Ahmad Rashad: Last year, making the playoffs was the big step. This year, with Shaq, there's nothing less than Winning the Championship--what do you feel about that pressure?
Dwayne Wade: I don't see it that way as pressure. I see it as opportunity.

kids

www. you go there, and there’s this guy, he jumps off a building and you see him smack into the floor. his body’s all twisted, his back is turned like this
www. all these guys, with shotguns or handguns, Magnum, whatever, sitting there on the screen. They pull the trigger and their head explodes. Like pschkk. Yea, it’s on tape. all of this. is on tape.
in conversa. Yea, I liked September 11. I mean, i never seen a building blow up or anything. Yea, I heard it at my school. and then the second loud crash. My mom came to pick me up, it was pretty cool. That boy stupid, Jeremiah, you stupid…
and almost missed my stop—where is this? it’s this one?—and luckily I jumped out, mind still pedaling the book, Steinbach’s America, or the sleep.
I’m falling asleep. Better get to sleep. Got to tutor those middle school rowdy newyork kids again.

Newborn Expelled by Sky, Saved by Snow

A newborn falls from the sky into the arms of outstretched buildings and settles upon impact on untramped snow. It's still asleep, and you can see its little tummy pace softly up and down against the line of its diaper. I've seen this too many times, and the reverent pedestrians surrounding at a distance and the cameramen and journalists recording away for the evening/morning news sickens me as I walk away, down the street to meet my subway train that will take me away. away. Sounds so glamorous, or phantasmic, a magical isle or something--but I really am just going to my apartment. Nobody's taking me. I'm going.

I live on the 367th floor of a co-op: cooperative ownership; means I own a piece of it, bought a fragment of stock, a frag-piece of all three-hundred-sixty-seven floors, particularly, the South, Southwest corner, resident 367-C. Three of us live here. Trent pees in the litter box, thinks he's a cat (his only quadriped companion died two and a quarter years ago: Furball the role model, she strained her building age thin in her maternal efforts, and left Trent a legacy of felinity). Bubble darts in his jar, eternally seeking shelter in the world's transperancy, and feeds on the algea that we assume grows on the discarded toothpicks. Three of us live here, I failed to mention, now, since Bubble only joined 367-C not long ago as an infant, and we wonder if he will live up to the life expectacny under these troubled conditions, or utterly suffer rollbacks.

I never know where this train takes me. I just know its the end of the line, the stairwell down from the street is a block West where the baby landed, and that the titanic canolies I first discovered in the shop window are always sufficient to content me the duration of each ride to the apartment's stop.

I'm here, I don't have a tv, so all my anticipation's energies target for the morning Times at my doormat: there's no doubt but a little, save for a more trite happening somewhere in the city for today, that the snowfall baby lands front page.

mythic world

everyone needs some mythology, if only to--no: as a strength, a superhuman one no less. The brain we have, there's lots of imagination in there, much more than an atheist could ever muster to explain. And it's created spaces obliterating titanic beyond our understanding, but within our capacity, for the love of this world, it has. Everyday we create it, every moment that we see someone else; those that are alive, that is, we, beyond the grind that antithetically, we've created. To believe in something bigger than ourselves; how big is ourself? Bigger, how, then? To exceed. Do you buy it? Are you really believing into the myth? Or, underneath, are you really buying into the ephemeral, materialistic, manufactured mundane?!

Surging, that line
breathing through every look
of love, the grind,
---that curve down the
bridge of that child's nose
---with the hand,
Finger--he's asleep,
----dead as a corpse
that woman, the grind,
---staring at mother & child
fearing of life, hurting
----from it. Tunnel,
is filled as we shoot through
it.

All the world's asleep. All us
children, leglets dangling,
imaginations off dreams auto-
pilot on
to the next stop--
world rumbles under our bodies;
we pass under the river
where river clams & fish
eye us like we're the aquarium people;
lifetimes long pilgrimage passes
across the footprints of Odysseus--
and come out breathing hard, breathing
alive,

reverent and grateful to the people surrounding with eyes.

An e-mail

Subject: It's cold, but I stayed in all day
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For those who have an aversion to computer screen radiation,
My belongings and life are now placed at this coordinate in the
largest of all cities,

.....169 Manhattan Ave. Apt. 3A
.....New York, NY 10025

I share Apt. 3A with Brian, a good guy from college, who works at his job weekdays while I search for mine. We have this space until April 15, whence I move onto some other arrangement in New York I'm not yet aware of.

Best wishes,
Abe

Jan 15, 2005
one of the most beautiful days of my life, you are in the midst of...
the city is a fresher thing than any the world, a morning I get up, together my kind cousin Marilyn and I decide, stroll the subway blocks to SoHo for breakfast before I leave. She has housed me this week, cooked me fluffy eggs and potatos for my flu--the passage of rite for
all newcomers--and I quickly have a newfound friend, in this, my new town, no less. An Irish pub on the corner is a pleasant transmuted breafaster, we are the first for its saturday brunch winking alive, and select the oaken table for two that admire the generous panoramic
sidewalking street.

An hour later, we say farewell, and the farther away her studio pulls, the more rigorously my maniacal friend's (and as of today, roommate) heavy foot pounds on the pedal--gas & break both--to make our one p.m. key handoff. It's quarter past and I phone K to say we're to be (or,
are) late. Traffic, right, what else.

Corner of 108th and Manhattan ave., it's a beautiful sight already, heading there ahead, is the slope of Central Park, browned over by crisp dead leaves on green across spaces where the trees and people don't run. Up the elevator (a nice one) two floors and I'm rushed into annotated directions for sublet usage before K rushes out; he's late for his own appointment, now. Brian, the roommate, his car parked, comes in, and in my impulsive raid of our new cabinets, I bartend two Jamison's on the rocks (the Stoli tideline ran too low not
to be missed by our hosts), to toast and pay respects to fallen fears in the face of this mansion--polished wooden floors, plush couches armchairs a penguin shaped shower radio all--we have inherited. For three months; but still three months--cheers!, and we are euphoric,
and take it all in lounging...

I wander the streets a bit (and since I yet have mentioned, yes, it is biting cold, but I smile against it today) and decide to take the C down to Port Authority; FedEx has hold of my shipment, and when I arrive home (...home), the notebook PC is surprisingly likeable, and I
christen it, when prompted, Abracomp.

It is evening now, and I am starving, so I venture out three blocks north to Saurin Park Cafe, where the candlelights are dim and the spinach is melted fresh into the cheese on chicken to give it crisp. And, no less, the free wifi relieves my duty from weeklong battles with old grumpy men over the tail or head end of 30 min online library sessions. It is here in this self-contained intimacy of cafe in the night--where the belligerently curt Mi-kehhhl (Michael, really, as he
insulted me with his look into correcting) is offset agreeably by the Belle waitress from New Zealand named Katie, with a smile that would disarm to tender skin a porcupine--where from I write this all to someplace you are out there.

Jan 19, 2005
It's been four days now into first month's rent. The lid is open, the contents are draining, I went shopping yesterday in cost-efficient Chinatown, but the oranges are all rotten (the first one) or otherwise dry & unsweet. I still eat the latter for the fiber; i still feel sick in mornings, or, that's the reason for staying in today, for the first time since, laying for the day in bed instead of out there walking the sidewalks for jobs, or pacing across the internet all day (today, only did for the first hours of the day, since I truly think I have depleted the *internet* of its job content; so i'll give it time, to replenish). Soon, I will rise from this bed to cook my first dinner here in my new city, my new apt. Hey mom, dad, but don't you worry about this hollow scene I've projected about myself--I failed to mention the lovely voices that have staved off lonesomeness: Bob Dylan Dave Matthews Eddie Vedder Miles Davis Monk Coltrane, quite the reassuring collection of friends--they've all had their rites passed in this city--well, I only know Dylan for sure, told me in Chronicles, but I imagine so...

I'll tell you what I've told everyone, I *love* this city; everything's moving, the window, moving people of this city, which there are always plenty of, the way to get around, moving, the train,
the waiting and the jumping transfers moving, the things to figure out moving, the things to figure out, all the things to figure, figure it out!, move along with everything else and you can't ignore it here in this city.

Enough about me: Be sure to come by--I'll take you around, I've got the unlimited MTA rail pass.

Stumbling to light

New York, Night

In New York, nights are nights again,
instead of the drugged-out sedated state of perfectly sleepful nights
back home. What love you
dosed me with, Mom. The hours
pass--they don't disappear--
tiredness plays
a role--the shadows of my
eyes sleeping in however not
don't miss out on the blues
to grays changing to light,
that give windowpanes shape,
eventually wake.

So many know inside: the young body
is such perfect vehicle for
pain, so isn't it a shame
wasting away in effortless preservation?
So many know INSIDE, but
so many within so many
don't just know, because the
concept--instinct--is so
counter-logical to understanding
that not even an energy
is spent on deliberating
the flickering grain of truth.

As oft said before in so
many words varied: to sleep, wake!,
I say, as the second gust
winds down from the city skies, breaking the building top, through
the windpipe and into the
studio's window to blow open the
flimsy door, a second time as I sit on the bowl of this toilet.

last4 2004

12.25.04

Get a Personality

I'm out here getting a personality like you said
--but I'm lebotomizing you to; I just
recall you in these lines to
--materialize you
in order to overcome you
--and bottom my boat
has left aground, that white sandbar on blue
--floats away
Turette's wouldn't curse the flower enough to express it
--but bipolar will;
Arts and crafts wouldn't create the Eve out from you
--but my rib will,
so fuck you, Abe,
--you meatless bitch.


The Gap

So how close to the reality do you breathe?
Can it feel the warm moisture?
Does it seduce you, but keep its distance--
----rubbing its skirt from the other end of the football field?
Is it a metal pole the tongue runs across--
----in the Providence wintertime snowstorm; or in a heatstroke?
Passionate? Romantic yearnining?--like you wish for
----after those Hollywood flicks?--
or does it breathe you, in love, making?

Reality is us, all of us,
for me--
Do you hear that rhythm
in my breath?
I want to fuck through paper
so I write write write write write write write write write
reality on white is done
for now.


So tonight, how about tonight, why dont I sleep?

Do you ever not sleep because you want the
day--the groove of it--not to end? Or is
tonight because of a failure to want to face
what comes tomorrow?--It's all subliminal, under
the consciousness--or is it all growing pains?
And it could be that coffee I had..


12.28.04 Weather Forecast

It's cold out there, Hey
----especially if you dont have
someone to share, warm the bed
-----those New York nights
Where's the cold come from?--
----there's lots of space
The world to fill; & imagine
----the bill to heat the place--

who's got that kind'er dough;
----not enough money in the world.
The Expedition.
There's an expedition that's all expeditions
----in one
It leaves in one hour--
----one hour, gate three Platform A

And you could have enough time,
----mind, body and life somehow still
But not enough heart
----to see it
On your own.