Union Square.

I will always feel at home in New York City, despite last winter when I called the Starbucks in Union Square my home, for lack of

anywhere else

that would have me and at the time
its funny how time is so fickle and useless in spite of what they tell me
i felt fine about that corner table the one by the side door that faced
what-13th street-i guess? useless alley if you ask me, really
just a buncha dumpsters and wind which makes for oddly-shaped cigarette butts
but anyway, my table was right in the drafty spot where i'd catch a random
shot
of crisp delicious metallic from whatever idiot needed coffee at that hour too
and swung that side door wide open just long enough
to take my breath away as
i suppose i can  be honest here-
the truth is this and nothing less than
the.what i can't fathom still or shake from my wrists like sticky rice
wanton won-tons
and cheap eats i liked to feast on back then in bed-stuy and bushwick alike
besides all of it still i try to find something half as good or close to
alive
as the addiction i loved to hate to miss even now in this fucking place
where i am the oddest duck around and even
my mail can't find me i'm so good at
hiding
out and what if i stood on top of one of those fucking
mountain tops
one of these useless days where i have pills and enough of
what flows just below where i can see through
veins in my feet
swollen and still
once i got to the tippy-top of the.what
i like to picture when speaking of you, and of
sin city as its better views i guess
those mountainous background images keep
me from running too hard down the hill by my house here
or staring straightintothesun like i
want to sometimes
for lack of foresight why not try
spots and blinkbackthings for the sake of
my boredom and i never liked
my eyes anyway even when they were
shot
up with
alive
and the air from outside
and my face felt like ice pops
and your cheek next to mine so close
to we're done and i'm over the best part of life and its not even
been a full year since i ate shit and had to
hang pride and
the.what
on the line to dry out for days at a time
and then all of a sudden it was the fourth of july and i might have been
better off not knowing that popping sounds outside my windowless room
on john street that night
were anything more than gunshots and dying
people every time my song changed quiet between them i'd find
room to move my feet and question why not me and answer myself silently
from every angle i just could convince my mind to bend around
i knew nothing like
alive and this is why you left me clotheslined strikethrough your old words
and also why i like to love the pages of this book i play with sometimes when
i'm high on
boredom these nights when i sleep wide eyed and think about
your hands my thighs were less than this and so was i but still
i love
i love
i love to lie still on my back and pretend that outside that the wind i can hear
howling
and mountains i see in my mind just beyond where the coyotes come down from
i hear the sky rumble just like
it did when i was awake at this time of the night in a corner in my glory but less
than free from worry and debt and destroying my face and then came flights
one-way always
scared piss out of me and panties were scarce back in those days i guess i made
messes of more than just chairs at the airport where i ran to catch my
fucking departure
from my life and all that i liked once upon a time
and every once in a while i find myself lying out loud to a stranger in his bed or
else to myself again why not
just carrying on about being on time and how i hate that type of thing and
can't find my priorities right now they might be, i reason, buried in my bag perhaps
the shoulder strap broke but that's fine i said for lack of what else and
embarrassed pack rat i felt like for that whole test of strength and vinyl failed me
like i describe to anyone who might be reading this nonsense and shit and
you
who fights the urge to bolt for the side door or else just yawn through my truth
spilling.out
like soda shaken can stuff
exploding
from somewhere unseen but felt violent with potential
and carbonated and ready
to splash the contents of your hands with what i try not to cry over more times
than i might like to consider but still
you sigh like you know better than me and i know its a long shot but
i think i've got nothing but time and whynot and its this or
just jump off the summit i can't climb
for lack of something i lost back when strong gusts
of blinding december early though back when its cold but not
so much so that toes in my best boots the ones with
holes in the soles and everywhere else from miles i walked while my classmates
knew how to save up the spare change i suppose i could not
and just blew off the steam i tightened my thighs up for what its worth
in hindsight maybe i should have just learned how to ride the
subway but ohwell is what fills me with smugness and sly little half-smiles
inside i'm sure you don't notice me not noticing you when i go there
in stories regaling you with but really i just need a reason to listen
to myself talk about this shit and run circles around history
re-written to fit what i miss most and without all the commercial interuptions
just because i control the on/off switch and this is spillage and crazy talk
and i still make more sense
to myself and within the context of
normal
when i am sitting still and i will seek out the corners of coffee shops for the rest of my time here until i am unsatisfied enough with
all that is lacking in me and the.what and the rest of it all of the shit i bring with me
if you check my bag out you get it, how i can't leave without knowing i might not come back tonight or at all actually better off thinking that just up
ahead and around
the next bend is something like i thought i would die without and
as it turns out i was more than half-right, but yeah-
just maybe i might not be lost and not found like every sock i once owned or
like you as my pet
peeve and project in-between lovey and dovey came weed maybe you made
me sick or at least it was both of us down and unlucky
downtown and unstuck we came when i was flung off like jelly from fingertips
fat little nuggets i loved to laugh at and miss
even still and
even though this is far worse
than any missed holidays spent thinking of how empty the space can be sometimes since you dismissed me without considering where
i would be in the months and the winters of this year and next and
then one day it turns out i flickered into not sleep with eyelids unwilling
but working and i saw
glitter and eyelashes from last night when i played
dress up and old me and i pranced around your place and i made eyes at
the stranger in you and the mirror behind what i saw i liked
just for those minutes when i had us both
fooled
into thinking that this
despite all that is lacking
like air that tastes too exciting to talk of today i remember
new york city the first week a new month
december
and i die less just a little on nights when i find
you
and your version of
alive
at the foot of the bed i lie down in and right beside my head as
i exhale for lack of whynot and also thanks to your pillows
the cool side hides always but still i'm not sorry or worried or bothered
like you might wonder if i care but i don't need this i swear
you stay right there while i hide
out somewhere else and if you can't find me you might try
the corner of nowhere and union square writing and shivering into the morning light
happy and holding on tight to the taste of hot chai and the city wind whipping
my cheeks into blushing i love it i must be
still me and not rusty and old like this
girl i know three time zones too late in las vegas and she lost
all sense of what this
feels like
hopeful and wide eyed blinkingback tears but not those kind
the good stuff
from whatever is not this
and hers is not his
but her own in the meantime i might just make time
to climb something somewhere in spite of my boots and what i find at the bottom is tooth rot
and grave plots i picked out for myself in my mind
thousands of times before deciding on tattoos and cremation and you made
more sense to get behind
and so like i might have already implied but not admitted to you or the mirror
outright and audible like those microphones you like to tell stories about how you made love to them audiences loved it and you were your own superfan
but i will try not to judge you like i do myself. in the long nights i spent since
then and when i looked ahead and found nothing in my life that made sense
and no one whose name or outlook even passed for okay let alone liked how my shit rhymes and finally
i like how it feels to make eye contact without going blind
and i want more
always more and then all of it all in one bite i never know when i am done
and when to say when and then i get left out in hallways of places i never played myself within but should have done less
to show that i want
i think i will try not to stare at the sun
from now on and i guess i will hope for some whynot and keep writing down
what doesn't work still and why air makes me wonder where is december and
new york and all i can do until then is
just gum food and notice as little as possible
subtle clues i will miss
from you i'm sure of this and i hope
you take your time with figuring out that
i'm nuts
but not unfun just displaced and isn't everyone really just lying
when they say they wouldn't change a thing if they could and yet
even i can admit that i can't yet be all dead and nightmare ish esque
since i met you i liked more complete moments in time and whole nights, even
more unlikely
than i can remember finding in hindsight even back when i was still able
to call myself
i
and use capital letters without hesitation despite what you might think
i don't like
to look in the mirror i really try not to its just that
i'm trying hard to fight off what urges i might have forgotten to medicate slightly
left the antivenom back behind in brooklyn and sunlight makes me feel awkward
and giddy like whatnot
and i look for things that i know only by their shape and rely on touch to find most of what lies in the corners of my better mood days
more of these blind my hindsight and i forget already some of the shit i regret and left out from letters mailed back to them all in the last month i guess oops or else ohwell you helped me get up and get off and then
over it all
and to think how its only october and how i can feel myself falling for whatever lines might land on my shoulder like birds singing something i find it
annoying
but nice at the same time i can't lie its not like me these days to try new things and people on for size but you seem to fit at least something i kind of need help filling up which is blank spaces inside this time frame city of sin and i can't find a single reason to take pride in staying single here please tell me why
i like finding new reasons to leave well enough alone for the sake of justright
so this is what i might have been like in real time and real life without all of the nonsense and noise drowning me out
and smoke in my eyes broken mirrors cracked like all i surrounded myself with why i might have missed something big in the meantime make me forget what all
i regret and remind me to
let myself like how it feels to be
breathless and love and less dead than alive.