Subway Urine 2
First time on the F,
reading poems,
thinking.
A light splash-tap feeling on my foot.
Looked down,
a stream splintering in air off my toe.
Traced the stream up
to a filthy penis
and then further
to a face with a tooth, beard, and two closed eyes.
He swayed,
I shouted,
one eyelid limped
a tongue clapped out
and he started laughing.
Train stopped,
another eyelid limped.
He hopped off,
filthy penis flayling.
I stood, stared.
Crowd was packed
to the other side,
laughing or just staying clear.
I would have laughed too
if I wasn’t busy
cleaning Subway Urine
off my new shoes.
Joke
My first paycheck in cash
from the restaurant
free drinks from the bar
when I got uptown
with an envelope filled with cash
two guys pulled that trick on me.
You know.
I’m stumbling along
not minding myself
when I bump into a guy with a glass bottle
—the expensive Goose stuff.
Shattered all over.
“Hey man that’s thirty bucks worth of Vodka!”
His friend from behind:
“Probably more like fourty-five!”
I emptied my envelope,
right as I remembered
Eric one time had a guy bump into him.
Dropped a glass bottle of milk.
“Hey man that was for my daughter!”
Milk hasn’t been in a glass bottle since
John Van Wormer patented
his folded paper milk carton in nineteen fifteen.
Love Song
Remember
when midnight scraped itself up the high rise
like a child on Ritalin working a treadmill?
Let’s go, this old street craves our return.
Remember
outside the bar? Jack had the beard,
had the charm of a twenty-something,
got the cigarettes easy,
but they were always menthol.
Remember
homeless guys?
Bear, Country, and Mohawk, Wheelchair,
Peanut-head, who came up to you dancing,
“It’s your birthday, peanut-head!”
It wasn’t your birthday, peanut-head.
There was the guy with the face,
and Eight-Footer who screamed at me once:
mid-day, Broadway, sunny in autumn
a crowd of little leaguers, unbrushed mom hair and carriages,
weekend-walking grandparents return home from morning,
Then, through a lens of light enriching each falling leaf
I saw him, like Moses, a messianic eight foot structure
parting this red sea of family, striding in full forced swagger,
torn belly shirt, rags of a trench coat, dirty sequins,
his eyes into mine (the opening scene of Closer),
the lips of his smile, halfway down the block, creased to
scream,
“I would loooooove to suck yo DICK!”
Remember
the pier? before Bloomberg?
Construction sites at our back,
frost cooked our coarse teenage hearts to calm
and our only vision of future,
the ice on the Hudson.
Probably Your Mom
I had phlegm in my throat
so I hacked and spit
on ninety-sixth.
I looked up and saw her
an outraged woman
of fifty-six.
She pointed her finger,
“We don’t do that here!
Spit somewhere else!”
I stared, spit dribbled down,
yelled “I grew up here!”
laughed like a jerk,
spanned my arms playfully,
smiled after silence,
tuned back around.
I walked half-a-second,
heard, “I know Judo!
Thursday classes!”
I joked her, “Bring it on!”
but she showed mercy,
didn’t kick my ass.
Harlem in autumn
the leaves that smack the sunshine
back all down to Broadway
the seams of some new Sunday
Loving you in Harlem
and fallen autumn auburn
wrapping you in nights
and cities with lights
