I did not want to look back
I had tasted distance before
so I carved the staples out of my body
pulled the map down
and drew a line straight to new york city
ran, upon arrival, feet slapping the gum-shot pavement
eyes wild spinning pierced by
the glare of an endless orange sun
the humans, howling werewolves
a pheromone haze infecting
all thought with images of inertia
of twisting bodies and collision
the smell of sweat and youth
the flammable buzz of alcoholized oxygen
8 million gasping psyches
crashing and coagulating
a hastily assembled cast of strangers
armed with piss-bitter prescription bottles of malt liquor
and a clock that stops at midnight
returning, like a boomerang at 5 am
to knock you from
adventure to psychosis
waking up on stone lipped rooftops
stale cigarette salutes to a creaky sunrise
until sobriety blows the dandy-flower cluster of
bit players
back into the sharp Atlantic wind,
some never to be seen again
some to crash back into your autobiography
for moments, sometimes years, sometimes knowing glances
and slight waves on 29th and Lex
sometimes cowardly shuffling past
a body who sweated away a Brooklyn night in your eyes
your biographies circling around you, your stories for a moment inextricable
the morning uncaring in its punctuality
sometimes spinning opposite sides of the Astor cube
sometimes passing underneath your feet, unknowing
your pac men ghost velocities
carrying you to the end of a new act,
your newest bit players shouting
their lines into the wind ahead of you

Fresh from the Bay Area, Aaron Bair is a poet and writer who now calls Brooklyn home. He is an acute sufferer of freight train blues and is currently working on his second collection of poetry and prose entitled Babyloncology.

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Keywords : New York City, Hustle, New Yorkers

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