Manhattan, Mildly Meaningless, on Columbus Day

Every time you try to push New York
she rolls on with implacable, indifferent imbecility.
Today you hoped to parse her into sharp and shiny bits:

investigate constituents of feeling for a verse
about her: see what fits; overcome the curse
of ambiguity: spread all in a fine array across an empty slate,

and therefore state, of mind – erased of doubt and inexactitude.
You took a taxi cab or two and into New York’s glue you flew,
or rather dropped and plopped and inched ahead

as if you’d rammed into a muddy bed
within which nothing was allowed.
Inside a growing cloud

of crowded immobility, you sat, stuck, in an incivility
of meaninglessness which distressed (no less) by adding freely
to the taxi fare: you’d lost whatever clarity you’d tried

to bring to bear; began to wish that you were anywhere but there.
Until you noticed you were here, which is to say, as near
as you would ever be to a deliverance.

And so you chose to pay another fee for the inevitably
mad exorbitance of daring to exist in this strange city: tipped
the cabbie pretty well, then bought a slice of pizza

(hot as hell): which burned your mouth before
you headed south on foot towards
home to write this poem.

.