And the last piece that I'll read from this particular book
is called "The Last Williamsburg,
this was About 10 Years Ago."
I have to say that I keep having to change the time
period in that parenthetical.
It was now more than 10 years ago.
But Williamsburg was this really hip section of Brooklyn
where they filmed the first The Real World on MTV,
so after that episode, after that series was filmed,
everybody moved to Williamsburg and you couldn't
afford to move to Williamsburg.
OK, so that's preface number one.
Preface number two is there's a place in here that's
mentioned called Pete's Candy Store that still does poetry
series readings and it was always a really cool place
to go to the poetry readings.
And then there's this other place
called PS1, which was public school number
one, so it was the first public school in New York City, PS1,
but it's now a contemporary art museum.
"The Last Williamsburg, this was About 10 Years Ago."
There's the Domino Sugar sign and there's that
and there's that.
And she's pointing out many things
that I'm beginning to think she's lovelier than I am.
And so for the rest of the weekend,
I'll be incredibly out of sorts and distracted,
quiet, suspicious, and worse.
See?
The whole side of that building there is only
held up by spindly planks.
On sidewalks, on roads, on lampposts, on walls
somebody has spray painted "Die, yuppie scum, die."
and "Yuppie go home."
The yuppies ride with baskets full of organic tomatoes
and bakery bread.
At Pete's Candy Store you don't get fries or chips.
Instead you get about four or five
really dry baby carrots, so dry they are white and have
cracks and ridges in them.
The prosciutto is as hard as a homeless man's foot.
I want to die by the time it's over.
Through these walks he doesn't hold my hand.
Over there Manhattan shines all orange
in the sunlight, which is in the west and dying now.
The bridge some sort of shade of gray sky.
The coroner comes once.
The freight elevator takes us up to their warehouse apartment
where all the inhabitants have been busy all day
going to the hardware store all day
to buy two by fours or nails or sheeting or paint
or whatever to make themselves little boxy rooms.
They think this is so cool because they have just
gotten a degree in architecture from some state school
on the West Coast and all of them
want to design a building that is bigger and better than just
these little rooms.
All of them do this except for one loser
dude, who still doesn't have walls for his room
and who still sleeps on a blow up mattress and everyone
gossips that he's never around and just sleeps all day
and no one knows just where it is that he goes.
They complain that her hair dryer is too loud,
wakes them all up in the morning.
I mention this to her and she gets very upset.
I think her lipstick is too dark for her skin tone.
On the rooftop, she's pointing out this and that
again on the Manhattan skyline, but I
feel as if she's only pointing things out
to him, the boy of the incredible shit,
the boy of the hyacinth.
He warns me that Paul will snore very, very loudly
and all night I listen to Paul snore very, very loudly
and I wonder how his little Asian girlfriend,
littler and Asianer than I am, can stand it.
He and I share a sleeping bag but don't ever
touch, all night the beeping of a truck backing up,
backing up all night in the paper factory below us.
In the morning we eat pork buns and he tells me,
Paul made these pork buns.
And I think, wow, Paul makes pork buns.
But no, he just stuck them in the microwave
for less than a minute.
He has taken a massive shit in Paul's bathroom
and the little Asian girl has gone in to pee
and comes out running saying, don't come here.
Don't come here anymore!
Because apparently he had taken a massive shit
and didn't flush or else try to flush
and the massive shit didn't go all the way down.
The coroner comes twice.
I wonder how I can be in love with someone
who takes massive shits and then doesn't care to see
if it goes all the way down.
The pork bun was not enough, so we go to diner,
because that is where she said we should go.
So we are finally going to be alone.
It's supposed to be the place to go,
so he and I go and he loses his wallet,
but really he doesn't lose his wallet
because when we go back to diner to try to find it,
it's just sitting there under the chair there as if no
one even bothered, as if no one even cared.
So many flowers in such little vases.
The coroner comes once, the coroner comes twice.
See there the Twin Towers as if, as if we didn't know.
I never learned why the trucks back up all night.
At PS1, he and she liked the same things
because they're both architects and because I
am a poet I am excluded from all of that.
They like the room that leaks the fake sunlight.
I want to die by the time it's over.
The coroner we later learned came for suicide.
The coroner came for an overdose.
A big guy punches him on the G train.
Never again will I ever take the G train, even later
when I lived in that city.
He seems embarrassed, below his eye a purple bruise
budding like a hyacinth.
I want to die by the time it's over,
the bridge painted a certain shade of sky.
And that was the last time I wrote about him.
And that felt good.