Freedom Tower

This city used to be

Lit by torchlight

Dusk has fallen

Deep

I am caught between

Cohabitating realities

And unsure which dream

I get to keep

They finished the

Freedom Tower

My uncle said

“They should have rebuilt it the same.”

On the avenues paper men make an indifferent show

Of disintegrating in the rain

Chorus:

I was the toast of Greenwich Village

For about two minutes, once

Glory was the price of tuition

I wrote a book about alcoholic doves

It was an elevated position

A better view to look down at us

I was supposed to learn a lesson

But I keep forgetting what it was

The romanticists loathe

These bright corners

Because they preferred privacy

While watching my friend die

They bloviate about

Complicity

And drink holy water

From each other’s pierced sides

Such is life

In the unfolding parable

I chase money to treat

Such deep resentment

I stroll these angular

Blocks alone

Like an ink-less pen

Scratching the pavement

Chorus

The future is a

Too cold day in May

With only graspable fantasy

An antidote to the news

We are fractured, we are ruled

Their sparkling communal vision

Is always due to be disabused

I’ve reached the block

With my favorite pub

And aged a little

Over a decade

I learned too late

Your finest expression of love

Were all my delusions

You so silently forgave

Chorus

Five rounds

Of rum and coke

And the Yankees

Holding off the Reds

I tell the taxi driver

To drive me past the epilogue

Because I never like knowing

How the novel ends

Oh, verticalized glass

With our reflections unkept

We slide off with the ease

Of a great promise unmet

And the cabbie doesn’t answer

When I ask about the ducks

At Central Park

Maybe he read the book

And just didn’t like that part