The Beat of Washington Square Park

For three beautiful strangers, two beautiful friends, one beautiful day 

I saw the best minds of my generation

Over falafels and jazz

With eyes that glowed

Green like fresh grass

And blue

Like fine crystals

With crescent moon

Smiles, as curved as arches  

 Radiant like sunlight

On a napping afternoon

We exchanged five dollar bills

For verses from strangers

Searching for things with

Capital B’s and P’s

Like those in

Passion

and

Poison

Time stood still

Like summer heat  

Or the static bodies

In bras and sunglasses

O’Hara wrote

Lunch poems

And Ginsberg wrote

At roofs

That we talk about in parks

Over falafels and jazz

Like stray cats

We searched

For the truth

And the light
From the words 

Of a stranger 

Life

The little boxer steps into the ring

Unsteady, like a terrible earthquake

His legs wobble, still ripe from

The womb of childhood

They don’t know how to support

The body that must endure

His arms are the twigs

Of a brittle tree

His hands are hidden beneath

Gloves, big as human heads

They don’t know how to guard

The face that must endure

The ring is large and wide

Like the dimensions of an ocean

White and marble-cold

Like a medical office

Unstructured and unbound

He steps in with calloused confidence

And sweaty fingers that slip

Like macaronis

His wavering feet  

Drag his ninety five pounds

Like a giant hearse 

He walks

With a strained balance

Like a trapeze swinger on a cord

Keep your composure, young boxer

Your future is suspended

By a string of dental floss 

Riverdale Diaries

May 20, 2013

But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.

-Ernest Hemingway from A Moveable Feast

It was the first warm day of summer. The temperature rose to 80 degrees and the city was jubilant – swimming in colors and sweat. Madison Square Park was a garden for lost wanderers such as myself. I soaked up the heat, the first natural heat I have felt in months, as I read A Moveable Feast. Hemingway spoke to me about falls and winters, but I sat in the cusp of spring, welcoming the summer radiance, like a new-born flower – its petals barely visible as they emerge from the ground. Across from me sat a girl. Her body was stretched as if she was floating. On what, I don’t know. All of us were floating… it was that kind of inebriating warmth. Her eyes were fixed at the sky, as if she were guarding it– as if her eyes were a magnet for the sun. As if she had longed for that warmth for a long time now. Beside me sat a middle aged man; pages trembled slightly on his left hand. I looked over out of curiosity, for these are city people; these are the people that I've wanted to be for years. And now, for the first time, I’m one of them. Yet, at the same time, I’m a lonely traveler – a lost wanderer still, never quite belonging. Maybe the secret is simply just that: we’re all alone. We live our lives feeling like outsiders, when the reality is that being outsiders is what makes us all belong. I caught a glimpse of the page and recognized what it was immediately. Its lean structure gave it away. I devote my life to that glorious silhouette, so there was no way I wouldn't try to read it now. I wondered if they were his. Was he a professor? Was it an assignment? Was it his assignment? I felt like a spy, so intrusive that I looked away every five seconds to make sure no one was noticing me prying on this man’s personal document. But I did, and as I was stealing this stranger’s words, I had that inexplicable feeling that comes to me when I take pictures… a feeling of stealing someone’s life, capturing their soul, being let into a secret that was never meant to be yours in the first place. And I find that, like poetry itself, the words are as human, as deeply resonant to us all, as is the need for water. And maybe that is a second truth: Art is our attempt to decode life by divulging secrets that have never been secrets to begin with. 

Watching you
Crossing the street
In my direction
I am in awe
Of your arrival 

First Signs of Summer

Now there are only the deposits
The smell of smoke after a fire

The goose-bumped skins,
The chill of spines, like frozen electricity
Must hibernate

The leaves have been drooping
Their lives suspended only
By snake-like roots,
As if they wished to falter

Now they tremble lightly,
Like giggling children
Tickled by the bare breeze
Of the morning

The songs of birds
Renounce to spring
Their choppy chirps
Are nature's orchestra
For the arrival

A single ray of light -
Its sliver like a sword -
Punctures the corner
Of my windowpane,
Taps it gently with its
Edge, as if to say:
"Here it comes"

Riverdale Diaries

May 19, 2013

To my left, outside of the square glass windows of my new living room, light rain is falling. It is not pouring; it is rather a sprinkle – quiet and soft, like the dance of ballerinas. I decided not to go out today. Not to the city, anyways. I woke up very early this morning, 6am, with a strange anticipation – a feeling of unknown productivity. At 1:37 pm, it is still unknown. But I’ve been reading. And I’ve been reading about reading, and about writing, and about Beauty. And maybe the strangeness that woke me up this morning, even before it woke up the sun, was just that: Beauty. The beautiful recognition that I have the day sprawled naked before me. That I can dress it however I please. The beautiful recognition that time, for the first time in a very long time, is now yielding, like a tamed lion – an obedient watch dog – letting me do with it whatever I desire. But those things are just beautiful… they’re not truly Beauty in itself, which of course, I know is unattainable. But from time to time, like it did this morning, it whispers tenderly in my ear, like a child that wants to play, urging me to search for it. And so I do. Today I will read. I’ll watch movies. And I’ll read some more. And during intervals, try to search for the beautiful child. I’ll follow it, always from a distance, until it goes back to hiding in between the creases. 

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

-Ernest Hemingway

Living By Myself

My eyes followed the car

As it rode down the street

Like a tremendous whale surfing

Out to a sea I no longer swim in

Absence

The world seemed vast,

Surroundings widened  

And I was like a child on the shores

Watching the waves recede

I’m small –

Inconsequential –

More singular

Than ever before 

Spring Blues

               After reading Sexton 

I smoked
With a mild hangover –   

Residues of last night’s laughter

My legs, unsteady
Hands, vacillating – two fingers
Firmly holding the cigarette butt


From its head, an innocuous flame flared
Like an extension of the sun 

Maybe my hands knew  

And held life from fleeting,

Deceived by smoke and lust for flying,
Their rigid grasp, like the strains
Of a determined survivor

The warmth does not console me
Spring is late to bud
Within me, a stale fear has chilled
My skin – burned it dry

I never notice ants in winter, but now
They crawl toward me, like weeping puppies
My feet have lost their danger, I must have lost
My strength, and now my head is low,
Like a drooping flower, bent as if pulled
By the ocean’s tide

The garden echoes the voices
Of strangers,
Like a ricochet of crickets
But my mouth is stuffed
With cotton balls,
The tongue, jammed
Like a swollen thumb 

...I cannot speak

From afar I saw a girl
As timid as a ladybug
Silent, like May rains

I used to know you, but I left
To follow the trail of time barefoot,
My bare back facing ashes
That never stopped burning

The past looks down
Upon my naked corpse
Its eyes, red-veined with panic

But although my head sags
Like candle wax, my gaze remains
Afloat, like the eyes of a sailor
That refuses to drown 

Journal

You implore

Answers that I cannot provide

Your stare is blank – absent –

Like the white of my pages

As we sit still – naked silhouettes –

Penciled by the shadows

Of midnight

Beneath the coppered outline  

Of a swollen moon, you rise

Your eyes heavy with slumber

To reproach me with silent accusations

Your looming fingers,

Feeble – like broken twigs

They do not supply, you say

As you proceed to tear me,

A masochistic ritual you endure 

Forgetting that I can only confess

Truths you have already discovered