Another New York City Heart

 

Find the quiet mind behind the winding intricate

ostensible agenda – bend before you think
you know what everything’s become: stick out
your thumb and blink and glide and hitch a ride
with anything that bums along to pick you up.

Every day I see another and another and another
New York City heart erupt: a fat man so obese
he couldn’t grease himself into three subway seats –
oh, how he heats the air with yearning! – burning
through his sad thick Jackie Gleason lids

for all the slinky-bottomed skinny-jean-clad kids
who slip enticingly, inevitably by him, crushing
for a moment flesh that feels. How Manhattan’s
sentient and collective being reels! Let our
poignant forms be scrutinized by alien wise eyes:

let’s subject ourselves to their dark gift: their stark
selective curiosity: apprise the outcome like
a sly detective. For almost anything that numbs
the spirit, breaks the heart, rips the psyche’s
threads apart, this may well be the corrective.









.