Blue Air
The blue sky of downtown later and forever
………….marked by inexplicable machine boom
breaking steel, cracked fires flaring
………….and blue turned to running ash
as if a B-movie whipping buildings,
………….stray workers, a chrome hot-dog stand
toppled on its side. But this blue is not
………….the same blue as our blue sky
of seventeen years before,
………….though the blue sky is still
September. The blue I know is the blue
………….on black of dappled starlings.
A blue floating over the Hudson,
………….non-committal except to the hold of the sun.
There’s something here, a blue trace
………….of what matters
at any given time: blue sky, empty of noise
………….except traffic, the blue lights of cop cars.
At any moment things change.
Glass mirrors the blue from the sky
………….The age of building upwards is not over:
102 floors of vellum windows framing electric ink
………….but this blue holds the nameless
and the named. The blue sky between the space
………….where two towers were once
walked by a man on thin wire, high wire,
………….who stood where the air closed
over steel. This blue space travels down
………….now, below ground, water darkening
at a certain depth. In our time we had looked up
………….at the blue we knew, a starling sky,
but understood nothing. This was before we saw
………….there are no limits to what
somebody can do with belief: hold up
………….the blue air between buildings,
or bring it all down.
Live Sex, Times Square
You weren’t scared of the XXX marquee lure: Taboo II
………….(The Story of Incest Continues) though you might have been
if you weren’t the daughter of a man who travelled the world
………….for work and being sixteen you knew there were men
(dirty was the word for them) who paid to watch and jerk off
………….at the girl performing submission like a big-eyed pup.
But you didn’t care then, as you do now, about women forced into
………….positions of enjoying, about it being a choice, like M&Ms
or a preference in steak; there were enough other noises
………….to hold a girl in New York who didn’t have to work Times
Square, or even hang around that part of town; you could always subway
………….down to East 14th to find music and blinis and cheap beer toted
in brown paper bags to Union Square park: Marc might be on
………….a graveyard shift at the coffee shop in Tribeca, Tier 3 might have
music on worth staying for. Stepping from a lean yellow cab
………….on 4th Avenue, some slim boy in lipstick and a just-washed
golden wig might laugh at your ripped black dress, but also
………….compliment your crazy-long legs and high arch brows.
You could smile and squirm a little because the boy friends
………….don’t say nice things – why would they – you’re a boy in a dress
and fishnets; except you’re also a daughter and also a big-eyed pup
………….and for too long you submit to everything: father, music, boys,
New York.
