Doing New York Right for the First Time - Noaa Rienecker
To do New York right
you have to be
like a drug in a bloodstream,
to put something in
that makes the whole system dance,
like a blood cell even,
the very thing
being pumped
and pulsed
through labyrinthian conduit,
bringing brightness to eyes
and ecstasy to sex.
You have to play the game,
and once you have a strategy,
you are the ecosystem of the street,
a player in an
eternally unpredictable drama
unfolding twenty-four hours a day.
One day in the game,
I bummed tobacco from an Abe Lincoln impersonator,
smoked it with a french conspiracy theorist,
and met a banjo picker and a fiddler
who may prove as dear to me
in an unpredictable pinch of eternity
as companions I have found
at other times, in other cities.
I wrote a song,
broke up with a girlfriend,
and poured my heart out to a bartender
with no money no phone no job no couch no girl no idea,
then made 50 bucks with my guitar
in washington square park.
It’s the motion of a throbbing heart,
it’s the acrobat in the metro car,
it’s the straw-hat poet with the cardboard sign
crosslegged on the ground
teasing a smile from a curious child,
It’s waiting for your man
on Lexington and 125th
with twenty six-dollars in your hand,
It’s the keys to the kingdom.
When you move, the city moves with you,
toward you,
as you,
brings you
something proportionate
to what you bring it.
you have to be
like a drug in a bloodstream,
to put something in
that makes the whole system dance,
like a blood cell even,
the very thing
being pumped
and pulsed
through labyrinthian conduit,
bringing brightness to eyes
and ecstasy to sex.
You have to play the game,
and once you have a strategy,
you are the ecosystem of the street,
a player in an
eternally unpredictable drama
unfolding twenty-four hours a day.
One day in the game,
I bummed tobacco from an Abe Lincoln impersonator,
smoked it with a french conspiracy theorist,
and met a banjo picker and a fiddler
who may prove as dear to me
in an unpredictable pinch of eternity
as companions I have found
at other times, in other cities.
I wrote a song,
broke up with a girlfriend,
and poured my heart out to a bartender
with no money no phone no job no couch no girl no idea,
then made 50 bucks with my guitar
in washington square park.
It’s the motion of a throbbing heart,
it’s the acrobat in the metro car,
it’s the straw-hat poet with the cardboard sign
crosslegged on the ground
teasing a smile from a curious child,
It’s waiting for your man
on Lexington and 125th
with twenty six-dollars in your hand,
It’s the keys to the kingdom.
When you move, the city moves with you,
toward you,
as you,
brings you
something proportionate
to what you bring it.
