Eighteenth Entry

So, didn't get the apt. I thought I would, and in fact got no apt. at all, and I'm currently homeless.

Still, being back in the city has inspired something, so off i go again.

Here's my poem:

ONE YEAR OF CUTTING YOUR OWN HAIR

Heat bounced off buildings
reminiscent of last august’s swelter
the maniac rush to escape the street.
New York,
you have given me so many regretful reasons
and so much cement has worn down the summer
of my shoes, I look down past the bathroom mirror.

The small curls of hair grown haggardly
longer than all advisements, the itch and sting
of hair against the eye, rubbed out with water
and shampoo.

In small groups,
and without any communication between one another
my bits of hair(dark brown) have wandered off
my mortal coil and have coiled into pattern
forming eighteen separate german expressionistic images
which I will now name and categorize.

New York,
what was the name of the girl who once wrote me a letter
covered in crayon and smelling sweetly
of some unknown variable, the girl who I met
on the choir trip to Universal Studios
from Michigan
who I didn’t have a crush on
but was mesmerized by
and, after receiving the letter,
was frightened of? I have no right
to ask this of you but I expect you know the answer.

The school supply scissors I use
opened a small slit in my palm filled quickly
with an amazing amount of blood
which I then smudged on several surfaces:
denim, plastic, cardboard, metal, bandage, skin.
New York I am counting the folds and coils
of my three ten dollar bills instead of the bills themselves,
regarding the half-inch hole in my shirt
that I bought with Olivia last year
when I thought life was doing me right.

And I couldn’t tell you what I see in the bathroom sink
of the person whose couch I’m sleeping on.
And the cut on my (left) palm makes me wish it was my right,
it is thin and black with a pink curtain of a bruise.
This is my one year to look down and see something
and the something isn’t there
but I’m supposed to go and blindly run with it.