New York City smells like freshly cut pine from Christmas trees lining the sidewalks and tastes like candy cane lattes. It sounds like steel drum music and feels smooth like the ice at Rockefeller Center where people of every race, creed, and age drift across a milky white rectangle beneath an overlooking golden angel. It looks like wool coats, knit hats, and people holding hands.
It’s magical.
After asking a Mexican dude wearing a Shrek costume if I was allowed to hug him and being told with a spicy accent ‘Baby you can hug me all night’ (because in NYC costume characters can talk, this ain’t no Disney Land) I headed to Comic Strip Live with my cousin CJ and our mate Matt.
While the boys caught some comics I caught up with my very funny, very good friend DF who was MCing the show.
I told him I can’t move back to town until I’m getting recognized as a Writer because as much as I love every single thing about the city, it breaks my heart working gigs that don’t involve doing what I am meant to be doing while residing at my favorite place. I can swallow it anywhere else… just not here.
Does that even make sense?
I’ll ponder it more this morning over a double espresso with warm eggnog froth.
I wrote this poem when I woke up today…
THE MIRROR OF MANHATTAN
Stories intertwine through
one heartbeat lighting
a city extinguishing
impossibility.
Where everyone possesses
a beauty and awareness
melting your assumption of individuality,
you are graciously devoured
in lights and sound and others.
Other wonderers and wanderers
offer sideways looks,
understanding comfort of being close
without using physical touch.
Avenue whisk pasts take you
back to wanting to be..
.
nothing more than what you see.
A piece (peace) to the collection.
Smiling on the subway.
Looking out
the only clear
window.
The world
a beaming
reflection.
The poem is beautiful, and gave me shivers in memory of how alive that city made me feel.
The recharge it supplies is like that of no other, I’m happy to have brought you back with me… x o