New York has been on my mind lately, as I heard recaps of the Magnum Festival events from friends and decided not to attend a party for Redux's 5th anniversary this week. More importantly though, the city has been floating around the girlfriend and I's thoughts as we look into the future and try to figure out which new place will be our next home as we tire of Miami and she moves towards her residency.
Who better than a New York poet to play with these ideas and memories, drawing a line through the thousand of hours I've waited in coffee shops ever so patiently for a tiny spark of inspiration to occur.
Tony Towle | In the Coffee Shop
the Mona Lisa, in the Village
at Bleecker and Seventh, a blip
from the middle ages
on the radar screen
of that young woman over there,
while she thinks of someone else.
I should have brought
something to read
because I have nothing to do now but write,
the way I used to
forty years ago, in the Figaro,
in the Village
at MacDougal and Bleecker, exhilarated
by loneliness, poverty, and paralyzing
indecision, and resolutely ignoring the fact
that everyone cool in there
could tell that I wasn't --
lost to what was happening
behind the overpriced coffee, 35 cents
for the fuel
to infiltrate oblivion;
and I waited for a girlfriend
and composed jejune little ironies
that I hoped would pass for poems,
and I had all the time in the world.
I could see the San Remo bar across the street
where I learned years later
real New York poets went
and drank real drinks;
but the San Remo has since disappeared
with everything else from 1960--
discarded, lost, or broken, or certainly
wouldn't fit me anymore,
except the sound advice
still gathering dust:
Think before you speak.
(Yes, I probably should have done that.)
A penny saved is a penny earned.
(That could have been made a bit clearer, perhaps.)
Don't be a complete idiot.
(Hey, I gave it a shot.)
You really should think about a career.
I'm thinking about it now
and there it is: involuntary barbs,
unasked-for opinions
and missed opportunities strewn
and rusting about the incorporeal field.
I told Diane I'd be here 'til six. Waiting
for a girlfriend literally is a great improvement
over afternoons at the Figaro;
and in fact it's cool to have a girlfriend at my age
I think amusedly to myself
behind the overpriced coffee,
2.95 to contemplate the traffic
fleeing down Seventh and into the past,
which brings me up to the present,
where I put down my pen, figuratively.
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