orlando

the only safe place to cry
is on the streets
where nobody will wake up
and pretend to know.

not ever new york city

where were you this weekend?
my landlord's face gets ugly when i say
n-y-c
he's not alone in that, we all have our reasons
for instance: the combined smell of hamburgers and cigarettes
july sweating at three a.m. waiting for the j train
bottles of urine on the subway and the street
people under blankets on the street next to people in suits
the way a hurricane can kill a coastline
while one mile inland, all anyone does is drink
but cody gets uglier than that
his big lips dropping down like melpomene
ugly at the sound of ghosts and gay bars
he says "new years eve, 1983
is when he let a guy fuck him in the bath house
and i knew."

never mind that nobody could have known.
some places are so full of ghosts
that it doesn't matter which ones
lenape, homosexual, black
there is always something garish about discotheques on graveyards

arriving home at sunset

it was a joke:
we are a 501(c)3 negative-profit organization
and we need your money so that we can
grind ourselves to dust but not disappear
so that kira can go home at night
and not cry because the people she loves
are tense in their shoulders, faces, laughs
about going hungry for the things that matter

i am driving home in a car with a cracked bumper
and a breaking axle, and
the crack will turn one-year-old soon, and
the axle will snap, and
i am thinking "who did this to the world," and
the black woman by the side of the road
holds a cardboard sign that says "anything helps," and
i drive past her and consider giving my last quarter
but it seems too small
and then she is in the distance

later
as i mount the hill whereon i live
an orange sun meets me and shoots up gold
rays across my windshield,
reggaeton falls onto the warm road from above,
the dust of a springtime afternoon
caught up in the sun and the music and the rattle of my dying car
and upstairs, my room smells like summer salads
and firewood
and i think again "who did this to the world"
because nothing so horrible should be so sweet

and christmas is eight months away

evening setter, sun setting, set-up: poinsettia

off my balcony spills a city bricolage

promises to be beautiful, not lonely

promises to be rainy on Christmas

to drown out being Jewish and ignored

or being in love with a Christian and living with a Christian

and surrounded by Christians who don’t know the difference

between menorah and chanukkiah

though really, neither does any other Jew

who claims to not feel sad about lights on Christmas trees

lights on Christmas houses, chintzy plastic chanukkiahs

on chintzy ‘80s temples.

I could list and list the things that give me distance

soul dysphoria – not just religion, but

rickety tables, rickety chairs, laminate countertops, electric stoves

linoleum kitchens, loose sockets, dusty corners

crying dog downstairs, the band “crystal castles”

but really this it it:

I want to wake up in the forest and not miss the city

to wake up in the city and not miss the woods

to pick mushrooms out of my backyard

I want to love Christmas trees

poinsettias

sunsets, evenings in Providence

myself

inverse correlation

no poetry
painting
or songs
just gentle winds
and long walks
an endless caress
and just like that
no reason for art.
it is better, true,
but it is also quiet.

i killed a huge spider

(it wasn't that large)

its exoskeleton crack-popping

leg by leg

under a bleached paper towel

spider and towel will travel

to landfill,

neither heaven nor hell

(why has nobody told me

that purgatory

is a place on earth?)

painted black

sometimes
i dream that you sing
but only because
i can hear your song
even when don't.