Solitude in the Heart of Manhattan

1.

Travel’s Effect,
Hope enough for me
Believe I am here
So the aspired time will not take absence,
Preventing the heart of the dream from
Continuing to live.

In time I could leave I left Miami Me myself and overnight bags Palms waving bye behind my back A coconut just missing my head Airport, Gate E8, American Airlines.

There I am, but how am I here?
How far am I from where I need to be?

Terminals become congested by similar desires, similar doubts.

We all go, wanting, to become less estranged.

Strangers, unfamiliar faces, shadows of selves don’t stick Depressing Heads buried in books Inside an other, waiting to be elsewhere Each the main character of this life for him.

This is not solely about me.

Regardless, we move, preoccupied with waiting, we live this life My living, without noticing you A current passing We wait again Through time a plane depositing bodies in other places Semblance of shape and size.

Descending
Conscious
Waking inside
Flesh
Folding over me
Manhattan,
The city of my dream.

2.

Trying To,
Familiarize myself with features
Walking, I traced the city
Hand trying to retain touch,
A feeling that shows its Self
Attachment wearing worth’s meaning.

Encompassing me, I stood rooted in reality Around I sensed bodies moving, exaggerating my stillness, envying my grounding The refusal to rush a moment New Yorkers can never just be, beyond the station of their body Desperate to become that person they are not yet Any way, casting their self for role of the future, invented ideal Twisted mirage, ant tunnels, millions marching, an ambitious pulsation, the cities’ complexity, labyrinthine lifestyle.

I am amazed, how little my mind knew Manhattan, this figure I always believed I loved Feeling now, imagining and experiencing my dream produce unrelated culminations Require different models of being.

Other thought, a being ceasing to be so another can, another will.

Imagination is initiated outside logic The latter limited by desire Experience and we keep our selves sober Have to, no choice when aware Envision and we allow ourselves to deny.

Letting lids fall down, veiled eyes Hand grazing wall’s belly, a stomach moan A visceral chew, the heart beating Moving forward, I trusted instinct Behind intuition, the feeling I was fleeing Miami more The past pulling less at my presence Forward for future, I go.

Outside body consciousness separates, Stuyvesant Street splits, and so does self, defines subjection.

Watching the way my body moved with street’s curvature Waiting for the moment my heart would try to step outside Not armoured In a spasm of freedom, go dancing through the veins of the city Staining the sidewalk with the dash of my heels I’d follow the sound Ears trying to see Bristles back and forth painting streets gold in light An artist crouching over masterpiece Fashioning modern myth Claude and Christine on his canvas of obsession Zola shake my hand! Autobiography prints anything we touch.

Held at a great distance a droning hum and dogs barking their owners awake could be pictured The talented tell as if never separated from a precious scene Such a writerly trait to deform the fact with details It is true, decorations detract from the real and embellishments confuse the simple.

3.

Being Alone,
To see to know to feel it all then more
Undeniable difficulty when anonymousNew to class? No envision the big picture,
In the city, to avoid aloneness think
A discourse with self, your phenomenal partner.

I am Waldo Never found on streets where no one knows names Streets, where no one sees who I am Faces tell a past but they are not how they seem Who one was now is because of that But no one will ask why Things changing everyday is not an excuse for silence, separation, disinterest.

I want you to know bits, I want you to know pieces.

Stay put, I will bring forth everything.

Wanderers moving, STOP!
New Yorkers, stand still, sit here.
It is raining?
Let me take you inside…walking walking walking over me…Wait, it was just an idea!
Why won’t anyone talk?
Does music need pulled out from ears?
I will do it just to be looked in the eyes!
Crash computer chips on paving.
Powder you’ll think and blow.
Programmed addict.
Is that what these bodies speeding by are?
Collecting, colliding, then moving on.
Forgotten faces, where can I find you?
The lost and found.
Is that the great distance I must travel for us seen twice?

No one does the genuine gesture anymore They type, they post, their signature is a username but I want it to sound with love cords In letter’s voice say, “I was the one,” One and only female in black, all black, no color, colorless nameless female who radiated beauty and has short dark hair that can’t be held in big hand I’ve never been near someone like you, a discovery made by my eyes and kept for my mind Female in darkness, I think you are My Muse The post ending on a single question No not, Dear love at first sight, did you see me too? If only when one saw, their eyes thought to know me, if only eyes looked through me and discovered truth If only the body were transparent, instead of one’s speech If only the message would not conclude on the attention to others, causing a distraction from the subject, the persona who prompted the exchange.

“Are you an actress? Maybe your mother?”

Jean Seberg, had she a child before becoming breathless? Being suicidal had she thought she may want a daughter? She was so lonely, so pretty, talented and adored She was so timeless like me What makes the believed in stop believing? At once to be discovered and get lost Is that an excuse?

4.

When Imagining,
A spectacular situation
We forget feelings
Live and die.

In an exaggeration of effects, untangled lovers finally take their limbs back, sighing goodbye.
sigh
“good”
sigh
“bye”

She will tell her friend, “He was emotional, honest and brave.”
Only there to keep her hopeful she will say, “It means he’ll have thoughts of you, call you.”
She can see it happening and promises to be committed to waiting, “He will love me in the snow.”

But it is months away from frozen windowpanes and heaters turning on How do I break the news, he was believable, that is all It could be read on his tongue’s fine print, hadn’t she looked there? Not thinking, never thinking, feelings feared as he promised a call by winter when genders develop infatuations for sex, the sex that is Feeling I am needy now I’ll have to find someone by then, preferably a Manhattan man with a chain and a lock, the biker aesthetic Two times the speed, he’ll rotate to accommodate my needs Coming inside where it’s not so chilly, we must have our bodies pressed, desperately decreasing draft In warmth the hunger will eventually be eaten away, no longer starving, it was just an unexplainable phase The feeling will make me sick, if I smell it I’ll heave My gloved sterile hand will drag down stairway the stripped sheets where we once were, impressionable, Hurled on an avenue corner, my recyclable feelings. 

Maybe someone else will want to use you.

5.

Lying Next,
To him, we may not have
Even known, ever thought
When wanting a kiss
His desire was to
Make us bleed.

“You’re sexy” echoed between Avenue C and Lafayette Six blocks I walk The line being passed on and on Could it be the High School’s baseball team playing catch? Three strikes and you're it! He’ll have to be the leader of the pack Bring home that fan, the one they talk about who comes to every game, smiling and cheering, her mouth open wide He’s it, the chosen one, the loser He’ll touch the girl first His body looking down upon her white eyes, no energy now, barely a pulse to cheer him on But he won’t mind as he opens her lips with his bat Behind the mates backing him, “Do it for the team!” Words enlarging his ego turn him on and he becomes bigger, batter, wanting to score Keeping the promise, “After you hit it, there’s no running home, what happens on the bases stays between the players” Raped, she will wake, embarrassed, thinking her period had caused the mess.

At least that is what I heard when the story got to me Now I just think you should know because I cannot get it out of my head I cannot help but feel him when I am lying beneath I cannot not think I see red when the color is white.

“Hey Pretty Mama lemme come all over your mind.”

Nine times attaching to me Let it go and they try harder Launching word-darts BULL’S EYE! Stinging my neck like a hickey, sucking me till it shows, yes they’re ravenous and that ridiculous A vampire was the guest on Tyra Bank’s Talk Show Thursday Said seriously, he is real.

Vampires, a community of them, three different types:

1. Sanguinarians—Blood drinkers who experience blood-lust or blood-craving. Their main vampiric tendency is a compulsion, or need, to consume blood for reasons that are not primarily related to eroticism or emotional satisfaction.

2. Psychic—Living people who have the ability, consciously or unconsciously, of draining vital life-energy rather than blood from others.

3. Human Living—Individuals who firmly assert they are essentially human beings, and to all external appearances are exactly that, yet have pronounce vampiric characteristics, having a need, compulsion or involuntary tendency to “feed” upon some substance or energy produced by other living things, primarily other people.

He’s hybrid. 

He drinks blood but has preferences.

Nothing mixed with HIV, heroine, no crackie’s cuttings, the mouth won’t go there.

No he’s A) indecisive B) lost 3) afraid.

6.

Bankable Productions,
A creation, what was made,
Manufactured, refined, branded
The process of changing the natural into the staged
Manipulating the raw for a financial gain.

Scream, I want to scream We all are just a little hungry for something to quench our need Just a little afraid the past cannot be separated from the present Should I tell him memories provide safety, memories show things go somewhere? Should I give him the secret? To have presence we must face the memory of our momentary self He will hate how the truth sounds He is embarrassed of who he was Thinks now he can’t relate Hates how he was treated Still hurt that no one will forgive him for slapping High School Sweetheart when she said he was kissing her too hard “Softer, you’re hurting me” And so he did, hurt her, because she thought of the idea first when he was too busy tasting her Nothing feels the same He desires distance The negative is it won’t help him forget The positive is it will help others forget him Then he can start over Be better this time He thinks, he plans, he invents logic But I have my doubts Why want friends when he says he dislikes the energy of the normal world? Stays inside instead studying—WHAT?—Vampire textbooks? The philosophy of drinking blood? I’ll Google when home, place an order on Amazon, study another mind I would like to empathize with.

Tyra eying him entire episode, “Boy you sound crazy!” But she is the one becoming crazy.

Friday she will bring her “babies” on, models super models, characters acting as super super super models in reality, this phenomenon told to be real I am confused, are all happenings in reality real or is the root being in the larger grander word just a coincidence? Wait, could one of the two be a trick, a joke, and then there will be laughter or a godlike figure talking to me through the backdrop of the sky like in The Truman Show? I think I am on to something Contributing to the cinema of “New Sincerity” I will fax Kaufman my notes Inspire the film Bergman is not alive to make Generation X this is for you Recognize death as a celebration, a chance to step out of the shadow Take this chance on me It is time us Americans influence first and resist our conditioning Calling all females! Use your tongue to make meaning Never again be ashamed of your name Initials are the tracings of someone more To everyone who communicates, Stop using ink for plot! Stop escaping what we already have! Expose the film to darkness and I swear in time the mind will process the negatives and see light! Make the screen reflect the inside life! Suspend the creative mind, so when the frames roll they play refusing linearity in order to provoke the pure! We will advance! I see it happening.

“Okay now go, off into real world, make mamma proud, eat veggies or buy pizza and change your career, runs in the genes, now go, bye bye super babies”—Commercial break—then Tyra’s fluttering eyes smiling glorifying a female who blames her boyfriend for having “brofriends” No this is serious A real romance In a very personal text message he told him that he loved him Something has to be wrong! There are too many hims! It is grammatically incorrect! I swear this is a fallacy! 

Someone hose someone down, the set is on fire with laugher Tyra first, then the audience becomes a chorus of hysterics The yawn effect All because they want to be her, do as she, she wanting them to be fans standing in for feeling Hyenas pissing pants, pointing at the two males who god forbid care, feel, aren’t so damn cold, aren’t so damn rock hard But now they are confused Because of this absurd prank? Laughter makes them feel wrong, makes them think “Bad behavior!” Bewitch changed them in a snap Tyra and followers inflating penis Clowns giving kids something to play with.

They won’t see or be able to think Their eyes will never smile or blink again because now they are conditioned to no longer feel either.

7.

Generation Feminine,
Thanks Tyra, Superstar Feminist for today
Helping lessen the divide, demeaning them
Branding all of us “Gender”
This is not the way the business should work
Enemies won’t give us power
Anger has no beauty.

“FEMALE…not under my arm…this isn’t a hug…behind me…single file line…HERE.”

----------------------------------------SHOUTING, SCANDALOUS---------------------------------

“MALE…keep moving…further…away…THERE.”

A division I cannot add up.

I don’t want to be near you, I want to be closer to him!

But I am supposed to feel liberated? By whom? This woman who the moment “keeping it real” became marketable forgot how to do it and just went on to another project, some mogul making idea I am embarrassed, embarrassed by what my sex says but then does She, “the feminine voice of our generation,” encouraging females to stand up, to be angry, to make a riot because they have a vagina and are entitled to be moody As if they worked hard to get their vagina in the first place The passion for feeling cannot be this superficial, I hope.

Let them set flame to their tampons They’ll just have to blow harder in the end While doing so, I will be collecting their hall passes and burning them in front of their television screen Hopefully excite them to exit and go outdoors to find someone, anyone who does not read a cue card, who does not share a story as if they were delivering a monologue, who does not mail a mix-tape to replace the voice they hadn’t had.

“You’re fierce,” calling through my thoughts.

Men so aroused, it dries me up “Short, sophisticated bob, let me make you wild, tug hair, pull it long like a lady’s” They saw the way I touched my hair while walking the street’s spine They liked the way I touched myself Imagined how I might if letting them see me letting myself Biting lip, they mistake my tension for appeal, elbowing partner in crime, rolling shoulders back like,

“Lemme me show you somethan’ you can feel, somethan’ that will throb throughout.”

I know better I think outside the box A possibility is they want to see me smile, want to lighten me up, help me be not so serious Just a few lonely men, delirious in the sun from the same old routine They can’t ruin the day or my swagger Background noise doesn’t make it on my mix Choose soundtrack carefully It effects the entire show.

8.

Disorderly Illogically,

I am taken through time

Carried by a past 

I cannot explain,

Yet explains fragments of me. 

Shake shake Coins tossing If I exchanged sense for cents and closed my eyes I would be back to Miami in a snap Hearing shake shake Thinking a dime a dozen shook outside the car window A panhandler’s eyes staring down at the driver, all safely strapped in seatbelt Shake shake and I’m hearing the sound again Jingles coming from waist But thank gosh it isn’t what it sounds like Not in Manhattan, where I don’t drive a car This time I see a dark skinned man shaded by an umbrella Big bright parachute-like, lending tone dimension to the face, making him a more colorful character than he is Waving wad of bills high above drifting heads From the arm up he looks like a savior.

On display are bananas In High School wrote my number with a black sharpie on yellow skin So bold of me Gave it to a boy I barely knew Once he peeled it he called, never stopped calling Bending in mouth, I can’t eat them without laughing Ziploc baggies packed with nuts, Fuji and Macintosh apples are two for a buck, Score! Grapes, buy them, freeze them and wait until morning, go to the icebox, close your eyes and surprise! The grapes taste like candy Trust me Rene Zellweger does it Says they trick her sweet tooth every time and she looks like she doesn’t eat anything but egg whites and grapefruit to burn the fat she fears she has.

Catching my attention are papayas lying orange under my reach Radiating ripe earth, newly plucked, soft scoops of tasteless beta-carotene Confidential laxative Eat after protein and nothing will stick to bones Helped my weight remain hovering in little bitty hundreds for a few months Yes, lucky me achieved a two digit number Remember those? All 5’9 of me People worried I was on my last heartbeat, that I would die resembling a prepubescent boy.

“I am better now.”

Claims the anorexic who never denies, who always sees the truth.

Everyday spent sensibly helps psychotic patterns of disorder lessen Granted skin turned cantaloupe orange around ears, beneath nose and covered palms But I was fortunate to have been living in Miami so this could be seen as a misconception, a statement that I was too smart to lay under the sun and instead, ended up with splats of self-tanner It isn’t even laughable I looked like a child’s art project, a big mess, ridiculous disaster, which was me. 

Some times I slip up though and fall back to who I was Thinking like her, feeling like her, as my mind speeds trying to avoid anything grounded in reality, anything that brings me closer to who I am A mirror? I can’t see my Self there, too focused looking through the glass, too tempted to break it, become more fragmented and have my nose use it for blow Then I’ll fit right into my dream Be my ideal image Walking quicker, moving faster, inside my own little world Going to all the art openings, up all day, I won’t miss an hour Awake through the night, out on the town, a presence at every event This is my fate Someone will be bound to see me and I’ll love that my name is in their mouth Thick promise on the tongue The agency will take me back with a waist of 23 I’ll be wanted but still have to swear on a pinky and sign my signature at the bottom of the contract X marks the spot and I will be owned again No longer so alone No longer unrecognized I will be stopped The stares confirming an obvious beauty It is then, I will think I am happy It is then, I will know I have reason to be proud of all this control.

9.

City Mentality,

The belief your face can be changed

That the answer is waiting

At the entrance of what is new. 

Now I am thinking too much by pulling at my past which is the last thing I said I would do when I left Promising my family for the fifty-third time before arriving at the airport that I will be good to myself Blaming my 90 pounds on the Miami lifestyle This city made me do it was the line I would always say And I believed it Believed a city could change your spirit and renew the soul Believed a plane would push you away from what held you back Believed a flight would make you fall out of yourself.

But now I don’t know if my body can stand how fast it has to move here I don’t know whether my heart won’t feel let down if it can’t do everything a healthy individual can How can I tell anyone it is harder than I imagined? It is real and not a dream.

Twin will say, 

Come on sis, why can’t you be more like me? 

You’re making everyone worry

You’ve always gotten all the attention, don’t be so selfish for once. 

But I was born with this face.

Friend will say, 

You’re living in Manhattan, you’re the luckiest girl I know!

Stop being hard on yourself and go make a friend, 

There’s millions to choose from.

But no one has the time.

Dad will say, 

WAKE UP, there are people worse off than you. 

But my feelings are what I know.

Mom will use

The last frequent flier miles to book me a flight back “home”.

But I’m not sure where my heart is.

They will 

Finally put me in a program to get me help.

But not the kind I need.

10.

Unavoidable Contradiction,

The outside, the inside

His wants, his needs

My projection, my introspection.

Happy hour isn’t yet Four to seven “manmosa special” Fruit drowned in a pint of champagne Here ten dollars will buy you happiness, the need to nap and a hangover before the time practical people, that select group who has their mind together, begin their nighttime life.

I can’t drink alone anyway It will feel like Halloween Take II on South Beach at Plan-B aka “The Spot” Where an outpouring of holiday enthusiasts are high on: A) tootsie rolls B) fear factor C) acid still soaking the tongue.

But I am none of the above Just slumped over dressed as myself because for once in my life I just want to be me drinking a Black Russian My breasts smashed on the bar counter provoking an illusion of cleavage Posture straight and these utters are just hanging out That night I am confident in some corner of myself There to have some fun, maybe play a few tricks, be spirited for once Alone on Halloween in a staring contest with bartender, taking my straw, so small and impotent, a disservice for sucking, having it touch the glasses’ rim, an over determined circling, so with his head risen he can imagine me performing a feminine gesture, and even though I’m not drunk I’d swallow what he had mixed Eying him thank you, this is exactly what I need, which is a lie.

But he would find me

Follow me home

Having to

Saying he was mesmerized by my way.

“Amazing…how you can be alone”…barely listening barely listening…“Call the shots…confidence”

“So sexy in a woman…few like you”…barely listening barely listening…“Makes me mad…most unique”

He ruins it by telling me words that don’t amount to much Immediately I lose interest Forgetting to edit what I say or care what I do It all becomes just a story I can pass down, a bedtime tale, a game.

Let’s play Marco Polo.

Close your eyes, I’ll hide, find me, figure me out.

He is either A) a genius B) a soul-mate C) a victim of me With all this hope inspired by an idealized image of who? Me? The exterior encouraging expectations of interior, you’re over thinking this When all I cared about then and there was avoiding holidays spent absolutely alone. 

11.

Trust Me,

I don’t like him

But I will take him

Have him for the night

So after we will not have to speak

But can decide separately 

To share the story differently. 

Taking advantage of achievement I let loose, as if my body was saying,

Gas tanks filled!

Vacation time!

Haven’t partied in months!

We could die tomorrow!

This was all true and made me even crazier in bed My finger in his mouth Not what he thought I liked, having to show him what I want, what I need Ass cheeks hanging out of underwear, a similar image would be padding in a cheap bra suddenly exposing itself and more blatantly the deception WOOPS! Except I’m au naturale, no imitation meat on me, hells nah! This derrière is what I call “my pantry,” you know, where any processed food is stored My most curvaceous feature can’t be hidden in the dark.

Why some men say, “Baby I’mma call you back!” 

And I’m like, Hey I’m game for wordplay, whatever makes me pause, think, laugh.

So I’m there with no more visible surprises, just all skin and nothing to unhook But he’s still clothed all because I won’t help him unbutton or unzip And I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s “that type” you know who keeps things real private or maybe he has some secret: A) a disease B) a vagina C) a boil Naturally reacting I pretend to be harder to get than I, well then I was just moments before, Until I shatter night’s speechless erotica with words that effectuate ear echoes Something pulsating with narcissism or if it helps anyone like me less may have sounded like ego-love I can’t quote myself verbatim but I said an expression close to, “This is when I act passively, so strip or let me get some sleep.”

I wasn’t even trying to make sense. 

I was just avoiding how I felt.

SCOUTS HONOR! He keeps himself dressed Regardless, he looks undeniably good, gorgeous, real Kenlike but come on haven’t we all played doctor on our Barbies before! The memory arouses me so I kiss him again, enjoy it too Rubbing the tension till he is tenser While in my mind salacious stories cycle, his mouth mutters hopeless confessions and his hands tear sheet’s skin Lashes blow back Pupils big as an O He’s trying to tell me something but I am all up in my head and can’t hear much over all the thick tension Sure if we were skin on skin I may hear him but not with all this rubbing.

Then suddenly, as in every instant is its own time, his body jerks and I panic, planning the speech on the spot, “His heart had been attacked, but oh friends and family, he was still so young and tame.” Checking for a pulse, anything that throbs, I reach into his pants My hand all perverted like its got a gimp and I feel something, something damp, like “Mom Daddddddd, the baby just spilt on the kitchen floor and I’m not cleaning up” And then translating the silence with what is felt, I make sense of the situation, thinking Awwwwww, he hadn’t been touched in awhile.

12.

Wandering ingenuously,

Through ponderings, impartiality keeps me 

Wholehearted, unmoved, grounded in the present

With dewed eyes of enchantment, not from sleep,

But a more ambitious escape

Youth, when fiction felt real.

Come morning room’s scent was stale secretion and I felt mattress become lighter Behind shut eyes I sensed him sneaking out confused There are only two options A) he checked my closet and found composure was a costume I had hung and retired or B) he vanished feeling I had already grown attached.

“She knew my jeans were Levis, chick was wild dude, stay around any longer 

and she’d have read my mind, studied my soul.”

The 17th time he’d have shared the story This round telling his version to some bloodshot middle aged man, just laid off from work, who was there desperately attempting to drink real problems away Not enough spirits here for that.

“Sorry sir, gonna haveta’ cutcha’ off.”

The second time today.

Wringing washcloth, a sponge of liquor over sink, he would think hard and instead try to concentrate on memorizing mixtures for obscure shots requested by guys looking to show Jersey girls a good weekend trip in the big, bad city.

What a waste, I hadn’t felt anything aside from less lonely and content with what I had received The pleasure of seeing him coming, which didn’t mean much.

I can do anything here, where within a place there is an infinite number of places to be Streets stretched with options Neighborhoods like a town And they call Miami a city? In Manhattan you never have to worry about seeing someone you’ve been trying to forget. 

Get on Subway: 6 Train—Astor Place—Heading Uptown Pelham Bay Park—Pass 15th street—Three after that—42nd Street Grand Central—Get off—Walk West towards Madison Avenue.

Location: New York’s Public Library Kiss lion’s cheek Climb all 57 steps Stand under arch Feel royal or like I’m in Paris taking pictures of landmarks Thank goodness I know this landmark’s name Could never pronounce anything foreign Never even tried, “My language is English, your words are not in my vocabulary” These things can be taught “No, no, no, useless, useless, wouldn’t want to waste our time, too precious.”

Guggenheim is an option Some experimental exhibit Museum as romantic comedy Conspiracies against human connection Spiraling narrative Labyrinthine hallways Familiar things forgotten and overlooked Disappearing progressions Pinocchio facedown on a piece of glass, I guess it’s suppose to be a pool-like abstraction Narcissus analogy Metaphor for what? Pinocchio drowning in lies? The motive is to (re)sensitize people Make them look closer and see what it is all about It seems farfetched Disney’s intention was never to take themselves seriously or I don’t know Maybe I was too young at the time and I didn’t have to, didn’t want to make anything be serious.

Where did that reality go?

13.

Being Loved,

You must have let your Self be seen through

To be read into, to not be taken lightly

Despite our own obscurity 

When in limbo, take to me slowly

And you will take to me fast

I am always wanting, this. 

Finally I am here.

13th Street and West 4th

Café Pick Me Up

Five New York Times reviews since it opened a summer and a half ago All saved, clipped and lamented for my file of pursuits, “Manhattan My Dream” Yes! Yes! Yes! I am here! Café Picked Me Up, face to face, I’ve had you pictured for so long But now you look like you’ve been waiting for years Your cracked surface like chipped nails Painted “Russian Roulette” Radiating starburst, sailing, the pirate’s flag rippling red spectrum Sunset staining sea In time the exterior rots, rusts and is ruined Some call it antiquity, I consider it classy No you read me wrong Nothing to do with style, behavior, powdered perfection pretentious pomp! I am talking the true sense of word, as in ancient time tells history and reveals character Classy as in classic.

Through any and every changing phase, this essence will never be forgotten, defines timeless.

Finally I am outside, but thinkingSTILLthinkingthinkingthinkingthinkingthinkingthinkingSTILLthinking

Really I am here But I cannot move Cannot move when I am waiting Waiting in the liminal space between silence and speechlessness My I becoming denser with the hour Waiting for the world Waiting for something in it The sole window for my eye to see through Waiting to see myself in the mirrors I always avoid My dream is waiting To move me. 

Reminding me why I am here.

What had I come for?

Anything that takes me beyond my limitations for my body.

Or is it the limitations for my mind?

Questions do not succeed without answer.

Thoughts are all self-imposed. 

These others disturb my desire for myself.

MOVE ME.

A smell.

A taste. 

Something that brings me back to a moment that succeeded in passing.

I am okay with this.

Okay I remember it was lived through.

Okay because it means I am alive in spite

Okay because it means I survived

I am okay with this.

I survived my selves.

I want a simple fulfillment to move me Nothing I will need Nothing I will depend on Just something that will not hurt me A kind no one can take A kind that will make me feel and not think A kind that will help me be better.

14.

Listen Listen,

Stop exchanging sense with reason

Are you confused? Don’t let yourself be

I sound like you, you’re hearing your Self

Conscious crisscrossing, diving clarity

This is the closest truth, it is real. 

Brewed beans, the deepest roast, a smell so thick it attaches to the face Makes eyes crave croissants oozing chocolate buttered bread Fingers warmed from pressing into baked dough Having to reach for napkin to hide grease prints and traces of indulgence flaking on bottom lip I have been without this experience far too long A machine lactating foam mixes with espresso A steamy infusion coming over the rim Inside the O is the tongue pursuing the stimulant A heart the lips reach for floating in the cup held by your cupped hands, Café Pick Me Up’s infamous design, manmade, this unbreakable heart Until the mouth swallows, finishing it off, tasting the trace in back of the throat. 

Swallow me slowly

Let me stay 

Digesting

I enter a similar scene I know I have seen but now feels like an unresolved trace Strangers stick to seats Their heads are buried in literature Literature, the escape from a visual reality Literature, the escape into the space of reader and written Literature, a product of the tongue and the texture of metalanguage The reader’s mind is more controlled when engaged in textuality A relationship allowing one to choose what is seen and imagined from all that has been evoked and laid down in type These readers with no eyes, only bent heads and open mouths sucking sentences for sense I have them pictured but I cannot imagine what they do Are they waiting for the authentic textual pleasure? Are you waiting for the ultimate orgasm? Females share your secrets with me Is that what you want to come, a feeling of liberation that will give you a gasm-glow?

Am I not creative? Is it me who is senseless?

Don’t resist me If I knew everything I wouldn’t obscure it I have no secrets I would not tell.

Don’t resist me We have much to learn but we are learning much too If I felt everything I would tell you how it feels With me you would feel it You would feel it in me But I can only write what I feel and I feel I think too much to let myself stay and be touched.

Don’t resist me To be loved you must let yourself be seen through And before that you must love your Self And before that you must see yourself Notice I don’t know how I look, I haven’t ever said.

Don’t resist me It is the inside that means most This inside which we haven’t wanted to leave or else we would Would we not? This is not for everyone, although it can be but it is up to them.

Don’t resist me This is for the feelers who thought to listen.

Listen, I sound like you Consciousness crisscrossing The mind amazed Unable to leave itself and draw from the outside in This is a presence An essence coming out And you are following it Because you think it means something, something abstract that you are challenged to catch and distill Time will let you All you need is the mind in time Listen, you hear something breathing which is why you are so close to the page Sensing it is speaking to you So close to passing through this wall, like a neighbor with his ear pressed against the door’s chest, following your musicality, your toes touching the apartment’s steps, advancing like a musical note Listening because you are so delicate, so fragile when you move And he hears you moving somewhere down the hall And now that you are moving, you are getting so close, that he can almost feel you Almost, and he presses harder Wanting you, having to see you now that you are so close And he presses harder, needing to know you right now. 

15.

I am, 

Finally here 

Had been

Waiting so long

Now I am sure

You will see me

All the time. 

I am asking, so curious Asking all about their different cafés Cappuccinos with soy, hazelnut lattés, americanos without room So happy to be talking to someone So happy to share a similar interest And he is talking, telling me what he will make for me, a first time customer But I cannot hear him over all the whispering Whispers sounding so cruel Behind my back a woman tugging her friend’s cottoned arm whispers,

“Eeeeeeewwwww, what is that anorexic doing in here?”

Voice 2, “She shouldn’t be allowed to stay if she isn’t going to even eat!”

Words loud Words cruel Make me turn towards the sound to see who they are speaking about Wondering why gossip is self-inspired Why even discuss other people and things instead of ideas? Shocked, her finger points to me Two women, best friends, right wrist crossing left wrist, pulses over lapping, the same life line, hands laced with attachment, as if they are one and the same In my mind all is silent Time has no sound as I make eye contact for the first time with two women in Manhattan They show no hesitancy, like they could stare at me forever They have no inclination to be discrete, to not be so inhumane, to not make me question even more what I see, to not remind me of who I am trying to get over.

Rose’s saddest shade spreads.

Into a wound transforming imagery.

Mood decorates skin’s landscape.

My face responds.

Quicker than I am verbally capable.

I must go.

I have to leave.

Before tears spiral loose.

And make a mosaic on my skin.

I must leave now.

But I imagined I would be here forever. 

16.

Manhattan Betrayed,

I will always stick up for someone I love

But no one spoke for me. 

No sounds, no words Silence standing still Me speaking a silent language in a city that never tried to listen to me anyway Silence spoken in your place Nothing real Nothing substantial Unheard words never mean anything Silence is unrecognized Silence is forgotten Silence is valueless Silence is no excuse for having no words.

Speech matters Voice is what we become attached to, a memory that determines the moment Voice deciding the instant we feel safe, the instant we feel secure, the instant we feel embraced in an exchange Language deciding and determining Language making meaning out of me.

This body birthed empty This body now filled by fleeting thoughts, fleeting images, all subscribing value but only some stick Depressing Attaching, clinging, symbolizing something more, symbolizing something greater Some meaning that I am a metaphor for?

Impossible! I do not understand its meaning Not yet, not now But some time I am sure I will But not yet Now I need a line, I cannot focus, I need something to swallow, something to help me forget details, help me forget what the women said, the reminder of who I was, how they think it is still who I am, which is what I am trying to get over.

So many details all around me Always here Always there Too many to matter I cannot process them all Realized this long ago and ever since I let them hide, I don’t think to know them, I cannot perceive every word, I cannot remember how conversation exactly went, I am only reminded of the substance and the weight.

I fill gaps in with feeling where feeling needed to be filled Because gaps are projecting such a void and anyone can become lost I have to patch darkness up with more darkness A thick blackness that you can step inside So knowledge, memory, time can fall away in a black hole, a nocturnal escape Static, speechlessness, superficial space, a one-dimensional stupidity.

17.

Wanting Redemption,

We rush, thinking the speed will move us

Bring us closer to desire

Wanting someone, needing help 

Untying ourselves from our Self

Hoping we can find the face freed of masks

The one that can be seen through and give us courage

To acknowledge what we resist and admire what we fear. 

This is not how it happens This is not the way it is supposed to be Never in your dream’s city, never by the only one you love No credit or recognition for becoming better, just

“You look healthy.”

Translation: Weight gain Not so sick looking No so depressed feeling Cheeks! Really eating more now arent’cha? Slender, but thank god you’re no longer a skeleton breathing death! Go to gym today? Go to go! You need to be healthy What did you eat? 

Too many thoughts all in one day Thoughts distracting and disturbing my desire Thoughts not letting me be who I want to be This chaotic consciousness prevents me from being committed to my presence.

Sanity, I can find no logic to define that.

Where is the Manhattan I came for Someone to look at me with a reassuring gaze Stay, Stay Not leave so fast without engaging in words In Manhattan we are expected to mean more New Yorkers, it is our responsibility to impress the mind Not come and go Make me red and beating, calling, asking, Please come again Remember me this time, I will make you feel something different, I will make you feel something special now. 

A west highland terrier barks My face stares into the sound My mind unmoved beyond itself Over this whole damn thing I thought might mean something, anything else Transparency veiling life’s intimacy A window poked open I see the west highland terrier, a sprightly young blonde, maybe seven, yes absolutely seven years old and her housekeeper watching people walk down the city’s runway, pacing over the season of their soul.

Transfixed, I am taken by this portrait, framed at a distance Such similarity between the blonde and my past self Before I changed Before time had less sympathy Before age took advantage of me The blonde’s beaming eyes, I remember those, large enough to contain a world Her fearless smile challenging individuals like myself, making us wonder whether we are missing the point, taking it all so seriously, as if our rival is time and the phases of our self I never thought to question reality at that age, when life still feels light and one has all the time to fill it, but she does not think of that nor is she in any rush to feel weighted down How manageable and dependable life is then How simple time seems before becoming distracted by awareness, an illusion we mistake for being real.

Imagination barely pressing against reality I watch this scene of three existing in a dimension that seems unreal, unfeasible, like a time I will never find my way into again, a door that has been locked, a key that has been swallowed Like a plane that has left me behind, a terminal’s gate where my name was called, a voice I did not hear, a gap in instants where I was too self-involved to listen to anyone reaching out in a moment of opportunity A plane I did not board, but that I had been waiting for, a plane ride I thought would buy me my escape, but would only take me closer to facing myself With an arm around her shoulder, the young girl, myself at seven years, notices me and waves, as if she remembers me Unaware that the truth is she is becoming me and will be me sooner than time makes it seem I respond with a tear falling Never expecting to feel this way, to act like so, to be like this Not in your presence.