To Get It Right

Here’s what gets me:
twenty-one-year-olds
paroling streets as if
the streets that they paroled
were new – I guess that’s
almost true: but also
wrong: I mean, to get it
absolutely right you
have to long for –
and demand to have at once –
what was, will be, as well
as is: to get it right you
have to stop and stand
smack in the middle
of whatever grand or humble
swatch of city ground
your feet have just been
pounding and resoundingly
declare you’re here

and, dammit, want the rest
of everything this instant!
Once, not long ago,
in fact this afternoon,
I had a blessed stretch of sex
with someone red-haired
and resplendently endowed
with pheromonal maleness:
after which I found
a Filipino cafeteria
which dared to serve crisp
deep-fried chicken skin,
whose sin I happily indulged in –
after which I came home,
ate first one and then
another golden plum.
I’d cried loud at New York
I wanted infinitely everything
and it had come.


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