A Little City Music

They say this city never sleeps

I say it is a Shepard tone

an escalator of illusion

forever rising, forever falling a

conductor-less orchestra eternally

tuning up.

No, there is no song

only these ideas

only cacophonous answers

to atonal questions

a rabble of relatives'

vying voices

boomeranging, ricocheting

TRYING TO TELL YOU

EXACTLY HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED!

Let me rhapsodize, elegize

wax romantic, pedantic for a moment

over the dirty, the loud, and the tawdry

over the city that listens without stopping

not so much welcomes as dares me to join in

its merry mamba, calling,

Where have you been? Keep up! I've been waiting!

Learning to cha-cha and samba

your way down the sidewalk,

the syncopated eighth-note ba-BOOM rhythm of

a New Yorker striking diamond plated cellar doors

where angels fear to tread,

it's an art.

Listen closely,

and let a little city music count you in:

the loose change manhole covers jingle, jangle, rattle, settle

every pressed button tolls for thee

every screeching incinerator-hot subway arrival

is accompanied by a bird song ding-dong doorbell chime

a ridiculous juxtaposition

a joke with no punchline

up the steps two at a time

you emerge from the subterranean

and while one movement is ending

another is beginning -

No clapping yet, please! We're not done playing.

On the street, a hiss, swoosh, and whir walk their usual beat

restless, invisible, atmospheric

blooming up and out against the buildings

loud, LOUD, LOUD!

City cicadas join the irresistible chorus

sending fumy prayers up to heaven

tuning their horns against the concert pitch

chanting, imploring, pleading:

LEARN HOW TO DRIVE! GO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

There is no subtlety, no subversion,

no wondering about

what the city might be thinking

it tells you loud and clear:

Hey, I'm living here!

Walking here,

Backing up here,

Unloading in the NO UNLOADING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER zone here (what!?),

Hawking comedy show tickets, the barker for the tourists' carnival here,

Selling dirty dogs and stale as cardboard pretzels here -

(those salty hexahedrons that sizzle a hole in your tongue mined from some abandoned Depression-era public works project, I swear) -

Working out the chords of Hey Jude on the shittiest guitar known to man over here,

belting it out from the basement of my lungs

the city - a microphone, an ear

leans in to listen

asks not if I'm any good (who cares?), but rather,

YES?

---

A moment of metropolis apocalypse silence for those

who aren't us

aren't here.

They say it's here or nowhere

and I think I know what they mean.

Because of anywhere else

I think of Vermeer:

gloomy, dreary, and glum

pale yellow sickly light merely suggestive of a sun

downcast eyes looking over the scenes of everyday life

varnished eyes looking out at you over a shoulder

placidly screaming

GET ME OUT OF HERE.

If you do get out of there,

and I hope you do,

get to W 53rd between 5th and 6th.

You'll find yourself at the Museum of Modern Art

which is long winded, so MoMA for short

and there you'll see The Starry Night

imagine it - Van Gogh's triumph on a sterile bright white wall!

But something about the depth of the strokes

the one forming over the other

the never-ending riotous movement of the matter

somehow Van Gogh knew how to say New York in color.

Yes, he understood us without words.

Yes, I think he was one of us.

What would he think, I wonder, of us

removing the gravity from his stars

gathering them earthbound around us?

Or this this selfish desire I have

to resurrect Treasury Secretary and adoptive New Yorker

Alexander Hamilton

and row him blindfolded back across the Hudson to Weehawken

for just one more dawn.

Removing his blindfold for him to see

his city

standing expectantly at attention

sparkling new in the old man's eyes

Atlantis resurrected

I want to see love try to encompass something so unfathomable

so wonderful

as the passage of time.

Two-hundred odd years between

between Vermeer and Van Gogh

between Alexander's city and mine.