One Evening in Nineteen-Ninety-Something

In the half-life of young-adulthood my serotonin-starved brain could find no joy to purchase,

No toehold with which to lift myself above the acidic morass of self-loathing

Distraction was my salve

.

The cacophonous city orchestra plays all around me as cabs honk and

Jackhammers chew into the asphalt of old New Amsterdam

Sirens and shouts rise above the soundscape as the rumble of subway trains underfoot provide a bassline felt in the spine

It is cold as I ascend the Angelika’s steps, but I am too numb to notice and too melancholy to care

Ensconced in theater’s flickering darknesses I escape into others’ dreams

.

Eating myself from within, I taste of red licorice, artificial, unnatural

Hours blur by

The foreign-language sleeper that brought them to their feet at Cannes has made no impression on me

I am too oily for anything to adhere

.

The season’s first snow is falling as I emerge from the darkness of the theater into the never-darkness of the city

New York is opalescent as crystals in the air diffuse Her streetlights, stoplights, headlights, and neon signs

It is as if a great white cat has settled over Her and poofing through the powder is like walking on its back

Flakes rise in eddies stirred by the city’s subterranean exhalations

Steam rising from manholes adds to the veracity of the dream sequence

.

The falling snow cat fur muffles the cityscape,

Its incessant grumble and percussive exclamations of human and machine

Have been replaced with the soft whoosh of particulates in motion and an

Ephemeral tinkling as if an infinity of microscopic wineglasses are crashing to the ground from Heaven’s mantle

.

This is what passes for peace