A New York Love Poem

The New York life is a series of bombardments
You want to know why they didn't go down with the Towers?
Every day is a preparation for disaster
Around every corner
Buildings reach up to challenge God
Skyscrapers like middle fingers
You want to know why they didn't let killers break them?
Their tolerance is high for such things
In the same way they say "Fuck you" to God
To each other
To the buildings swirling around them
To the subways
To the homeless
There is more to break you here
Than anywhere else on the planet
It's not that it makes you hard
It's that it makes you strong
For living on the edge of annihilation
Every day
Every morning
The end of every business day
We clock out
Check out
And living on that edge of destruction and beauty
Makes you more alive than tucked away
In track homes and manicured lawns
There is more terror here than in all the dreams
Of Middle America
There is also more hope
More wonder
A thousand different twinkling lights
That prepare you for Heaven

I watched those Towers fall
And my heart broke with everyone's
And it was the first time that I saw what being human
Was really all about
Was not the terror
Not the death
Not the horror and the blood and the ash

It was the love

The calls to family
The rushes to the blood banks
For once in the history of my life
I watched America in the largest game of Red Rover
And we stood united

I don't know what happened to all that
The chain broke apart
And everything went all to Hell
Our broken hearts were manipulated into
A War of Apathy and Spin...

I walked along the Times Square Station
Up through the N/R/W into the main terminal
Where I bumped into prophets and fakes
Indistinguishable from each other
And a man played "Mrs. Robinson"
To the beat of the fading day
Through the tunnel past the 7 train
Where I kissed him goodbye so many times
And preachers telling me about sin
And competing musicians
A woman with a tambourine has beaten
The man with the flute for the attentions
Of those who passed by
He looked disoriented as if someone had
Eaten his porridge
Slept in his bed
Goldilocks with a tambourine and a hymnal
I left them to duke it out
And on to the passageway of the A/C/E
Where the same violinist perched himself
Every Sunday
I drift along like a ghost to Vivaldi
Barely touching the ground as the violin cried
For a moment I cried with it
And then I smiled

You want to know why the Towers were brought down
But not New York?
It is the endless parade of these moments
Tragedy wrapped up in comedy
With a healthy sprinkling of the absurd
You cannot break a world like this
Not with a thousand bombs or terrorists or threats
Because every one of us walks around with
Our buildings giving you the finger
With our voices crying out
"Fuck you."
Behind every one of these hard moments
Is the silent appreciation and wonder of this
Place
Time
Experience
And every curse and hard brushed shoulder of a stranger
Is a silent "Thank you" to Whomever
Might be listening.