Virgin In Her 20's

NEW YORK # 2 IMMOBILE 

You can see it.

Older than eyes.

Before eyes were things

of beauty.

When they were pits, almond

pits where new humans

buried light to last.

Back when the only cities were

mass

graves or

stunk like them.

I walk steady

with my back facing in all

directions.  Slave to my

evolving walkman.

And when there is no music

to beat back the people,

I am still

like a dog chain

freed of its dog.

We rage from the windows, still

on the subway

without making eye contact.

Everyone, a collection of blood-statues.

A woman bends and becomes a share-

cropper, struggles to lift her stroller

down the germinating steps of the 6. Her

three young

children scattered,

like a bag of brown-faced marbles.

Passers-by, eyes liquid dark

The tails of their winter coats fly, scissors of cold.

No one stopped to help her;

it was primordial.

Like the way we used to leave the immobile

but not –quite-dead

to grow into memory.

I cannot feel anything but lost, unseen 

like a skyscraper amongst skyscrapers.

No bone beneath my pocket,

just a whole lot of wishful lint.

I walk

through so much

empty scaffolding,

passing for skeletons, for people.

Through smiles like tunnels that close

in around you.

Through the skinless subways,

humming its guts beneath

your shoes. The bed bugs confessing

the city’s adulteries

in whatever pant hems and shirt collars.

Everybody’s itching to tell.

At least they’re

scratching

themselves, like an automated need.

The world was once a painting; it panted

for color.

Now shades behold sunrise,

demanding someone rinse

the stain.