De Los Muertos

The train across the Manhattan bridge is a gift your give yourself, is a pill from New York to ease the pain, but it’s a testament to its shortcomings that you do not ride it back and forth on a loop, that you do not stay on it for days on end, because the bright lights only carry you so far, the rest of the way you have to walk to yourself. The October winds are a hurricane, they set the west ablaze but your flame is small enough to keep in a back pocket. The streets are a carnival, the Bowery is a gamble and sometimes the cards blow away unasked. The answers slip through your fingers.

It’s only life. Surely you can find them again when the dust has settled.

Pause

The heart is a very small muscle, I wrote once in my youth, yet within its fragile walls lie all that love and gratitude that make up our existence. I had no idea, then, how a heart can stretch and bend, break and recover, did not know how much I could will it grow, or how it would grow even against my will. It's a great testament to the human spirit that it survives at all, that we endure this life with nothing to carry us but a small soft muscle the size of a fist.

The streets are full of disguises today, of blood and of fear, of a minute to be anyone but who you are. I know it's tempting to stay there. But take a deep breath and listen to the old brag of your heart. I am, I am, I am. It is not good enough for you to be so sad, so much. Maybe now is when you sink in and let yourself be happy.

Also

It rains and rains, but everything is warm. We sit at the end of the bar racing through topics because how can we ever catch up when time is so short. Her advice is an anodyne, you see the synapses light up behind her eyes to patch your every wound, pair each tough truth with a parcel of hope. When his anger attempts to sow distrust along your heartstrings, you feel that old defense line up. How broken hearts will try to break the world. I mended mine, you know, glued it and softened it again until I dared to think it could survive the rain once more. I sit here now under this ridiculous umbrella, alongside piles of truth with this parcel of hope in my hand and do you know?

There’s room for one more
if you want it.

Starve

Poverty runs rampant through my every waking hour, the first of the month approaching like a monster in my closet and it takes all my energy to keep the door to it shut. I see the well-adjusted routines of my peers sink into carefree weekend spending and casual acceptance of a life without jagged edges. One time I went to the dentist and didn't flinch at the bill, and I still remember how sweet the moment. That was years ago. Now I search for quarters in the sofa cushions to pay for a castle in the clouds, while I wonder at self-fulfilling prophecies and how long it took to drag the last vestiges of propriety out of me until I could finally sit in the ragged beatness I so long revered.

Because when you peel away all the layers of security, of civilized living, only art remains. I only have the Word, now. I cling to it, drag it through my anxious filters, force feed myself another rewrite to try to eke out the magic that can sustain me. I said I'd sacrifice everything for the Word and I had no idea then what Everything actually is but I am here now, reduced to only sentences, reduced to only piles of stories, I saw a dead cat washed up on the shore of the East River yesterday in the rain and all I know is somewhere in the back of my head, somewhere in the deeps of my chest, I still think
this
is
worth
it.

Exhale

A day unravels in mental illness, in useless circles around well-trodden paths, I am so many more questions than there could possibly be answers for, and it's hard to know if this is the right path when they all look knotted in the beginning. Meander over to the bar with more gritted teeth than faith but whatever gets you there is a good start. The bartender's boyfriend shows up later than usual, but her voice rises in octaves and they steal sweet moments at the edge of your vision. You turn your phone off, try to forget there's a real world where the rent needs paying. Illness has kept you sober for too long, the beer tastes different, it wraps you in a cotton cloud of your own anxietey. The real world agrees to sit back for a minute.

And that is when it happens. When the typewriter keys melt under your fingertips, when stories line up behind your eyelids, do you know I saw a character break and it made me cry despite myself, despite this chatty bar and dissuading beer, I saw her break and I did not. I stayed, right here, and carried her through and suddenly the hours had swept from under me, suddenly the world had floated away and there was only this story, only this dark wood of creative bliss and I never wanted to leave.

When I came up for air, at last, wiping the tears and trying to smooth the hair from my mad science, I had forgotten the questions that bore into me before. I forget the fear, the years that escape me, the rent that requires paying. This path is the right one. I know because it is the one that knows me in return. I know, because as much as I think I'm the one choosing the path, the path chooses you.

All you have to do is walk it. 

Prophecy

The day rains, rains like it cannot get itself to stop, like we'd be fools to go outside. We try, but end up back in a moment of soft folds and heavy dreams. In sleep I saw sweet futures without all these clouds but I suppose I'd take the one if I could have the other and anyway rain makes the flowers grow. I keep hoping there's a treasure trove of answers somewhere, where everything could become clear, but I'm starting to think the answer is just keep walking, one step in front of the other, do the best you can. We cannot make a lot of promises, other than that we will try. Just one more moment, and you've built a whole life.

Here, have this moment.

All I'm saying is, it's a start.

Favorites

It rains.

After days of warm kind October sun and when you need benevolence, it rains, cold dark confining rain of November. You scowl. Saturday night on the Bowery is a farce, it has always been a street for the young to ruin, what else is new. I sat in a window on the upper west side and watched the traffic on the west side highway, slow meandering diamond necklace of cars along the dark stillness of the Hudson River. This city is a faceted blessing.

We sat on the sixth floor of a Chinatown walk up painting our whims into the universe. More windows, more views to infinity and sometimes I think the magic of this place is it makes you think you fly. I swam in poetry, piles of it amassed around me in the silence. All good things come, but you must go out to greet it. If you never say your name out loud to anyone, they can never ever call you by it. It may rain now.

But it will not always.