After a long drive I’m on foot again, at last, in New York City.  It’s cause for optimism. You can’t help walking toward something in New York City.

Give me a cookie
Steal me a charm
Comfort my hunger
Cover my arm

Keep me from harm…Who is this in my ear with this song, this sweetmeat of nonsense chock full of adult mistakes?  Damned if I know right now.

Walking toward someone
A view to a dance
Perhaps she’s a building
Still standing by chance

This is no mutual romance…no.  I am just one of this city’s clumsy crushers.  Neither upfront Casanova nor backstairs politician, the city beats on me when I’m here and won’t release my head when I’m not.  

Walk from high on the West
to low on the East
Walk like we’re starving
Not seeing the feast

Or someone in need at the least…Once I walked from 107th to Houston.  My feet red and wet by somewhere south of 53rd, I stopped in a bar to drink and bleed.  I’ve been bloody drunk a lot since then.

How hard the streets
How cruel the air
How tightly we’re tethered
How far off we were

I wasn’t born here…I won’t likely die here.  But I’ll likely be thinking of Hell’s Kitchen when I’m on my last breath.

Buy me a dinner
or refund my fee
Empty my evening
Make me less free

It’ll come to me…The last time I was in this town, I got a tattoo of my own death on my back.  Carry it with me everywhere, call it “my pretty picture.”  My own weightless burden.  Carry it home on my skin, call it “my philosophy.”  

Tell me you love me
or answer the phone
Better I leave you
than be left all alone 

Can you tattoo a moan?  An image of a death in the Bronx lovingly crafted in Brooklyn by a woman now from Queens who grew up on Staten Island. Manhattan, are you OK with that?  Can we hang?

I’m in the city
I’ve never lived here
But it is where I’m from
Since my home disappeared

I needn’t have feared…