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“In New York” by James Tate 🇺🇸 (8 Dec 19438 Jul 2015)
The cosmopolis leans up against the light
and tries to start a conversation
where one is terribly serious
and the other is a gigantic raging oscilloscope
hearing nothing and swimming on
like you smartiepants.
I’m parched, my notebooks are parched & so
with my eggs, everything is coming up pencils
and I come home to a chaotic celebration
really shocked me out of my whirlpool to find
the mightly surging tribulet budding with ants
counting their blessings after the pillage
of every living cell on the banks
now all is bald, O get on your evil horse, ride down
loose spheres of blacklight across the border
I give into my seashells
they’re still something to bounce off
who are sure they exist
very humble and self-assured.
An old man in the cosmopolis
must divorce himself, his home in the far TV
the false hope at the end
it would be proritious to die though
the standards O gulp into the gulfing
the big Mexico burst upon the solitary stone
and be glad
and know what that old person feels like:
broken aquariums
bugging everyone.
Always aware that we are dying
at a meaningful pace for a real experience
that stab was meant for everyone
the fat sages
down the ages
their elliptical hearts are an excuse for holidays
mating stupor and drinking song
by reason of the effort and its tradition
of the utterly hopeless
celebrating “remote exquisite Beauties.”
You can purchase something to keep you sane
such as a bigger and bigger slab of the madness
navigating uptown like a crumpled fish
through Buddha’s nightgown
you sometimes know the secret, if anything,
not asking for anyone to take you home
you are, for one second,
the only one that’s not alone and
like Jesus you can’t lift your arm
to stop a taxi, you tear yourself up
because it feels so damned good.