[26] Poems in an Alphabet–New York City
New York City [1]
Dedicated to the gunseller
A is for all my dark places you knew, B is is for bravery and laughter, that too, C is for constant companion you’ve been, D is for dazzling and daring and then, E is for everyone one living here still, F is for fearless and iron of will, H is for happy and homey you are, I is for intellect, true north your star, J is for jazz age and jazz hands and wit, K is for killing me softly with grit, L is for lovely the park walks and features, M is for midnight marauding and creatures, N is for noisy and nosy that too, O, those opinions, in spades it is true, P is the perfect imperfect right here, Q is for quickly and quiet and dear, R is for righteous and rough-hewn, a riot, S is for sitting in churches in quiet, T is for talking with neighbors and friends, U is for unions and worlds without ends, V is for victory and valor in vogue, U is for universe, world that’s gone rogue, W is waiting + walking + will, X is for kisses I send to you still, Y is for you know you’ll always be mine, Z is for zeppelins which come in due time.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [2]
A is for always I loved your dark places, B is for Beautiful you, C is for Central Park. D is for Dumbo, E is for elegant too. F is for forward and funky and fresh, G is both glorious and grave, H is for holy and highly undone, I is for idols and slaves. J is for jiving, being jealous and jacked, K is for kisses you threw, L is for loving on languorous Sundays, M is for moonlight we knew. N is for now I know more than I did, O is for Oh, what you’ve done. P is for Parkside, pizza and pinball, Q is for quiet I run. R is for riotous beauty, the roar of the trains and the sea, S is the safety and sanctity of place, T is the end of the spree. U is the uptown, the downtown, the bridge, V is victorious we. W is the waiting, the wonder of it all, X is the spot that we mark, Y is the you I love without end, Z is the zoo in Park.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [3]
A is for all of the creatures we slew, B is for bloodied, unbowed, C is for continents submerged anew, D is for flags flying proud. E is for everyone shrugging not me, F is for fatal so fast, G is for golly, gee whizz and let’s see, H is for Homeland(TM) at last. I is for ignorance, blissfully offered, wrapping your thoughts in faint praise, J is for Juvie and Joker and Juice, all of the kings that we raised. K is for killing things, slowly or fast, the skill we revered above all, L is for look here, go lightly my love, the ruins are endless and tall. My is for mighty and Mordor and mine, N is for never the day, Oh is for Oh What A Song we did 🎶 Sing, P is for plagues come to stay. Q is for quiet, and quickly and quell, but really for riot and quench, S is for sales and savings on Saviors, T is for truly, that stench. U is for uh oh, we botched things I guess, V is for oh, very well.. W is why bother, let’s Netflix and chill, X is this Xenophobe hell. Y is for you, the lost ones we loved, to ashes to dust we return, Z is the zealots who slaughtered with zest, the poem that ends in an urn.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [4]
A is for ardor and awesome and art, B is for boardwalks in blue, C is for crazy, chaotic and tart, D is for duty-bound, true. E is for everything we ever loved, F is for fighting the tide, G is for glory and goodness and grit, H is for heroes don’t hide. I is for innocence, it’s never lost, just is for Justice deferred, K is for kissing you in Central Park, L is for love, the last word. M is for marvelous, mighty our dreams, N is if not now then when? O is for open, the future, the door, P is for paradise then. Q is no question, you’re regal, a queen, R is be righteous and true, S is don’t worry if you find you stumble, T is the main thing, be true. U is the universe, patient and waiting, V is the vastness it spans, W for wandering worlds rough and mild, X is your map for new lands. Y is you guessed it we came to the close of a poem that ends in a song, Z is for get some, it’s bedtime my darling, and lightly it’s coming, the dawn. See you tomorrow for dreams that are endless in a city that rises again— be patient, have courage have humor, be stoic —and believe in a world without end.
❤️🦊❤️
Andrea [5]
Do you know Andrea, she’s my friend from old Brazil. She is beautiful and brilliant and courageous and yet still, she’s quite delicate and dainty [when she wants to be, that is] but more often she is feisty even famous, quite the whiz. She is glamour, grit personified, she’s hilarious and free with her feelings and her lovely heart she gives to you and me. She loves joking, she loves Jenkins, she is kind and kinda crazy, she’s resourcefulness unlimited, and she’s never, ever lazy. She is madness, she is moonlight, she is nature and quite wild, she’s original, provocative, she is quicksilver, a child. She’s the roar of ocean, sunlight, she’s a trellis near the sea, she’s a universal delight, she is just what life should be! If you see her, wish her valor, bless her virtues, love her ways, and tell her Pirate 🏴☠️ Jenny will be seeing her in days. We will meet again in moonlight, with our broad swords at the ready, to recount our wild adventures, but until then please hold steady — for the worlds a better place with you sailing o’er the sea, so happy birthday pirate girl, with love to you from me.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [6]
I would have started with an alphabet, arpeggios, the Armageddon, but it’s been too brutally sad. I realized so clearly the date we had made for eventual coffee or drinks would find us together gazing at one another, happy, in proximity, innocently taking in the world, jockeying, kissing with our elbows, looking lovingly at one another, masked, no matter, oh [how the souls shine through] perhaps [it was just a dream] a quiet reverie seeing two together thus, us, united. Verily I wept, [remembering] this wish, an impulse so profound, [it felt] x-rated to recall, Year Zero in a coffee shop with you.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [7]
Alright I admit it, a beautiful balmy night, quiet as crickets, decidedly so, the moon shining down, everything in its place, city freaks and madmen silent or sleeping in their graves, haunting no one, those indifferent jokers of the killing dawn, liminal at best this moonlit night. Oh how perfect the quiet invitation [of the rose bush, the hyacinth and the honeysuckle, the eucalyptus and the sea] to tumble into their uncomplicated virtues without a care, wandering along like Xerxes, your city warrior at rest, directly above, our zenith.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [8]
Achingly beautiful, this city. Duly noted, the divine in all the details— dogs, the dead, debris everywhere, an eerie emptiness on once flowing streets, avenues newly made grim. Here there be no [more] hustle, instead just a pair of hawks, inscrutable, keen-eyed, alighting and majestic. Nature doesn’t care about our private grievances. quixotic grudges, [what a drag, really] she truly doesn’t— it’s useless to vent on her impartial ears. She’s waiting for the extravagant in you, waiting for your [extraordinary] soul to zoom in, past the dawn patrol, those dead or just sleeping, listing or laid low, waiting for you to make your way past the fitness obsessed on the docks, sculpting their fear of death into something more accomplished, more social, waiting for you to zero in, to come on home.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [9]
About last night baby it’s not that I forgot to check in with you, it’s just that I didn’t care to, even enjoyed forgetting all about you, [gosh, that’s honest of me, I think]. Joking aside, I didn’t know why I should bother listening to more meandering noise, more nothingness. Oh you see, we got plenty right here, quite so, riots, rodent invasions, social unrest and turmoil, people expressing unsanitary urges, violence on the rise, so why make things harder? Your armchair quarterbacking during the Armageddon seems extraneous, silly even, exactly what’s uncalled for in Year Zero.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [10]
Also [as an aside] because life’s so beautiful and bonkers [at least right now or perhaps really always] there’s this beautiful boardwalk under a sturgeon moon, clearly so alive. Certainly it doesn’t hurt to delight in the excellent atmosphere, the exciting and festive goings on. I see the hustlers, innocents, jokers, knaves — many lovers linking arms on this luminous and mild night, oh so peaceful, quietly regaling each other with stories, strolling, together, united, very much in love. Why not fly in the face of [unanticipated +uncertain] extinction, and just sit eating ice cream under the moonlight, serenely watching the running lights on sailboats zigzagging their way home.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [11]
As I was walking this big city
the child in me recalled this ditty
For every fear and ghost that haunts
Instead decide for peaceful jaunts
I know you’ll see such lovely things
Hear matins as the church bell rings
Neighbors walking dogs, just oodles
Runners, walkers, joggers, poodles
Queer old men and aged ladies
Rough hewn boys and sexy Sadies
All of this my love is free
Delights await both you and me
Make haste have at it
The world won’t wait
Don’t sit around and contemplate
Exactly now it’s time to rise
Get up and out
No compromise
You’ll see how lovely life can be
And pick up zephyrs from the sea
It’s bliss I tell you
Life is gold
Get going, scram,
before you’re old
The clock is ticking
Must get out
I’ll see you down the road, no doubt
And just remember this, no lies
There’s only one man from St Ives.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [12]
All right, it’s important on this beautiful calm night to document the divine beauty that’s taking place - the exceptional everyday fight ordinary folks are engaging in — flying in the face of this [not so latent] Fascism, this outright racism, this ghoulish destruction of our higher hopes, our idealism. The jokers will never win, know that, literally I mean [not for nothing #newyorkstrong] So obviously sane American people wont quit, right? We will surely be victorious thanks to the extraordinary love and goodwill [you and I and everyone we know] display in the face of what can only be considered extremely bad conduct by Congress, Cheetohead and zealous madmen. Zero in on the future, zounds and don’t give up the ship.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [13]
Appalling, brutal, boring, a catastrophe actually don’t like it one bit, everything feels forced, its kinda grueling honestly, I think, just kind of limiting. Mostly I’m lacking imagination, no doubt about it. Oh, I know, I shouldn’t complain, everything is copy, Nora says, but I can’t wait to write poems about quiet stars, the remarkable things I see on dawn patrol, boardwalk visitors clustered on benches, the dead shooting pool at dawn, shouting “what’s up, quarter pint?” as I cruise by, star crossed lovers, the chemical sunrise, you, of course, and zeppelins coming home to roost.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [14]
A is for all the things I miss ‘bout you, your crazy adorable elegant face, your gait, the way the wind pushes starlight through your hair when you’re not looking, your intellect, your jokes! Knowing you’re alive, kind and kinda lovely, your meandering, your musings, the noise your lips make when you’re talking to yourself dreaming, your eyes opening in the pale morning light, quietly taking in the day, the way you used to read, seeing you on a bicycle riding down the boardwalk, your unusual wit, easygoing flair, your love of jazz music, jazz hands, even jazz xylophone, our many many walks up the avenues, through the park and going to the zoo.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [15]
All the beautiful things I wanted to tell you about— the cricket I heard chirping over the drone of the west side highway, the elegant woman wearing an incredible outfit pairing plaid trousers and a striped Breton shirt [amazingly fresh], a gaggle of girls dressed to the nines in black outfits walking down the boardwalk taking hilarious squad selfies, just incredible. Junior on the tarmac giving me side eye, throwing shade, lawn jocks and jockeys, flexing for each other, shirtless, sweating, kites, at least six of them, festooned in treetops, lacking momentum. The nice shady bench, old pylons sticking out of the water like a jagged set of crocodile teeth, the kitten rolling around on a pink cotton quilt, so pleased with its softness. Those cats really know how to live. Stationary I bought to write letters I never sent to anyone. Unless you count my correspondences with ghosts. The first sly breeze promising autumn up the road. September Vogue. The trapeze artists wiping their chalky hands before the leap, the advertisements for X-ray specs and the family of sea monkeys waving at us from the back of our Zorro comic books. One of them even had a trident.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [16]
I thought about things I’d like to do with you. It was easy to imagine them and I could easily envision how they might happen. An ice cream cone on Russian Hill in San Francisco. An espresso in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Riding in a taxi over the Brooklyn Bridge at night with the gigantic moon, me doing freestyle poetry for you. Jumping on the bed. Pillow fight. No one wearing pajamas. Miles Davis. Looking for the Lochness monster. Fire pit. Dawn swim. Black coffee with a piece of homemade cherry pie. Books stacked like bricks on every floor in every room. The smell of sawdust and turpentine. Working hands — hands that know how to do things, make things, understand and conjure things. Desert hiking. Places that were forgotten that only we discover. Road trips. Why the dog always looks like she’s smiling. Lightning strikes. How we took shelter in a gazebo and counted out the miles between thunderclaps. So many fireflies on the lawn at dusk. My grandfather’s white patent leather loafers, Pall Malls, pinky ring and lighter, heavy and mysterious as pirate treasure. The legendary story of my grandmother reading to Godfrey the goat in the back yard. Mint juleps, the veranda. Clocks that needed to be wound. Sombre heavy carpets, lurid television signals and ghosts in the TV snow.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [17]
All along turns out I’d been free. Only constrained by my own mind, dead ends of my own design. Freedom was right there. Great, I thought I can go in any direction, happily. I can try anything on for size. Why not? Just look around. Isn’t this the precise time we should be pulling up our knee socks and trying stuff out? Life doesn’t wait, just muddle through somehow. No? Orient your soul towards the stars and blast off. Persevere! Quality adventures await. Really! Silly, I know to have advertise life to you as if the alternative were better. Think about that for a hot second. Would you rather be six feet under? I think not. To the victor goes the spoils of the usual day with all its attendant splendor. Why squander even a moment of this extravagant adventure? You feel me? Zut alors!
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [18]
You have to forgive yourself and others [but of course] and also allow for the opportunity that they can forgive you — that you dare experience a state of grace in the world. My kid has an email handle “just some guy with opinions” and that’s kind of how I see Jesus TBH when I think about the church and forgive and forget [TBH again I haven’t really forgiven the Catholic Church for a whole mess of terrible things they did, mostly to women and children, so no state of grace or breaking wafers with those clowns, at least as far as the Catholic priests are concerned. Fuck those guys]. But I think a lot about grace. Grace Paley the author, her story title Enormous Changes at the last Minute. That’s grace. Or that sometimes enlightenment is a lightning strike. Hilarious peals of laughter on the boardwalk waking you up at night floating up through windows opened for the first autumn breeze. I’m convinced that when these autumn breezes start rolling in that you can smell frozen starlight on them, future nights of the cold north country, the extinguished embers. Maybe grace is just the every day experience of knowing that Frank Sinatra loved and lost and did it his way and you can too. No idea. Or maybe a state of grace is my pet cat snailed up next to me sleeping, me listening to her quiet breathing, her teeny weeny snores. The regal demeanor of the visored subway conductor shuttling humans along tracks to places they need to be. Unless it’s something more unusual, more vast, why ever not? The extravagant promise of the nighttime breeze reminding you to live on, keep going, chart your course under celestial navigation and sail forth, the first day of many in Year Zero.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [19]
A is for the night I spent in your arms, aware, alive, B is for the blind dawn creeping into the room C is for the cabinet of curiosities, a cat, coffee, dust particulates everywhere. F is for my very strong feeling that’s it’s always a fantastic idea to see the sun rise + the sunset every single day a good habit, a generous and gentle runway into the realities of the day. This morning for example I saw the dawn. I saw a man in red talking to his dead friends shouting “Good job, Delta Meteor!” — and another man completely starkers striding purposefully North. Where to? I saw a sad-eyed woman with Jesus pamphlets kneeling on the docks. Why so serious, asked the Joker? Perhaps he had lunatic Gotham in mind, none of us can really say or know for anything for certain these days. It’s a not so quiet riot, a free fall free for all. No stasis. No stopping. Just the lunatic chorus at dawn and the evening prayers of usual young families, dog walkers and hopeful lovers, knowing they’ve a future to get to, a dinner to share, a victory to celebrate however fleeting. Every second counts. Coming home at night I see Venus rising over the Hudson, sailboats drifting up channel, the Statue of Liberty [still] standing, unknowable water flowing in exact opposition to itself, navigating both directions at once, you of course, and Ground Zero just ahead.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [20]
Aw baby did I tell you I can feel you from here even now, decidedly so — even from behind these fortresses, these concrete towers and glass skyscrapers you shine through, your ferocious energy, your genius and your gifts. Hey, it’s anybody’s guess what comes next, but we have just enough time to squeeze out a few more dreams, kick off a handful of rooftop soirées cast against the sleeping giant skyscrapers and then some lovely dim sum dum dum and maybe a drop in 3am poker game where everyone seems friendly — or not. Mostly what I love is people watching, quiet on the sly like, taking in their quirks, curious, fascinated really, it’s all so amazing to me. Then, I think a stroll through South Soho and Tribeca at dawn, I’m seeking the tiny alleys, the cobblestone remnants and a strong cup of coffee for the boardwalk. “Usual please” — [these vendors never forget a face or an order and today is no exception] — wow... the dawn breeze is so wonderful today, perfect running weather too. What was the old advertisement? You’ve come a long way baby! Exactly right. We done good, grammar or no grammar, so give yourself a pat on the back, we made it this far, we may as well go on — xoxo, year zero
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [21]
All the feels, beginning with the butterfly canvas abandoned on the homeless bench right outside the classic car club where amazingly people go to rent cars and drive them around like Jay Gatsby, without the overhead or murder. Here though, the abandoned canvas, an empty car lot, and just north of that, the body, a corpse, doubling down on the day. Fairly certain deaths the ultimate escape room adventure — and as it happens I’ve been spending a lot of time with Death, who’s an an excellent conversationalist. Full of good ideas about how to appreciate immediacy, jokes like this New York City killer classic — “What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.” — But let me get back to this morning, the body bag, a string of festive lights festooned around the dead man, a black Mariah, four uniforms holding up a white sheet by four corners, very symmetrical, nonchalantly chatting or looking out to the sea of neon. People run by this stretch quietly this morning because really this body is you or me or anyone we know. Seems like a long time ago I’d last seen a body. Truly unforgettable. Vivere! says someone’s T-shirt. Another one says Just Do it! When did we start declaring our world views on workout gear? And why? What difference did it make? Whatever. X marks the spot [for death, and don’t you forget it] today in TSQ in Year Zero.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [22]
Admittedly the beautiful cat and I do stare out the elegant picture window under fickle or graceful moonlight every now and then, hearing bicycle chimes, cutlery clanking, the grounded wheels of a skate pack zooming by. It is all so incredible too, so minute, just the regular tick tock on the clock, sailboat canvas lashing, tied down, repetitive lap of the Hudson River, silty, salty, dead. The News judiciously keeps reporting lurid tales, meant to titillate, terrify + thrill - that’s just human nature, loving to be outraged. Perhaps. Quarrelsome irrational headlines, saying nothing truly useful. Selling things. Rendering lists of information about celebrities lives - Selena’s kitchen, Miles makeover, Theresa back in rehab. Unreal, useless, delicious vapid fodder. Why not a jingle for the road? A product benefit. “Bandaids stick where it’s supposed to, but it doesn’t stick where it’s not supposed to.” Unnecessary grammar begone. Extravagant yowl of the abyss seen from zero gravity.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [23]
Altucher blew it when he claimed the city was dead, even about to be forgotten, gone. What a horses ass. I think he mistook his own juvenile kvetching for a thought piece. Who are we kidding, looking at Miami? No self-respecting person would oar there, only putzes and kvetchers running scared. But quitter that he is, our royal boy saw no alternative but to head South to Miami. To do what? There in the town without pity they’ll straight cold gun you down in the monotonous suburbs for no good reason at all. Useful values, wouldn’t you expect at least that much of yourself? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way, out, you zero.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [24]
At the time Alphabet City was still a thing, home to many, terrifying to some, but essentially just another few blocks in the big Apple. Families, corner stores, things you can’t even give a name to they’re so nuanced, so elemental. The Chinese restaurant on Avenue A where we shared fortunes. The joint where poor bohemians ate breakfasts designed to fuel them all day at the Socrates diner. Eggs, toast, hash browns, coffee, juice. The waitress was from Marseille and we talked about the virtue of living in coastal cities with lemon groves and delicious food and enough salty humor to go around. Bodega cats and looseys, scratch tickets and stoops, 40s and slices, dawn walks home. That incredible turning point when night turns to dawn and the disco pack rodents and riffraff have sniffed and sampled enough and are scurrying home, making way for the dawn patrol, the coffee carts, the cooks and marketeers, no Mickey Mouse involved. No need for artifice, the magic kingdom right here under your nose for the taking if you dare. Still is yours to carve out. Always was and will be. Someone’s stupid car alarm. Things that once were kiosks. Booming speakers and street racers winding to a close. The chorus of the bird song in Fort Tryon. The memory of the killer who laid out the girl like an Ophelia in the leaves, surrounded by a halo of flowers.
❤️🦊❤️
New York City [25]
After midnight, this: blue moonlight over the harbor, candlelight in the window, deep peaceful sleeping in the high rise, even though a few nocturnals remain, the blue grey light of their television lives signaling help hello and hi. I see you. Just outside a pack of concrete knaves and line men, they know the importance of a good bluff, the essential lessons of geometry. Northbound, the lonely fireboat, steadfast, true. Did you know when the towers burned these decommissioned little fire boats showed up to do what they could? Imagine an old canvas hose half a mile away, a mile too low, you see the odds and yet, they showed up. Pretty boys and poets on the Chelsea pier. Other people’s mothers raising children that aren’t theirs but belong to them. The man I see every morning lying on the bench lips moving in incantation. Dead or sleeping bodies. The rising tide of homeless. Workers flowing in and out of transit hubs in sensible shoes. Hopeful fishermen casting lines into the filthy Hudson. Don’t eat those fish boys, they’ve been swimming with the corpses. Quiet giants of the West Side. The old railroad tie-line and cafe where we still gather every day for the usual obsolete delights — coffee, the papers, people watching and complaining about the weather, the Mayor and the MTA, in no particular order. Dogs who know what time it is. Kids who don’t care what time it is. Train tracks north into nowhere.
❤️🦊❤️
[26]
Autumn breeze clear day, everything possible and [t]here for us to win or lose. We decide. Forget the fickle hand of Fate, God, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Forget the Holy Rollers, Intelligentsia, Jokers, Jacks of the All-Knowing, Lords of Merciful Nothingness. Oh, put behind you the quicksilver, rotten, silver-tongued usurpers. The venom pourers, the venal and the vicious. Wait for nothing, so say I and the dead— walk on, seek sunlight, make everything better. Break down, rebuild, reboot. Beyond mountains, more mountains, so the Haitian proverb goes, and that is true, but beside me, always beside me, [climbing, walking, resting] beside me, always beside me, is you.
❤️🦊❤️