At the Opening

Working 14 hours straight with no dinner and that second gin and tonic is punching me in the back of the head. I don't need any extras but this is New York City baby and more more more is what we serve on a daily basis so it's no surprise to look up from the cab's windows, swerving onto the FDR and there is the rotting hospital for contagious diseases lit up and falling down on Roosevelt Island and there is the Coca Cola sign in Queens and there is the Citibank tower and then another Citibank tower didn't we just see that now here comes the anchoring strings of blue lights on the bridges count them now Queensborough, Williamsburgh, Manhattan, take the Brooklyn, take the Brooklyn from here we can see the far off chain of the Verrazano-Narrows.

This is beauty, yes, god, this is beauty and I want to go running extend this spangle of a night into a blur through and down my beloved streets, offer myself up to hard pavement unlove and there is the moon again tonight clear and with its two horns. Amidst the $1,000 tickets and pin-striped suits I picked an early Marsden Hartley landscape for mine and I did get my head turned by an Edward Weston and who wouldn't, and a pair of Diane Arbus' raw and flat and vicious and impossible. The man who watched me watch a Man Ray saw only a woman who did not mind looking at a nude, not a woman who was looking for the divine and he wants to buy me with his plastic but that's not the currency I take, take my phone number because what do I care you won't remember me when you are sober tomorrow I'm just another thing, but you don't know I'm the thing you can't have.

Driver, turn right here, yes, this is the way home, this is where I live, where I have my secret dreams, where I breathe, where I look at the night sky, where I see stars stars count them until you fall asleep sweet, precious, one. two. three. three. three...bless you all sweethearts and good night.