dispatches

been listening to jazz to celebrate celebrating nothing, miles smiles and giant steps, etc. it's raining now and all i want is to stay up here, warm and dry and surrounded.

while riding my bike

at times it takes something cruel to realize how much you love something else. i've got a lot sloshing around in my head right now, but that's okay as long as i can stay all smiles and the cold does not feel so cold.

i can't stop mouthing Frank O'Hara's Steps; maybe because i'm trying to memorize it or because it flows or because it just fits right with everything. no lie, i don't even know what he gets to mumbling about in the middle but that doesn't matter to me because i mumble too. at least he's intelligible about it.

Steps

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting's not so blue

where's Lana Turner
she's out eating
and Garbo's backstage at the Met
everyone's taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park's full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we're all winning
we're alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building's no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

insert phrase of hope and political refinement

the streets of new york city last night were more beautiful than i've ever seen them. everyone, everywhere cheering and hugging, solidarity as evident as an elephant in a room. high five, very nice.

8:25

recently, i've been trying to efface my unrealistic grip on time. albeit i wear my watch every day, that does not mean i know time, not really. realistically, it takes half an hour by the orange line to get to bryant park, it takes 15 minutes to walk to campus. there's a whole brigade of excuse expressions for people like me: not everyone is on "island time". 20 minutes into class is not "fashionably late". i've come to know that the only instances in which time is malleable is (1) when i drive up the expressway and (2) in dreams. and this long streaming thought boiled over for this moment: a saturday night in the library with my pals thoreau & durand, and a mind like a sieve.

you know, i think if i ought not wear a watch, i'd be where i should more often.

thought vomit

so the weekend starts like this: sitting inside on a perfectly sunny day with a stella and tired. i feel bad about what i don’t post here, want to post more, have schemed modes of persuasion, haven’t really come up with anything except--you know those websites you stumble across where families take pictures of themselves on the same day every year for infinite years? like these guys . well here’s a picture of me, right now, riding my bike along the Hudson:



i think if i were to do that project, but once a day instead of once a year, i’d probably only incriminate myself as to how often i do not do my laundry. i’m not interested in lying today.

this weekend will be fine. it started at WNYU. my word vomit can now be found in the middle of The Sound Between on thursdays in the wnyu.org archives. i like it there, the station: all technical and hushed and, god save my vocabulary, alternative.

tomorrow’s going to be southern cooking and vodka, good friends and company down in the dirty; the financial district that is. there are few trees in the financial district, unlike central park, where i spent a good portion of last weekend. it is one of the only places here i can see the season’s change. that’s what this place misses, manhattan. here, there is no turnpike, foliage turning from that solid green to brown, or even the occasional yellow that distracts like a flare from the road.

that's all it is here, distractions. distractions like right now (all of that elapsed time to do what college kids do: veg out on the worst furniture you've ever experienced and watch finding nemo all slit-eyed and giggly). i have nothing more to say except for i'm listening to the prince song that's been stuck in my head all week, and it rules.

just woke up with peter gabriel's in your eyes stuck in my head and i don't know why but it was almost comforting, like the weekend.

finally got to redeem myself to mr. charles simic on thursday night--he did a reading at the creative writing house on w. 10th, and when, trembling, i handed him the book i had just bought of his (the monster loves his labyrinth) he smirked and looked to me and asked in thick yugoslavian english, "they sell 'dis here?" and i told him everything i had put into verse in my head in the past few weeks. and it was not gratifying in the end, really.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

-Dylan Thomas