Staying in

The Bronx is a ten minute walk from where I live. I've yet to go there. I haven't visited the park near my apartment. I haven't eaten at the highly rated restaurants in my neighborhood.

Mostly I work or sleep. I'm a bit of an insomniac, so when exhaustion eventually drags me prostrate, I remain there as long as possible. Often I find myself waking up at noon or one. The only thing that lifts me from bed is work or outings with friends. The outings with friends are rare, so I get up for work.

Not to say I'm unproductive: during my sleepless nights I read good books and write.

Literature. I went to the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe on Friday night. I basked in the movement of people back and forth -- the men tended to slam about politics and the women about social injustice. I've just flipped through my music collection, looking for an artist with the passion or honest eloquence I saw on the Nuyorican stage. Bright Eyes may be the only comparison; but for his whiny scrawl, substitute the cursive rhythms of east coast rap.

Here's the poem I sketched the next night about one of the poets:

this is the persuasive
sermon ... this diatribe
from the bottle of this
Atlanta acreage, bared
like this woman's chest -- with
that honesty of address.

this is the finally
ill invalid facing
her demise with shocking
regard for these invalids.

her upheld hand cups a
lucent mantel ... and a
white knife she drives through her
leather coat. Her black-skinned
blood salves bored cancers -- red
coughs do not enrage by
vague triviality.
Her blood punctually
succors small kids and plants goats.

not for the lack of tithe
in her other hand, not
for the lack of glory
in blueprints and plans, not
even for my poems of
her anonymity
she slides to her knees, casts
the mantel of light -- she
crescendos. We, all and
I, hear as she bares her
palms righteously, holies
the mic. Her eyes beg. Her
tongue heaves. She breathes -- to old
tenements and invalids.