crotona park

i am walking past titanic project buildings in the
buzzing sanctity of six
ay em bronx sidewalk fabric
soaked with miles of porous graffiti and
shrines to the lost beloved of
this forgotten city dangling

the scraped blemished gatherings of fumbled garbage preyed
upon by transient wildlife and the footprints
of commuting mothers are
early morning musical notation
deciphering dawn preludes and
the mournful painted bicycles of dead commuters
the earlybird intoxicated napping on apartment stairs
before being jostled awake by somewhat gentle superintendents who
then walk past the tattoo shop's shuttered windows arms
inert at their sides with brooms and featherweight tools

when she walked around in the morning
in panties and a long shirt teasing
the curve of her ass and the first
drops of awakening are the sounds of a camera seeing
the dawn

i become very small and insignificant
aquatic in the pond of a shrinking brain
i smell the remnants of her shoulder in dented cotton
dead molecules brought to life

as if walking through a city
morning by morning
chemically lengthening and destroying
with lumbered angles of the sun
filtered by leaves and bits of dream
alongside no one and nothing
are

cities of old
infecting moving limbs with the
virus of lost children now men the
virus of lost children now men the
virus of lost children

buy a grapefruit juice across from the bus stop to
feed these painkillers
flowing through wage slave capillaries
and my tongue presses hard onto
nerve endings thirsty for
other tongues
languages concocted of mixed nocturnal drinks
she leans forward on the table with
tumbling hair

-i'm nearly there-
is the only refrain
nearly next to something other than suffering or
mixed reunions with
previous cutouts of selves to be
shuffling neighborhoods like cards held
close and next to me

i walk to work these mornings
smoking pieces of these mornings
finding the plausible elements filling these lungs

i shake off last night's blood like a wet dog