Poetry and Pizza

Every time I go to New York City
I always make time for two things:

one, to read poetry before an audience;
two, to eat pizza.

My obvious presence on the stage
attests to the former,

the obvious presence under my shirt
confirms the latter.

There’s something about that burg
that brings out my appetites.

Something about how swiftly
the people move makes me want

to add to it all, stir the air a bit on my own,
and to take something of it back with me

to my slower home.  I shovel in a giant slice
from a hole in a wall and it sticks to me

as close as a brother in arms.  It makes me want
to nourish a sheet of paper in return, to offer

gratitude for what I have received from this place
on the run, filling myself as I walk among the crowd

without a name of my own: just another shlub
doing the New York Thing, taking whatever I can,

leaving whatever I can, and doing it all
at the speed of life.