Not the same city I walked for months
down Avenue of the Americas from
the Vanderbilt Y, with its icy showers and gritty carpets
on the islands East shoulder sloping down to the United Nations,
and cement benches demanding, in chill spray paint
U.S. out of South Africa and El Slavador
to Washington Square, where chip-tooth fags
wearing stirrup pants and Kieth Harring T-Shirts
sell antiques and dirty postcards
and to Vennessa's father's loft on West Broadway and Broome
a dentist, who throws dinner parties
where dancers and art dealers comment on the virtuosity of
a handsome skinny Jamaican who sings and plays a grand piano
lost in the bright yellow hardwood I think must have been a gymnasium
as we look on from the balcony

And Charles Roberts, now dead, you were with me
and shared my desire for European remix 12"s
some fragments of this place to take back to Michigan
as if freedom could be held in the grooves of vinyl
or as static potential on magnetic tape

In this room at the YMCA that we shared with two other boys
we all stayed up to watched Interludes After Midnight,
a nude talk show interupted only by escort service info-mercials,
women spreading their vaginas with gynecological equiptment
at the suggestion of the gravelly voiced black host, well hung
not one us having the bravery to jack off
even though all hid our pajamas tight with hard ons under the blankets
I at least would wait for the cold morning showers in the hall
In which we were warned lurked lusty homosexuals
and from which we returned with carpet grit clinging to our damp feet

I rewalked those streets and strayed into the New York of my imagination
in my dreams of Seventeen, those months after my father's body
was returned to the family reduced to silky grey ash and chalky ground grit

Today New York is a city of carnivores without enough meat
everywhere gristle and bone, one must learn to share the pleasure
of the Chinese entrepreneurs on Lafayette below Canal
who gnaw endlessly on the joints of Chicken feet,
no hope of swallowing or cracking the thin bones for marrow

Today in this city bicycle frames are left to hang from their locks
without wheels or handle bars or seat
And the city has pulled the tendons away from my knee
as I cross the width of the island at 42nd street from Ad agency to temp agency
in search of typesetting work, I stop to look at music but now I buy CD's

Grand Central is still the same Grand Central,
where we arrived in our airport bus from Newark
Times Square is still Times Square walkmen filled windows,
silk tie shops, quarter peep shows and the giant Coca-Cola sign
only new is Rush Limgaugh's face high up with Fuji Film in neon

I think again that you Charles Roberts are not alive to walk with me
in this city where the buddy system was strictly enforced
where we left the others for the used recordshops of Greenwich Village
where we were offered drugs by dirty Rastifarians.
paniced and took a cab back uptown
Where you betrayed me and refused to pay up like the others when,
after I had spent my food money on tapes
I accepted a bet to enter a topless bar

As I walk through Central Park past the children's Zoo toward
the MoMA where I will see again this afternoon
Des Moiselle D'Avignon and certain works of Salvador Dali
and wonder where exactly my friends used to jump the fence after hours
and give their boyfriends blowjobs and lay naked on the summer grass
We would no longer be virgins if they still played the Rocky Horror Picture Show

I will spend days on sheets, a little stiff with sweat and cum
rising only for ginger ale and icecream sandwiches
I hobble on my swollen knee across the street to the bodega
where the fat clerk shuffles to salsa as he fills my bag and takes my money

Is there any flesh left in this city or must I learn to endlessly gnaw
on joints grown cold and hard like chewing gum in your mouth too long
In the mornings do not trucks filled with meats restock the markets of New York
do they not fill the tunnels and the bridges with their girth
surely the slaughter houses of New Jersey and Pensylvania have no lack of business
unload the beef, unload the lard and lamb
Was this not once a city of Delis? Now it seems a city of convenice store buffets
cheap sushi and greasy sweet and sour hung in metal bins above steaming water.
I remember two fisted sandwiches from a shop near Rockefeller Center
I cannot seem to find it on my lunch hour
I remember turkey soup in China town that filled my bowl with half a breast
I cannot seem to find it after seminar

Now it seems hard to find a Puerto Rican cafe on the lower East Side
where I can afford to eat Rice and Recaito,
and choke up the chiken for the gristle
perhaps I will eat Vietnamese from now on

Carrying home my bike frame slung over my shoulder
It reminds me of the carcass of a turkey the day after Thanksgiving
through the wet peace of Driggs Avenue's slope and curve
the illuminated Empire State is a triangle over Segnor McGorlick Park

I wonder if this is a city of the living or the dead
This East River is as corrupted as any Styx
any of these bicycle thief- junkies on the Williamsburg Bridge
could be my Charon, into what hand to place the coin?

Instead of buried under the desert of Arizona,
with a tumor on the stem of your brain
that brought you merciful death some Friday morning in early September
like Alan Ginsburg's mother I will hope to find you Chuck Roberts
some Sunday morning after brunch picking over Orchard Street Market,
alive and happy, living with a woman who contents you
who amuses you and makes you think,
Maybe you're teaching at the New School
Maybe at the Knitting Factory you now and then play music

Maybe my knee has gone bad because I carry your weight as I walk these streets
If New York is a city of the dead should I admit my residency,
would it help me to claim the status of tourist if I should I visit the statue or Ellis Island?
I think I must decide if I am staying here,
where the fat has been picked from my ribs while I ams still alive
Even with a nuance, a history still buried below the cobbles and asphalt
How can I deny that my mind has in those grey autumn days asleep in Greenpoint
awkwardly begun to speak the language of these unfamiliar streets
where for the first time people comment on my accent