Have a little soul

Have a little soul,
'cos this morning I'm going dancing.
Have some fun
and let yourself get thrown around
in the storm.
I never tried to make here safer
but if you're cold,
I'm doing something wrong.

You're a street-walking saint
made of plaster
primer and paint, and I'll follow
blindly at best.

I've never been pushed off the street,
or been invited into a country,
I've never asked for more
than I could carry with me.

But I dashed for the subway,
I snoozed on the ferry, and
I shook along with the bus.
I spent my savings playing roulette
with public transit, where I lost
everything but the frenzy.

When I scraped past the casino,
I remembered "In the long run,
you lose as much as you win.
Andrew, you're better off at home
reading a book."

So I ran on with my
four and a half dollars,
still trying to make myself full.

These months I'm going down a new hill
in a red and black coaster
made of heavy wood.
My Dad built it for my sister and brother
but it's my turn
and I'm not sure if I know how
to use the brakes.

Los Angeles

First, god and the soil
play Go with circle farms
on a board of New Mexico.

West, the hills
turn from chalk to pencil lines
all drowning in peach and gray-pink.

From thirty-two thousand feet
we follow the sun to Los Angeles.
but the haze disappears and the day ends.

Evening hits like a dark marriage
of halogen and mercury vapor,
full of non-repeating beauty and quiet light.

Second, my sister finds me in Burbank,
gives me water, and takes me home.
To be a foreigner and to be found!

Our Orange Line city bus offers me
a five-dollar haven of rattled peace and pulls
the weary through palms and pawnbrokers.

Family of the summer with
new life coming in September,
I had forgotten we stretched this far.

Dallas

Here, I saw a jump-cut ballet of green skyscrapers
dance across a Cadillac, scatter into a haze
and escape through a false night sky.

So I gave up faith in Orion's Belt, kissed Ursa Major
goodnight for summer, and found my home on Loop 12.
Moving tore me open, but now the architecture heals.

On the museum lawn, jazz wrapped the red, sprawling
sculpture and brought us to our feet to slide across the bricks.
Then, a black woman smacked my hip and said, "Smile, boy!"

So I smiled at the horse race in its colors of royalty
and beasts of speed. I smiled at my place of rest,
my home for the Summer.

NYC

Here I pushed through the dirty thicket of all Manhattan
in breathless insomnia, a Van Gogh of lost lucidity
with the colors of madness, and the half-genius of delirium.

But in sewer steam, in the humidity of industry, Williamsburg
brought me rest and distance. I stepped on soft grass
and sat near the water.

The Navy in their white cotton rode for Staten Island,
and spent the ferry ride searching for company.
The air was cold mist and the city swelled into our wake.

Above Central Park, I heard the chords of a dense, hidden hymn
emanate from the MET, matching history with chaos,
where a green quilt is the lifeblood of this neighborhood.

On each block, I found the constant chemical reaction
of hot life. In each park, I found the holiness of empty space.
And in the street, I found a home.

The weather comes to us

A thunderstorm grew above the interstate,
so we followed the funnel clouds east of Ardmore
in the now hail-littered countryside
and we drove over the fresh green leaves
laid at our feet like palm leaves leading to Jerusalem.

A family stood out on their porch
to capture the purple and gray growing mountains
and the radio reminded us every two minutes
take cover, find a bathtub!

We had box seats for the devastation, where
our adrenaline grew the lifting storm. where
the people who lived so long
in window boxes stretching out for sunlight
now had the weather come to them.

Membrane

A white hospital bed
or an astronaut's gold visor—
thin membranes between blood
and the infinite.