Memories of Brooklyn
I was there.
I could almost reach out and touch the distance
the delicate balance between us, between the beating heart
seated there, and the eyes of the man…
the becoming of, the partaking of having been in the past
tense born other than myself wondering what I would
be doing standing there on the street corner
on Kings Highway at 4 o’clock in the morning holding a plastic bag
with my left hand in my back pocket
(at that time of night)
Another nervous me-looking lady is waiting for a bus,
her face resembles the fragile consciousness
beating in my head, which wondered
only a moment ago
why it could take half a lifetime
for the price of eggs to drop 50 cents
while the cost of everything always seems to go up.
Strange this short distance transmigration of ethos.
They wonder if I am as much in them
as they are in me
and perhaps feel the same sensitive pulse of an alien being
coursing through the veins somewhere
between the wrist and the elbow
‘Are you working?’ the voice at the window of my cab
inquires.
‘Where you going?’ (can’t be too careful nowadays)
‘How much to Flatlands and 56th?’
For 6 bucks I shudder all the way at the thought
of a knife in my back
and the hungry man climbing out of the night
into the backseat, into the perfect environment
of my rock-n-roll taxi,
a hideous monster demanding all my money,
leaving me dead for a hundred bucks
and a half-smoked pack of Camel light cigarettes