-I borrow the best music in town,
steal inspiration from shelved classics,
give strange women directions to my friend's house
and ask everyone to love me unconditionally.

-Asking you for some company
tomorrow afternoon
should be the easiest thing I've done all week.

-I could be wrong.
You could be even meaner than I am.

The meanest thing about me?
I fancy myself somewhere between
a spitting vixen and a cautious redhead
with nothing to lose but patience.

And for the record, I've been waiting for an invitation
since you opened your trap and baited the damn line.

You're really not asking too much.

-I ask for a lot eventually.
Money for mean-spirited misadventure
is just the half of it. There was one time
when I borrowed the car of a decent man,
and played the most satisfying game
of Bumper-Cars in history with his garage.

-It wasn't some effort to sell books later on.
Stress just sometimes makes people do funny things.

-Some of my friends have been around for every last bit of it.
Their patience is the last virtue on Sarasota Street,
and I regret every nice thing they've ever done for me.

-I'd be thrilled
if you and I could settle for a cup of coffee
and a sandwich.

We would have to take a long walk
to get to the right cafe --
the one with the Chinese dragons hovering
over the entrance.
I once met the owner's third cousin
and I'm sure we can get some extra
fortunes for cheap.

They let the customers dip their hands in primary colors
and leave prints on the back wall
so you and I can live forever no matter what the papers tell us.

-Living forever is for hippies and 1930’s suckers.

-I’d rather we walk through Times Square
as though neither one of us
has ever been there before.

-It’s been said that the nine a.m. rush
of humanity is a world different
from what goes down at eight fifty-two.

-That kind of thing has always appealed to me,
but it’s exhausting keeping up with it alone.

Surely someone somewhere once told you
that the Big Apple was scripted for a duet?

I pay no attention to the time since my watch stopped
its shivering march. I just stare at the sun
when I need an itinerary.

Give me your hand.

We can take the subway until the track runs out,
run like fools the last five miles,
And when we arrive out of breath
you can make the sailor’s kiss look like a handshake.

-I’ve been to some of those happenings,
at the point just after those tracks disappear.

-They take beer with their morning coffee,
callously mock the living
and never really had much love or interest
in the likes of me.

-Maybe I just didn’t bring the right cohort along.

09/16/2011

Author's Note: My own meager contributions are marked with a "-". Meghan has been kicking some substantial ass, with a series of daily pieces on the month of September. Go check them out. She's a pretty darn spiffy writer.

Posted on 09/16/2011
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