I got fired so I went to the park

There are times when I look at this city from within itself and see nothing but a ghostly empire—luminescent, haunted, already fading. The views of grand palaces that dwarf Versailles; the limpid ponds and vigorous squirrels; the dancing sunlight; the autumn coolness in the air; the lethargic tourist families, collapsed on each other, eating hot dogs and ice cream, nestled under subway maps.

And something in me leaps a hundred years ahead, or back, and I become a traveller from a different time—some kind of cosmic voyeur. And to see leaves turn red from the tips as though dipped in blood, to hold chestnuts, smooth and fragrant, in the cool cup of my palm. And to watch an endless procession of persons marching past, all missing the view; I am alone here, hidden in the dappled shade, hidden in the notebook on my lap, hidden from the day and the night in this middle kingdom of evening.

Looking Through Old Pictures (DF)

There is the vascular restriction of life

as it stands

            the heartache of waving goodbye to yourself

            putting yourself on the bus

            the tail lights red and sad

                        as you pull away.

 

And letting go in this moment

            walking home from the bus stop

   into your home, where everything is

   strange again, as you feared it would be

the last time you did this.

 

connection-drawing

I sense a connection between the last two posts, of Jason Alexander and Frederick Seidel. To each post-author, those subjects represent a release from fear. Taking it farther, I’d say they represent a release from a fear of not being “sophisticated” enough. Even just being writers, we have to wrestle with that. Or maybe “sleek and elegant” is a better phrase. Instead of binding our lives up into careful miniatures–sometimes that’s what my poems seem like to me–we want to expand outward, fill up some of all this empty, blank space.