A New York Newcomer

When I walk the streets of New York
I don't see the blazing artistic promise
Of my youthful lust,
I don’t feel like Greenwich Village will turn me into a Dylan.
Neither Bob nor Thomas.

The assault of smell
is the closest thing I have found so far
to carrying my emotions where
the blues is sung or blue is painted.
But nothing smells familiar yet, and sometimes,
that makes me lonely.
I don't how “that” works but it just does.

Some Italian meal,
cooked by a third generation owner,
whose son is waiting the table of a lovely couple
swirling their forks to twist the hand-made noodles
into eddies of weekend dreams and designer shoes.
The waiting son watches the swirl of noodles.
Noodles he made, swirling and spattering his Great grandmother’s sauce.
He smiles and waits for the day
when it will all be his…

All this floats into my long Roman nose,
waters my eyes with the vision and then, its gone.
Swallowed whole by this magnificent street that
bursts with buildings all day until the earth ends.
Gorgeous and stunning really.
Should be enough to make anybody
want to write.

But I find, the best writing comes
in a dark room
where all is quiet
and the hand of the muse feels like
velvet on my back,
my hands, and my eyes.
There I can remember what I saw
and tell myself about it,
in a song or poem, then work it all out in simple
black,
and white.

Most of all, when I walk down the streets of New York,
cobble, concrete, stone or brick, I see faces.
Faces that are empty, sad, strange, elated, happy, crazy, but very few
at peace. Including mine.

I suppose my face fits naturally into the yearning rivers of peace-less faces,
pulsing through the shimmering jeweled veins of Manhattan named:
Amsterdam, Columbus and the OZ of the Apple.

When peace on earth finally comes, I think
the place I might want to be is New York City.
Cause when the so many faces that now mirror,
the lost vacuum of want, are at last filled,
How beautiful it will be in New York.