Tangental

It's not the rain I love, it's the overwhelming darkness of the city. Pulled under the pale brown-blue like a week old bruise, the noise is dulled, the walks are slower, the pavement is slick with glitter, the people are solitary and humble.

We are all afflicted. All of us. Many people open little black bibles on the subway that sweat salvation. This is not one of them.

This is not a book of poems. It is not a book of stories. It is just words, most of them empty.

When I was a child I wrote a story on a piece of paper and glued a second sheet to the first. I called it a tall tale, and kept writing and gluing until the words didn't matter and the story extended on for six or seven feet. Those were empty words, whole sentences devoid of any motivation but length.

Here is my allegory for the American life. Here is what I fear: rounded vowels, very few words, too many lines, deep dissatisfaction.

Stalker

When you constantly dream about someone, time and again, inside and outside of sleep, are they stalking you? Or are you stalking them?

Dumb Blondie

I am not one of those girls who needs chocolate everyday or I will whine. I don't get fro-yo cravings or delight in a bowl of m&m's. Yet for some reason, at exactly 3:12pm EST, I was knocked, bowled, thrown over my desk chair by a desire for a blondie. Oh, blondies, the sweet, sweet counterpart to the childish brownie. Toss in a few nuts and I will get down on my knees for a blondie.

Onwards, I marched down Madison avenue in search of a suitable blondie. Oh, hello. What do we have here? Tea? A butterscotch blondie? Oh heaven in midtown.

It was the greatest 3:17pm EST I've had in months. Had I not been in plain sight, right there amongst the sniveling tea-shop bloggers, I would have moaned about said moment of bliss.

Now that several hours have passed, I am still holding onto that afterglow.

Manhattan

"Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Uh, no, make that: He romanticized it all out of proportion. Now to him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. (Ah, now let me start this over.) Chapter One. He was too romantic about Manhattan as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. (Nah, no, corny, too corny for my taste. I mean, let me try and make it more profound.) Chapter One. He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of the contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in-- (No, it's gonna be too preachy. And, you know . . . let's face it, I wanna sell some books here.) Chapter One. He adored New York City, although to him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage. (Too angry. I don't wanna be angry.) Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. (I love this.) New York was his town. And it always would be."
--Woody Allen, Manhattan

A Pound of Flesh

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will." --Ezra Pound

Blink

You are no longer in love but your heart is swollen with it.

An Easy Metaphor

Let me tell you something:

My iPod broke yesterday, and suddenly I'm on the 6 heading downtown without my earbuds. I'm exposed. I hear everything. And it's nice, because I'm able to give my seat up to an older woman and politely talk to her. But I also hear terrible people saying awful things.

And I guess you might say that having to face this half hour commute in the sort of silence so loud that it's literally distracting is exactly what I need. It's an easy metaphor to make: I have been walking around New York for the past year with my guard up, unable to experience the sweet because I have turned away from the bitter.

I suppose I can also argue that I am so aware and overly conscious that the moments I relieve myself from my acute observations, I am suddenly more vulnerable. Hence, my guard is down.

There is no right answer, suffice it to say that I draw comparisons where ever and however I see fit. And when the music is absent, something else must approximate the rhythm of the subway and the trilling of its tribe.

Be a Camel!

That's what she tells me, sexually speaking,
and though I have to agree with her point
(the one about going so long between drinks),
I am thinking about the hump
and the way people describe the journey
the rolling and jolting rough-sea rock,
the slow-aching hip bruising,
An unfortunate way of telling someone to wait:
endure that painful mammalian convulsion.
How can I be a camel, I think,
blowing softly on my hooves.