden death comes from the sky
above us now, the New York sky.
Don’t look at me like that.
Oh, you among the worst, the kind that say, “Not I”
two years here dancing with the rest of them, and think yourself phat
when you leave a decent tip and flash practiced expressions
all dawdled dandy, catching smiles in storefront reflections,
on credit.
On Credit.
Are you happy with what you see
or secretly hope for a shove beneath an uptown C?
Be careful what you wish for, friend.
The churches won’t save you—
as if this place revolved around any higher sacred truth
than tender.
There is only one grand temple to the God
of our great country, right here in the heart of our brothel-city.
Wall Street, protected daily by men in arms, the rod
and lance to keep the sharks protected.
It isn’t pretty—
the fortune of working men and women should be so doomed
to those who know jack squat of honest labor, a day’s work,
and bustling, jabber gibberish in shiny shoes, all groomed,
for their unyielding gore of moral death.
For prey, a smirk
and wink the only reaction, the only way to tell that they’re alive.
At home, at night, you’ll find them dancing round the pyre
with blood of infants dripping from their thirsty lips.
Toward Baal and Moloch, justice never, do their achings tip.
Oh this is the place where, like water, so much money flows—
through gorges of the rich, or through the poor man’s fingers goes
the runnels joined to meager streams, returning to the canyon home
along Fifth Avenue.
Have you seen the women there? Dear lord—
their faces stretched to ghoulish masks, the fashion stores they roam
with rubber breasts and plastic cheekbones rigid with youth restored
in semblance of some mockery.
What the hell are they thinking?
If I was ever to see such an apparition brushing my teeth
I would most likely die of fright.
Just try and catch them blinking.
If only the rotting ones were hiding fair Nature beneath—
that’s all right—but the youth!
A once pretty girl impossibly made—
an automaton—beneath her titties, constant shade.
Oh people, let Nature take Her course.
After time your flesh has devoured,
sleep. You’ll have lived a true life, not as a shunning coward.
“I see you nodding, smiling, as if somehow worse than men,
but postures, seeming, lies, with us is so much more common.
Exaggerated swaggers, sideways glances fishing ire
just daring one to furnish cause, to vent our impotence
both real and imagined.
This city lights our hearts afire,
wild passions, wants and dumb desire—that or does dispense
cold water to snuff the flickering flame.
To be a man
in this dead city is against all Nature—a strong back
and calloused hands hold no measure here.
The unspoken plan
is not to prove through deed but simply front, which shows the lack
of substance beneath the form, to be a man in shadow.
Everything here is but seeming, lies and untruths.
Although
there are some places beauty’s seen around about, they glint
with light in rarity, so often you’ll have to squint.
Like Harlem sweet where every true American dream has slept
where Liberty laughed a heartfelt joy while sullen Justice wept
and weeps today.
Worse for white kids moving in the borough.
Yet Harlem’s self-misuse does squander bright, inherent riches—
community so strong and fair, passion strength so thorough—
yet rapping music—sisters, daughters, mothers—calling them bitches?
It’s how we keep ourselves down with hatred unforgiven,
sins long cold, while hot sin swirls about of our own design,
of self-made wrath.
If not for those born in favor driven,
couldn’t we live together?
So oft the gentle hand declined,
in either hue, beside what honor lies within the heart subdued.
New York is almost harmonious, near perfection too,
enduring moments of racial peace—aware, though different shade,
in one image of beauty and truth is every person made.
Hold, cabbie, hold!
You see? There are exceptions to the rule,
like this gabbing hack.
I will pay your absurd fare.
Damn fool—
he doesn’t know his tongue still wags.
Many come here seeking fame,
and arrogant of their native lives, they’ll shun ours to bring theirs
and fly their brightly foreign flags while Glory’s colors wane.
In Chinatown unwelcome unless buying cheap trinkets, tourist wares,
and Little Italy but for gorging guts—down each street
of every borough do we furrow amongst similar kind
and never mind the concord.
Insults greet us each to each
and harmony’s found in the slow-moving bodega line.
Go there, Oh Child of America, thou noble New Yorker,
in any of them—they’re all the same in form and odor—
the scowling clerk acts as if he’s doing you the favor
while he suckles the wilted teats of our nation’s labor.
Such are our many perks, advantages suburbia lacks—
What shit is this?
Like subways?
The odor of dank butt cracks
stale urine, rotting rodents along the tracks?
MTA…
it really stands for Might Take Awhile, and if you’re in haste
plan on suffering deafening noise on the platform’s edge and wait
while laughing workers shuffle fattly about their lifelong waste
of broken dreams revised to relish your delay.
You’re late
and may be fired (the bootlickers job) yet badgered for dollars
by seasoned beggars pulling at your guilt with luckless fate
and flaking hands and crooked backs.
They make more than scholars,
or I with all my slaving… and at days end they go home
with bellies full and a fresh pint of Jack, their daily roam
brings them back again.
If you don’t go mad living here
or die of plague or scurvy or the pox, you’re blessed to heaven dear.
No.
But if all the world was Central Park… ah, what beauty’s there!
Though Nature’s hemmed in block and square, sweet chaos has a lair
among us.
Often traipsing through enchanted wood and glade
to burn the gray mind back to green again, reminds our heart’s intent
is less to bustle and to slave than know of Nature we are made.
Wander dappled light of lording trees, a darkened-earth scent,
Bohemian and free.
If all the world was Central Park
I’d never want to leave.
No, humming along gentle trail,
wieners waiting brownly stewing—chance upon a hotdog cart—
at times the greatest meal on earth.
Yet never fear, a hearty hail
will summon waiting cabs who troll the edge like hounds—
museums, finer foods, the greater world in far surrounds,
though ever near, hardly heard, and smaller than its emerald core,
the vibrant throbbing center that makes New York a place of lore.
But it’s not all parks and smiles, nor nods or becks or wanton wiles—
it’s lust and anger confused into millions per square mile
and broken dreams and ill dreams dreamt, where countless lives expire,
are spent in utter exhaustion, all blurred in dizzying speed
toward the grave-filled soils.
A place of toils and lost desire.
A place of filth and grime and senseless crime, of blinding greed
and bottomless wants, slim unfed needs, where injustice haunts
our every move.
Oh friend, you would be wise to join my flight
from this fetid meat-hole.
What say you?
You’re not one that flaunts
your ignorance so like a flag.
New England’s a fair sight
for asphalt-lidded eyes, and there we can curse and despise
New York like any other American who denies
the throne of the wide world.
Oh, well.
I see you will not leave.
Farewell.
And if you scribble a good line, come—let me read.”
And as I watched tired Hector’s taxi pull away and flee
a strong sensation, near elation, trickled over me,
that there is one less cynic in the city (a damn pity,
there never seems to be enough of them in general),
Yet I couldn’t help but think that New York is less shitty
than his dire view intends.
This place a concrete pastoral
that imbues its hues upon all who dwell here, to love it
is easy; to leave is difficult.
Perhaps he but convinced
himself.
Poor Hector.
Forever will his dreams populate
this city, this haven in a world so unsure, condensed
to visions strong, and intentions pure—the last hope for mankind,
for true potential unity and our woken heart’s sublime.
Besides, his growling made me nostalgic to embark—
a pleasant stroll before me, and hot dogs in Central Park.
aleakypen (Stuff for your head to use quietly.) 