Falling for Xanadu
Preface
A seventeen-year-old novice
wakes in Irving’s Gotham
thinking of poetry and a home.
Nurtured by your motherly ways–
unlearning, relearning– I learned
how to walk amongst them all. Your August sun
wrapped around my abandoned child.
I first saw you with naive eyes.
A dainty skyline full of promise. I longed
for a yellow submarine to take me in,
but it took me under.
I shed my skin for you:
“Land of simple-minded fools”
make me new.
“¡Líbrenos Dios de estas honduras!”
Free me, God, from the black hole
that is culture cleansing. A citizen of no land
I ought to be. Schooled by privilege, raised to know:
Mi país cinco estrellas, but the finish line?
A mine of gold up north.
But, mi tierra, you have given me everything
And in your sweet crevices,
I failed to rest– now, light fails to project.
Though I'm merely a creation of
your own duplicity:
Tu hondura es la mia.
On My Building Desire For Silence
Recalling the moment I grew disillusioned
with you still brings the uttermost grief.
I cannot even begin to understand where
the asphyxiating air changed from thrill to burden.
Once, your streets heightened my senses
and rushed endorphins through my body,
a haze I could only come to recognize as love.
Yet, I wasn’t aware of my building desire
for silence. I tried to find it in you and I did,
occasionally, in the corners of Stuyvesant Square.
Unraveling my longing for refuge carelessly,
I fell for you. But, my literary mother
taught me early in my penmanship and life that:
“one does not ‘live’ at Xanadu.”
So I have no choice but to strip myself completely
from your tenderness and go.
My trust lies in our hallowed tie.
You once saved me from this suffering
and you will do it again.
Once my rebellion destroys you
and I mend us with well-traveled hands.
East and West
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like
or if my tastes are too various
to be sustained by one of anything.
I was in love with the city,
the way you love the first person who ever
touches you.
But, we forget
all too soon the things we thought
we could never forget.
I am trapped
in this particular irrelevancy
never more apparent to me
than when I am home.
I had come out of the West
and reached the mirage.
New York has a kind of
push, you never have time to think.
It’s one of its charms.
Six months can become eight years
With the deceptive ease
of a film dissolve.
People with brains went to New York,
it takes a certain kind of innocence
to like L.A., anyway.
I’ve been in love with people
and ideas in several cities, and
I knew that it would cost me something–
Sooner or later– because I did not belong there,
I didn’t come from there.
In California
i found myself staring at the blue
of a cold malibu morning, thinking
of my two mothers.
there’s a peace here,
one i’ve never known. i now understand
what Eve defended most: a home
not glorified, raw authenticity.
her california reminds me of my home and
the earthly desire, to tie yourself to
its roots. an almost paternal duty
to keep it safe, to keep it true.
though like Joan, i failed
to sit still. searching for some
faceless muse, moving east.
i am looking down, moving around
a sea of lifeless bodies, looking up, only to find
concrete dullness. the idiosyncrasies
once praised, now nothing more than satire
of a life we failed to settle with.
now I endure,
new york isolation,
california hedonism,
and lay between
these two, and my home
below
trying to fill the insatiable hole
of my never-ending longing. one who
has alienated me from ever feeling warm
under the sun of beachwood drive,
or feel excitement staring at the brooklyn bridge.
and worst of all feeling satiated, in my honduras, in
new york, in california–
anywhere.
On My Sheltered Existence
New York and I have a complex relationship
Trying to understand it, is merely an insult to our
Sacred bond. Oh, sweet purgatory.
•
There is pleasure in seeing everyone
Try and pretend like this life is natural,
As if we are all not fighting to stay awake in the midst
Of a hypercharged overpopulated town
And praying to every god, hoping at least one of
Them grants us sleep.
•
Making it: synonymous with
Survival of the fittest. Climbing your way
Up: tearing yourself apart, limb for limb. Home:
A shoe-box-sized illusion. Happiness: a fools
Only hope, a reason to be.
•
There is something about this place,
An ability to either welcome you or
Send you into exile. I walked the Highline
A cold evening in November– searching for the hands
That once took me in and the peace loaned to me
By Central Park the first time I decided to get out
Of Greenwich Village and up 60th St– questions attack
Me as I drift, ghostlike, with no direction. But New York is honest.
It never presented itself as an answer. In this way,
The city takes me in once more. Arms reach out
The reservoir, holding onto me as we mirror each other.
•
The hate I feel for this city–
A feeling so strong– It transforms.
Suffering here feels right.
NOTES
“Preface” (p.1) The quote “Land of simple-minded fools” is a reference to Washington Irving’s nickname for New York City “Gotham” in the literary magazine Salmagundi in 1807.
“On My Building Desire for Silence” (p.4) The quote “one does not “live” at Xanadu” is borrowed from Joan Didion’s novel Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
** “East and West” is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from Eve Babitz and Joan Didion.
