A Pleasant Stroll

New York, October, 2009

The subway wails under the asphalt
pushing out all the rancid air of the underground
through the metal grates.

Outside, lovers,
taut with their limbs and organs,
velvet each other under the vigilance of a lamppost.

The city
fumes everyone’s vehemence and loneliness
into the high gray infinite.

Skyscrapers aim sharp hornets
at the same constant, unreachable sky,
who hangs heavy like a manatee.

The lion licks his paw
and the pigeon punk-dances in frenetic semicircles
pretending to be a dove.

My entrails as an empty commercial tumble dryer,
and I walk carefully on the checkered patterns, too carefully...

Petrified angels watch the city from the tips of fancy buildings with no balconies,
and ships vomit the smoke
that unused fireplaces long to flutter in their throat.

A carnal doubt pinches my fathom
and millions of empty suits dance the grind.

I look at my selfish clock and time rolls steady:
My cave is darker, my retreat sharper
and I hide in a third floor,
behind a windowpane and a wooden door,
between the pigeons, the angels and the lions.