vingt et un

To describe last night using any word other than "shitshow," would be to err. It was Courtney's twenty-first birthday so we did what any good standing friends would do: ordered two twenty four racks of Coors Light to our college campus (thanks completely legitimate beer delivery service) and started the toasting at 5:30 p.m. There was some chugging, some poetry, some painting, some dancing, some laughter. Some Jack Daniels? Some Jack Daniels. Then around 10 we decided it would be a good idea to take the Valiant to what is possibly the sleaziest bar in White Plains (you guessed it, Kelly's). Courtney tried to get on with a just opened Tall Boy, but the driver was afraid of it spilling, so she chugged the whole thing infront of him. Once we got to Kelly's one of our friends who was using my old driver's license couldn't get in so I proceeded to rationally (read: belligerently) argue with the bouncers and then we all left for another bar (Korova, which is actually very cool, it's modeled after the bar in one of my favorite books- A Clockwork Orange). This is where the night becomes hazy. There were lots of Pink Ladys (highly recommend this drink). There was also a point in time when I convinced the "DJ" (I use this term lightly) to let me play my own music only to realize that I had left my ipod at school. Oh and funny story, our friend threw up on the bartender's coat and our friend's friend threw up on what we later found out was the bartender's car. Then we got kicked out. I just saw Sonja and the bartender apparently texted her something along the lines of "Man, you guys were fun last night."

I haven't been writing enough lately, but this is my most recent poem:

New York

City of the insomniac
the strip steak
the philanderer
Your air is as rotten as your disposition.
Your gold paved streets are no longer visible,
no longer neccessary.
They say your have lost your soul.

...perhaps they are not wrong.
I have born witness under aching constellations
to your metabolic negligence that permeates the streets
like poison.
You are a casualty of the apathetic.
They say you are vengeful and I believe them,
for I have seen the faces of the dead who haunt your
haggard island in shackles leashed by men in suits
that cost too much.
You must realize you are enslaved of your own accord.
They say you are immoral and I believe them,
for you are the city of the existentialist, seeking solace
in the absurdity at the corner of Broadway
and desolation.
Your thousand churches are ornate but uninhabited.
They say you are deceitful and I believe them,
the web of lies you have so intricately spun falls like a
curtain draping your steel structures in shadow.
Your skies are not blue but grey.
They say you are destructive and I believe them,
answering in defense that it is but your nature.
You do not heed your own advice.

Oh ye of little faith, come disappear here
in this place, this empire, this inferno
to which one is drawn like a fly to flame.
You will become a familiar lover pr a recurring mistake
amidst the nothingness.

Come and show me a city with so persistent a spirit,
who regurgitates failure so often it has grown accustomed
to selling it as success, head held in the clouds so as to
look down on all of creation seen as inferior.
New York, you are instinctive and calculating with an
artillery of charm that is at best savage.
Always erecting,
destroying,
erecting once again,
you are cunning in your creation.

I can hear the contagious laughter rolling off your tongue
and across the Hudson as I pound away at keys that
will never feel your blind happiness or desperation.
If you never spoke again, it would be too soon.




I really miss the city. Everything about here is too small.