Maybe in the fall.
. . . It could be
Maybe when the autumn hits;
the scene at Columbus Circle
consumes the city with a sense of
something that no one else could understand
(unless they came from New York City)
Maybe us, someday . . .
. . . It could be us
Think about it
Us, sitting in the back of a horse and carriage:
a trip through Central Park
the leaves changed color
the air is sweet and crisp
and the wind is cool to the skin
but kind to the heart
Maybe . . .
We could be here, together,
listening to street musicians
give their renditions of songs
which we all know so well.
(Do you even see where I’m going with this?)
I have this idea.
Or maybe my idea is only a picture of something.
Maybe this is a vision;
this is something I’ve always wanted to see
or be part of.
I think about this sometime.
I think about me in the back of the carriage.
The horse pulls us along.
The city is colorful, like say,
the way it would be in the early weeks of October
before all the leaves fall.
Everything has color—including us.
The City, I swear she is like a dream to me.
She always has been.
She always knows something,
like a locked up little secret
about how to love, how to live,
and what it feels like to be cool
like a saxophone player in a jazz band
There is a feeling I have when I think about this dream.
I am younger, yet older.
I am still me, yet,
I am more like the me I always wished I could have been.
I am the real me—the perfect version of myself,
unchanged and unmolested by doubt or opinion.
I remember walking passed some of the old play houses.
I remember the first play I saw called, Doonesbury.
I was only a boy.
And there was another I recall named
I love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.
I think the title alone says it all
about love, about the idea of it or the feel for it
and yet,
the title alone somehow acknowledges
the lonely evasiveness and the devastation
of love for love’s sake.
There are things in life that cannot be substituted.
There will never be a night
like my first night when I walked down 42nd Street.
There will never be another moment
like the time I experienced my first New Year’s Eve
right, smack dab in the middle of Times Square.
There will never be a replacement for my SoHo memories.
There is nothing like a NYC hot dog,
or “Dirty Water Dogs,” is what we call them.
There is nothing like the smell of toasted chestnuts
or hot pretzels
and there is absolutely nothing
like walking through Central Park
in the early moments of Autumn.
There is a story that I think about.
This is a story about a play that opened up.
The man who wrote the play
died the day before opening night.
I think about him, although
in fairness, I don’t even know his name to be honest.
I just know what happened.
I know what he put into his work.
I know he was building a trick
I know he missed the chance to see what he built
I don’t want to be that guy.
I don’t want to miss a thing.
Not a second
I want to find myself in this picture
I want to see the life I’ve always dreamed about.
I want this so that when the curtain goes up,
I can see the look on the faces around me.
I can show them this “Thing” of mine,
which is literally everything that I have.
This is all that I own.
This is me.
This is everything about me
and if given the chance,
once perfected, I would gladly give it all away,
which is my entire life’s work,
just to have the chance to say, “Ta-Da!”
and feel like I made a difference
(to you . . .)
The Written Addiction 