a poem from you right now from me

Time exists, right? Here's some poetry from me about cities I've known or fancied or heard about.


untitled 4865


I knew of Detroit from movies
and magazines;

Chicago was
lived in, snowed on,
drifted through,
as in a dream;

New York City was always the prize
of
my fantasies
and
my dreary teeth;

Austin was also lived in,
still
is I suppose,

and it has pretty hills and
girls
without
hats;

San Francisco is expensive,
or
so I hear;

Seattle has a tower, a peak,
the perfect center of the
universe, if one were so inclined, and from there,
well;

Vegas was a cheap stuttering
bitch on
the prowl;

Cleveland sang to me in youth,
a baseball park, a
dingy old peanut shop;

Charleston was less extravagant, but
just as sturdy;

Savannah, oh Savannah,
was angelic
but
lost;

Asheville was the dirty
feet
of
a man singing hum
dim ding;

D.C.
was
a wicked stretch of Ethiopian
restaurants and
chain theaters, eating the
eyes;

L.A. must be a waterdance,
but I’ve never been;

Dallas and Houston are
wicked
sisters, shaving each other’s
armpits with abandon;

Oklahoma City belongs
to a friend of mine,
and she thinks it’s made of chocolate
and
spiced rum;

darling San Diego, I suppose,
has nice
weather,
but forget Oakland, it’s full
of steel;

Boston is a runny
egg
dripping down the spine of a
notebook;

Philadelphia is
beloved by every
dead
man, patriots
too,
and little girls with ribbons
in their hair;

New Jersey sinks into
the monolith
of
fiction with every
drawing breath of its citizens;

Charlotte has
the straight hair
of a Viking, or an
idiot, or a rambling son
of a bitch;

Mobile was a squeak;

and New Orleans,
queen of the mighty
breeze,
has that thing inside of
it that rattles,
but it ain’t a beer bottle
and it’s not a lantern
and
it sure ain’t some loose kids
getting
their teeth kicked out
on
Bourbon Street.