Here is what I see out my window, since art can be free associative and none of this f<cking matters anyway. I see pasty white men with chinstrap beards and strained pastel-colored collared golf shirts and non-ironed khakis, walking in groups and parting as the young high-socked PPA agent strolls in the opposite direction through shade, holding cockeyed his tiny computer machine that spits out tickets making an oldschool faxmachinelike jittering sound, I can't hear it from here I'm only assuming that last part. Flags of various nations gently ripple in the breeze up the Parkway, woman with stark white business casual pants and hair pulled back taut in a bun holding a red bag crooked over her bent-upward right elbow and cellphone in left hand, sunglassed eyes looking left and then right and then left again before strolling 'cross four lanes, a young couple almost run over by a yogamatcarrying scooterer, a capped brunette man pulling boxes on a dolly against the red hand that silently begs passersby to STOP lest they be hit by a car, a car or a few cars (let's see: red truck, blueishblack hatcback, tan truck, sienna orange SUV, black SUV, then the light switches to the blinking white walking man) one just barely slows in time, the horn (I assume), the man lifts one hand from the dolly to wave as a sort of thanks for not slaying me today here in this frustratingly designed intersection, the dolly tilts violently on one wheel then the other and two hands steady the mechanism while the wind picks up and the cap flutters off into the bright blue city air, up swirling, swirling, caught in the backwind of a boxtruck and lifted past view, the windows from the tall skyscrapers staring silently down in judgment, one out of every five spaces a deckgap for the fire escape stairwell, the sun shining off the windows approx nine to nine fortyfive. An underfunded bus chugs silently past and I hear in my ears about
the overbaked indie art rock star boredmanner mumbling about yet another female associate orgasming, feels like I've been over this before, too many times, Joe wake up, you fell asleep again, you're on the northbound side of the subway platform, you no I take a short breath of stiff acrid burnt underground air and the shrill choogle of the subway trackmotion approach-ing, doors gliding open and then closed like a maw, digesting here on orange cool plastic seating and moving at the speed of sound, chopped into bits, thrown into a bowl, stirred with a thick wooden spoon, doled out sparingly, thick stringy shit, bossa nova in a chokehold. It's been years since I've been here. It feels same, no different, I
don't, it's here in the recipe, the soft squishy guts of the damn thing, humming, humminggggg. Edges worn down dull. All edges. Joe, listen to this. Listen to this again, Joe. It's new but it's not. It's here and it's always been. You were there for the big bang and then have had to withstand the aftershock silence for years and years. The standing ovation can only last so long. People sit back down in their seats eventually, their hands stinging slightly, and the shift from one crossedleg to the other, fist under chin, looking onward, reeling in the silence, unsure what to do next, waiting, waiting. It's like when
you were watching footage from the postseason match and the edges are all staticky and the feed keeps jumping, crackling. There is no stickiness. Nothing sticks. It's so smooth, slippery, it keeps slipping. Restless, just SUCKING FTOP. Restless, so f^cking restless. The sort of restlessness that leads to destruction of the art. Buddhist monks with their sand after they bring out the big blowing straws, shredding thick coils of canvas splatter, crass capitalists mocking a ducttaped banana as if they aren't the reason it has value in the first place. Clearing your throat on tape, a clear attempt at self-sabotage. After the big band, sorry bang, afterpeak, the downhill path accelerates, fearing the inevitable crash yr flailing wildly, slapping at guardrails, wagging tongue, taking two broad arms and in one swift motion pushing everything off the table, send the bottles and glassware and ceramic and chintzy china and bejeweled lamps shattering on the floors, stand above the wreckage, heaving, wideeyed, mouth open in a gaplarge O, shoulders shuttering slight
ly as you survey yr destruction, you can't go back, you can never go back. The rest of yr life sputtering and petering out from heyah. Often ignored. Often resorting to cheap tricks to gain the attention of those from whom you once gained attention w/o having to work for it. I guess I'm doing that here right now as I sit and stare out the window listening to some bullshit fragmentation of whatever f>cking shit I thought was satis-factory back in a younger age. A cop waits pigeontoed on the traffic island and crosses when it's safe and a biker with shiny silver helmet scratches where the helmet's strap grips his chin and deaccelerates so as to not hit the pedestrians that are now flooding the crosswalk at the behest the little white walking man. A black caddy stops in the crosswalk and the pedestrians they don't flinch, just part like moseswaves and walk around the caddy, their wide hips swiping bumpers on the way.
This doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have to mean anything. I can tell you it means something, though, and you have to believe me. You have to. You don't have to like it but you have to believe it exists. You have to.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
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