the miracle in poetry

who could ever want to destroy this town?
bomb it with planes? want it to end?
this weird terrible wonderful shitty miracle
this new york city, my dear old friend.

might want to make it less expensive
might want to build more and better
drug rehabs and mental sanitaria for
the lost souls on stoops at night
they could play less fucking Billy Joel
but I can’t imagine hating it
wanting it to end, ever wanting to leave.

coffee creamers lined up like spent shells
a decent day in heaven, a lucky day in hell
three o’clock in the morning Sunday into Monday
killing time in a diner outside Penn Station
waiting for the Albany bus back
there’s more going on here now
than an Albany Friday rush hour double-stack
it is amazing.

it could cost too much and it moves too fast
you could end up mugged, you could come in last
if you don’t keep your head on a swivel
but how could you ever try to kill it?
how could you ever want to leave
return to the sleepy thoughtless middle?

these thrumming hearts, all these millions
beating out the saints-and-villains rhythms
dreamers and bleeders and thieves
immigrants from Kenya and from Tulsa
immigrants from Hicksville and Bayonne
stock purchase-men and tattered sages
in packs and all alone.

the hope is so thick here you could choke
and so is the smoke and the piss in the streets
as thick as aforementioned thieves and
Peter Luger’s steakhouse meats but

you can’t have the good without at least
a little of that bad
some will collapse and some will be had and
it should be a goddamned lot less
not a place just for the born-rich and blessed
but it’s just so. fucking. beautiful.

walk like people in other places might breathe
see what anywhre else could not be believed
see everything. be everything. because

if you want everything, you’re gonna get everything
knife fights and warts and major league sports
if you also want opera and ballet and
poets out screaming in the streets
in your bones you can feel, it’s a package deal.

there are things so rare and true
you can only get them as a part of everything ever
you can’t talk your way into ala carte
you can’t be selective and clever
there’s certain kinds of miracles
that only come included with having everything ever.
some shitty’s going to come with it too.
that is new york city.
between me and you.

but how could you ever want to burn it down?
this all-encompassing shitty miracle of a town?
all that’s happened ever in a single water-tight weave
how could you suicide bomb it?
how could you ever leave?
how could I leave?

I went broke.
there is no other sane reason
under this missing god’s own sky to leave
exhausting all your money and
fleeing in your shirtsleeves.
but that’s okay.
I get to visit every once in a while and
when I’m not having my nightmares
I get to dream of returning to stay.

I have seen fucking miracles,
wonderous and shitty
because I’ve lived in New York City.
Brother, I’ve got memories to keep
I got to live them for a little while and
I can see them when I sleep.
that’s more than most people get.

I like New York in June, how about you.
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you.
some people hide their lives away
in hateful little towns
in churches and in mosques
with their minds’ filters shut down
closed off from the vast
in their hermetic bubble sphericals
I got to live in New York City
I saw the shitty miracles.
for a little while.