I Just Got Here

425 word poem

I have been a New Yorker all of my life

I am in exile

Give me your socks, your shades

Your umbrellas for

Six dollars off the street

Your crumbling gargoyles

I want my legs slung over

a broken concrete slab

canted to some wild angle

In front of angry, vast graffiti

sipping Makers to celebrate

the grit, the audacity

the edge of pitch black harrowing through the day

A colossal ghost in an epic machine

take my picture in front of that

oh, you’re not the same

you are not The City of E.B. White and the gang

I know, I know

yes you are shut up

this wrought iron is not a snapshot

it ain’t kidding, flaking rust

one peek under the current tumult

and you haven’t budged an inch, and never will

the crucible from which you forged your first years

is forging this year, this moment

the crucible that forged New York

its primal machinery

became its heart

its spirit, its engine, master program,

its DNA is

Coal fire, horse shed, printer’s ink

& whatever’s left of this whiskey

Exhale hard, rub those hands

Is that the only coat you have for the winter?

You will catch your fucking death.

This is New York City.

II

The news of this world is hurting me

so I am rage-meandering

plunging into twilight in the 20s

slowing the clock, taking a picture

watching the lights pop

staying saturated in this surreal onset of night

and I am wrapping my fingers around the points

of this rusting wrought iron fence and

looking up at this grand statue of …

whoever the hell that is, upon his rampant horse,

and I am telling him

I am saying to the black buildings,

the horse & this fence, this night

that I was not a dreamy-eyed arrival

I live in exile

I eat crucibles for breakfast

heck, toss me that one over there

I mostly needed to be lost.

I can abide, I can withstand where I can be lost

I will just be here by this fence if you don’t mind

A rough-chopped

how-the-hell-are-you has emerged

for me like oregano

and spray paint

and the top of the Chrysler Building

Welcome. Now get to work.

Find yourself some real boots; you’ll catch your death.

Have you ever tasted pizza? No: no you haven’t.

Go get a slice of fucking pizza.

I am telling you

that I deeply

truly

swear

I have been

a New Yorker

all of

my

life