"What Do You Do All Day?"

A Prose Poem in Four Arbitrary Stanzas

I can't seem to put it into solid language. It feels like
it would injure it to try. Partly because it would seem too
sort of skeletal, laid out as 'facts' -- and its effects are
so rich. I inhabit my inner life and the outer of life of NYC
so completely (a 'completion' of course that isn't; it intensifies
moment to moment) that they have become seamless.
Anything I do, whether it's a walk to a meeting or some

other encounter (supermarket, friend, etc.) or subway ride
up to the cat I take care of every day on the upper west side
or coming back here for more of my very active solitude
or cooking broccoli or Brussels sprouts (my main dinner
diet, with pasta - oil & garlic & salt & red pepper flakes)
and then making my bed and feeling -- every night! –
this unbelievable luxury of being in & sinking into the city

of my heart in every possible dimension of it -- settling
down to watch NCIS & House re-runs & PBS whatever
& then drifting off to sleep, and dreams, a whole other
way of inhabiting this waking dream of a life -- well, again,
doesn't begin to say it. The writing – sure, would have to be
'central' -- I climb onto that island daily -- but then everything
is central: I can't single anything out as more 'crucial' than

anything else - it's all part of the unbelievably ardent love
affair I have with this city, this completely indifferent & yet
passionate city -- this city 'who' (I see her as a transgender
empress/whore) demands everything I've got & it's still
not enough & coming up empty-handed in front of her &
bearing her dispassionate disregard and chronic hunger
for more still constitutes the most glorious pleasure I know.



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