Flaunting familiarity and defiance and hurried distaste

your polythene corsets of saccharine pinks

look oh-so tres chic in the neon gasoline lamplight.

Take your silver lining, you wretched, you glamorous,

Take it, leave this

this jilted corner of an infinity-and-one-pieced puzzle

of a city

of a painting of a city

of a half-starved artist living his dream, no, his nightmare,

his fetid hallucination,

on the lip of reality’s porcelain cusp

or the curb on the 53rd and Madison dreamways.

All of you, you hang like stars,

like your champagne,

effervescing,

coupling,

fighting glass with pale fists

and knives with paper cranes.

Oh, you can lacerate, but can you operate?

Can you fix it? Do you need it—your fix,

that is—can you make it?

Can you make it alone?

Have you left your needles with the dregs of fragrant bathwaters,

in ruddy pools of fresh poppies and old cigarettes?

Yes, oh yes,

left your inhibitions on the crumbling doorsteps of dusted aching tenements,

left babies on unforgiving park benches,

left broken heels like titanium chewing gum stuck in the gutters,

with angel heads and starry hips and marble chipped cheekbones

you broke the mold and storefront windows at Mach III

and

never

came

back.