new york, new york: a scene by Mac Emery

Unfleshed coats hang flat in the boutique                                  Does the bruise show?
                                         tonight is a bounteous stranger to him, clean-shaven
Eek eek eek scream the cabs                    a cigarette tip quivers like the distant eye of judgment
pigeon, o pigeon, primordial in a slim sky of artifice                               two hands hold, somehow
                   Blue coat passes a crimson coat passes a green hoodie, mosaic-like, motion
and all us on one hard plane                                       all these screens interlinked, not speaking
Where will we live?                                                                                 My kid gets out at 3
                        Boot heels flint against concrete, slipping into the undercurrent of din
Kiss on the cheek, brighter than sun on 30th story glass brighter than
                                                                                               green light, red light, green, red, green,
               redgreen dress that crackles and flutters like the heartbeat of one who watches
little song whistled, you catch only two notes and                            know it like an instinct
            an instinct to leave this haphazard city like a flight– outbound, mechanical, a routine
is hunger and half-life from a cup, a cart. The sticky ash of hope                                  o shit.
A hissing Starbucks coffee machine smells like awake                        Gaudy fliers saying nothing
Karl Marx echoing from neon franchises                              tinnitus of sirens and brake pads
                              A civilization of sneakers have scorned this smirched surface
What’s your problem?                                                       in the human coop who’s the fox?
                        magazines flex their bold nudity, and a russet hardship goes unseen
a selfie to remember or a selfie to forget                   the thrill of being lost in bigger
I wonder what it is                                                  smudgy figures meld in a dim narrow restaurant
                 vagabond styrafoam rolls on, rolls on, the gutter its transcontinental railway
an insular tree drops its wan leaf on voided context                 a scalloped awning for what sun
steel suit on a stone man                                                         what’s up? where have you been?
bags flood from shops to the stash fondly called home        no where to go, no where to go back
                               man’s stinky invalid of a cloud leaks from a cryptic manhole

                                 for a moment, there’s almost a melody to this modernity

this protean street shuffles faces                                 underneath, wishes the size of an embrace
                             youthful, they’ll find time at the bottom of night or a red mouth
loiter on the corner because home is an assumption                                      will I see you later?
Progress indefatigable, flaunt your endless cement                 taxi cabs stream like blood cells
permanent hot dog cart                            flower bouquets from and for a distant patch of growth

The street coordinates, is whole. To each its place– many, capitalistic, dreamy, rags and metal,
        beyond the math of beauty
New York, what poet would dare to swallow one second of your brutal wealth, to begin or to end
        to pronounce your chaos?