People are like cities here
But you’ve always only been yourself, haven’t you
Rooftops in Brooklyn got
Nothing on your sneer 
Or twinkle of eye you don’t yet know you’ve got.   

At least this time around.   

Hipsters have their babies now, 
Canon satchels
Warby Parkers
‘Manhattan on Safari’ 
That’s what we’ll call it
Dickie couture
Yves Saint Laruarnt
Cut offs tucked into running shorts
Fanny packs are back
You’d think they’d run out of ideas by now
Scuffed shoes
On
Lorimer, though I counted them all 
All
Scattered and flying through like stars, or
Streets I used to stumble
Or like there in our L.A.,
The houses that belonged to Simon Cowell. 
They say he’s drinking beer, 
You never liked the taste
You prefer a whiskey Erasure.   

There’s still magic here I’d forgotten, you know. 
Mothers pressing hands on baby’s ears, 
Smiles down under on the platform,
As their C to High Street’s rolling in
The baby keeps on sleeping. 
Poet Fathers with Picasso sons
Cardboard signs 
‘Love and care our Earth’
I want to see you hold a child’s hand.   

I ride a train towards another person’s home,
Another man I’ll fuck for the view. 
Where are you now? 

I’m somewhere under still,
Someplace between 14th and up.
You’d hate the heat,
At least the way it’s been
Swamp dick, a musty ass
The desert suits us more.   

Here there’s other men.
Different flours,
Water always never tastes the same
Depending on the hangover 
And or the avenue
These island boroughs have stayed the same
However
There’s now a Starbucks on Allen and something or other
God this heat 
Week-long Summer. 
Beads of sweat that taste of tears
down here
I know you don’t like those
And yet 
I’m beginning to think I need them
If not to love song 
Then to plea for you
For you to hold me in your arms
For me to know you mean it tight
It’s not an errand 
But something that you want
For me
Or for us
Or for you so I’ll keep
The train’s a station away
It’s getting hotter by the second
Breeze of the underground 
Break this Earth I stand on for a living
That’s a living
Living to want to Live
I beg of you
Submit my fever dreaming heart into 
Knowing that you’ll want me back 
So that this home I wish to 
Show and brag with you
Will simmer from Hudson river aqua into rat-trash fumes
Into yesteryear until it’s finally gone.
Even if you only say it I’ll think of it as true, 
I’ll hold off that demon air in corner number four
And tell my aches 
I’ll still be wanted after Christmas Season
After parties
When Winter People are no longer wanted
And tossed with flipsides of high life
‘At least we had prosecco.’   

There was something about cities, here,
I was working hoping leading towards concluding with, 
Something like the other shoe.   

I wish you were parked outside my house like that one time,
The time I pretended I wasn’t home. 
I wish I were home and looking out the window
Watching you
There was something to you hoping
An
Embodiment of something 
Someone 
Wanting me.  

I suppose.
Let’s just meet at the Grove? 
Valet in the parking garage
There’s a gin bar I’ve been meaning to try,
They say Constance Wu is fantastic in Hustlers. 
Maybe cities are the people you do things with. 
I don’t know what that makes people.   

It’s too easy calling you L.A.   

Re other men, 
I’ll swallow all explanation for later
Please trust me,
For I will no less and inevitably self-destruct 
The way you know I can
The way that irritates
Yet makes you think you’ve done it right,
Your stronghold my frailty 
Kamikaze dreams of arms
And laughter 
Plastic cup cupboards
And overcooked falafel.  

I wish they had Mamoun’s in Chelsea.
I’d love to watch you act as if it’s something you’ve had better somewhere else.