4 Days in Manhattan - 1 Best Friends and Phoebus' Chariot

Even though I always knew that therein resides a yearning
Kept ever fresh for corporeal splendor and could
Easily weigh the importance of her looks

I had to cross the Atlantic with the sun
And yet widdershins
To find out that Art is a gay thing.
Interest in her is a gay interest.
To be attracted to her looks like a gay attraction.

Wherever in Manhattan you may find her, throughout
These scattered places you won't encounter
In Americana
But youngish men walking their dogs.

A youngish man strolling through Manhattan
With some dog leashed to his wrist is a gay man.
It is also a man who seems interested in
––Or attracted to––
Art.

The art may be best friends with the dog
Or may be best friends with the gay man––
All the same, as long as
You ramble where she is confined to
Without the slightest chance of getting preggers.

This is the first thing I have learned in Manhattan.

June 10, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 2 El desfile en la Quinta Avenida

I wasn't allowed to watch their parade
From under some umbrageous marquee.
A tiny rican female came over and told me
To move and go into the sun.
I did not obey.
A giant rican male sauntered over and told me
To move and go into the sun.
I did obey.

There is not only a problem of male chauvinism
There is also a problem of white shyness. I forgot.

If you are willing to watch those crispy bodies shaking
Just move and get close under the sun.
You must not persist in the shadow, gabachito––
You too need some tan, man.

Our future is at stake and this is progress. This is
But a formal invite to join in and take part in the party.
This should promote the due convergence of shades, one may
______________________________________ say.
At least, I understood it that way.

June 12, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 3 Cushytown

Never saw in any megalopolis outside of crass poverty
So many critters loitering:
Placidly brawling on the street or hanging around in front of
____________________________________ places
Often shaded under the daintiest canopies.
Some are brazen enough to dare squat inside even
Those choice limestone buildings.
And all kinds of gift shops.
Yet nobody tells them to scram.

Besides, these idle beings still seem to have names.
Call them janitors or doormen or eager salesmen if inquired
____________________________________ about.

The plusher the places the nobler the dwellers––and so are its
Resident loiterers. If you're lucky you may spot one of them
Quaintly dozing behind a counter.

Oh ye pictorial dawdlers, is this city named Naples?
Doth there not burst forth like an allurement of antique?

Manhattan is a paradise for lazybones.

June 12, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 4 Local Temper

How come I met, hardly ashore
So dark a grudge in miens galore?
Did all these porters, ere they grip
Yet on their shoulder tote a chip?

And why did every chambermaid
Changing the bed look so betrayed?
Should this be one big continent
Of rampant flunkey discontent?

I found the reason quite outright
As out my window took a sight:
From high-rise to skyscraperline
Some stories more give it the shine.

Methinks they built them up so high
To cover up the same old sky.
No wonder, they're all in a huff––
New worlds are never new enough!

June 13, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 5 One More Novelty

In Central Park
A large outside screen is
Displaying a peculiar mix of pics:
Views of the Eiger blended with those of Prague Castle.
Nobody's watching besides me, eftsoons sidetracked
By the squirrels of an unknown gray
And the ubiquitous blackbirdish robins.

No one ever watches what I am watching
––Neither in Central Park nor anypark else––
But when I have a look at someone
Working out on top of a terrace, for example, or
Simply slouching on the grass:
This someone here will assuredly look back.
(Well, I'm not used to that kind of visual exchange.
In my prideful City of Lights it hardly ever happens that
Someone minds someone's gander at someone before a while.
Thus for pretty a spell it's like beholding a wall ad.)
I am mostly stunned by this presence
Of mindfulness.

I walk with my fresh eyes
I observe and
I am observed back. I look visible
In this novel place for these novel fellowmen
As if I were as novel as them.
I am positively stunned.

June 14, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 6 Don't Read

Once ventured inside there, one can buy things inside there.
Though it's rather like a strange cancer form in Manhattan, it not
_______________________________________________ only
Behaves like one, thoroughly padded with rather cheap things––
Indeed columns of malignant gastrointestinal epithelia cells.
Is this because these things are by far not as seductive as things
_________________________________________ ought to be?
But who was the man slinky enough to provide them for switch
_______________________________________________ sale?

Such cancer in Manhattan, almost called like an olden days
_________________________________________explorer guy
Or one's blinkered southern forefather, yields to the least
__________________________________________inducement
Creeping into any corner, it fits into the weirdest nook and cranny
Snuggling up, oh boy, like the Snake of Paradise to
The most intimate shapes of the city, it most
Naturally takes advantage of its filth, its dank hairs and its filth
Since Paradise now is kind of raunchy all over, sidewalk-frowzy
________________________________________________and
Very littered with dingy yellow sunshades so as to duly propagate
Its very tang, a stench of wiener grease and summer anaerobia.

It is a filth disease.
Where you can acquire stuff.
Cheap, greasy stuff for rather cheap.
A satanic enterprise, an infernal non-temptation.
DON'T READ its name, don't overhear, it'll entail your own
___________________________________________damnation.

June 16, 2008

4 Days in Manhattan - 7 Final Reconciliation

The first glimpse is always the most telling one.
It's the mystique of skimming perusal, like in
Eavesdropping. I am never as attentive as
When bound over to prick up my ears
Amidst the turmoil of unknown.
Otherwise, shameful enough, I'd be way too much
Caught by my multiple inner voices––the
Turmoil of known.

I was not devoid of a mood, I admit, but
This mood met its mold in Manhattan.
I can hardly figure how it would've met the lightsome.
Poor lightsome, they couldn't have earned a rumble seat here.
It is homeland for the sour.
It is homeland still, I see.
Yet simpering it might
Funnel the world's
Basic soreness
Jauntily into itself and so be.

June 21, 2008