The towers are perfect. Hot running water
And clean towels on the 73rd floor.
And look. The next street over, there are more.
Nothing overshadows you like New York City.
Even if Beethoven were here, he would drift about silently.
Overwhelmed by the talented, the mechanical, the iconic, the pretty.
I don’t care who you are.
New York City is the gleaming star.
Don’t bring your small town, conservative attitude here.
We’re New York City. Colorful and queer.
The subway system is a long ride
Just to get over to the west side,
And if you go way uptown?
I’ll see you, then. See you around.
The massive towers and the vast
Towers, architecture of the recent and less recent past.
When Spotify employees take cabs, they go fast.
In New York City it’s impossible to get lost.
You were lost already when you lost what you never lost.
The towers. They determined the cost.
The swift, clean subway takes you to Harlem by ten.
At CUNY, a statue of Alexander Hamilton.
The lovely brownstones, the sycamore trees,
The old Gothic hills. The transfixing breeze.
New York! The borrowers and the professors
And the traders and the intellectuals
And the cheap labor from all over!
That’s what you are and wanted. Chipped and far.
Every pavement brick accounted for.
That’s why its gravity drew you here.
Greater than the past, or your dreams, or grandmother, dear.
Hard, curved cement.
Better than what any poem meant.
A lonely pussy cat on the 60th floor
With loneliness and a modeling career in store.
Delmore Schwartz dying in a midtown hotel.
Not all of the immigrants did well.
New York didn’t care.
A deep homeless stare.
Great poetry doesn’t always sell.
And sometimes in the suburbs a will
Takes over not even New York City can kill.
The conventionally handsome are attracted by the money
And women are conventionally pretty
In New York City.
But, like anything else,
It’s always better somewhere else.
You were never really here.
It was intellectual. It was language.
You weren’t really queer.
Is this the right corner? What’s the best cologne?
Nobody knows. New York is unknown.
New Yorkers, New York-neutered, are blasé
About themselves, not overawed,
The restaurant, the movie, the play
Is boring, and bored, with its perfect jaw.
But New York City silent, in the dawn,
Is the most beautiful thing, in the dawn.
And the small green park with amateur jazz
Reminds you New York City is small
And vulnerable, as well as tall.
Here the great numbers protect you.
More makes more. There’s nothing new.
New York City is looking back at you.
Surfaces. Roman, black, dane, jew.
A small Christian church, anxious to save,
Around the corner. On the 90th floor, you shave.
The tall goddesses come here to live.
The funny, strange faces. New York City pulls to give.
New York City is made to be
An indifferent building to the poetry.
There is too much here to ever use
Seriously by the muse.
I am hectored by New York City. I lie down
And pee in my white toga. In my green gown.
Once I spilled my guts downtown.
And you know what? Nothing can compare
To her—who has never even been there.