No New York, according to the New Wave,
in the garage land of guitar bands, before
the city became an open grave and
I breathed the dust of dead insurance brokers.
I spent my days in bed with David, bobbing
for a birth mark shaped like Staten Island.
We were the toker brothers, writing poems
in the margins of the Wall Street Journal.
Each crap concept was an uncracked kernel
from the corn field craniums of midtown
America’s night-time emissaries, slick
as the dance floors of Studio 54.
It was all glitter, but no balls; all English
bitter, but still sweet. I followed virgin
arse along sorority halls and lost
my street cred in a dance routine from Fame.
I will live forever and remain unchanged,
so long as my name is remembered by
the deranged boy who looked at Johnny
and needs no statue to stand for Liberty.
In the deeper dells of Central Park, my friends
all fear the dark of a Ringu-like well,
where the ghosts of the video age still crawl
and curse their imprisonment on this page.
