it is 655 am and fuk what ya heard, it is officially dawn. well, at least for me, as the sun has made it over the roof tops and tree line and is now hitting me dead in mah face washing me with warmth.
by my side are what remains of a french toast & coffee breakfast, adrian castro’s latest book “wise fish”& my moleskine. both the breakfast and castro’s poems were excellent while my early morning attempts at a poem are not. no worries. i have never been an early morning writer anyways.
since you are probable thinking it, i will come out and say it- ob, what da hell are ya doin up at this hour?
last night i greeted the dawn for the first time in a long time – actually, a lil over a week – but still, with the turns my life has been taking as of late, a week can be a very long time. this ‘greeting of the dawn’ has become very important to me as of late. i look at the sky from my window and assign a color to the blanket of the sky and shape to the clouds that may inhabit it. i look to the moon for a friendly face while searching for a star i have claimed as my own. this star resides in the interior obtuse angle that forms from the ladder and base of the fire escape outside my window.
all these things are important to me now. all the little things have a weight and gravity all their own. and this is good. i travelled for too long free of the pull of this world. nothing had a hold of me and i was wandering flotsam in ether.
but in greeting the dawn last night i realized how much i love the chaos which is my city. a claim i put on it early in my poetry. if you look past the ever present noise and filthy streets you will find people who wake every morning to this dawn. they go out and live extraordinary lives. not extraordinary in accomplishment but extraordinary in perseverence which, i guess, is an accomplishment. this city is unwielding and any spine that can brave it deserves praise or at least a spot in a good poem.
something which did not happen today. sal’s restaurant, the tree resting on concrete, the mta worker restin on the sidewalk, the men playin backgammon & chess by dawn, the hoods clockin outside the bodega, the joggers by the park, the newspaper delivery, the flowers by the makeshift memoria, none of this made itself into a poem. not today.
i did however scribble some words of thanks to the star that lives above my fire escape, which is packed now with poets looking into my sleep and seeing how my dreams tangle themselves into my sternum.
and now i attack this day armed with a modicum of sleep but full of hope that my life can be just a little extraordinary.
love ya like mexican chocolate loves ice cream
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