Rainer Maria Rilke writes:
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.
This above all — ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.
[…]
A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.
In this spirit I offer you, Reader, this poem and these images, stemming from one brief November visit to the city than never sleeps – and several months of correspondence.
In a New York Minute [Glissando]
“If you can receive it at the wavelength is is playing at, you may love it.”
From a review of the series “Forever”
We existed
in the ellipses between
words appearing on screen
and giving up
Suspended above the city
you loved how I used the word luscious
We kissed with our souls
on the tip of our tongue
this is from Spoon River Anthology
You are morse code
and I need continuity
–when I asked if we were ships in the night
and you said yes did you notice me wiping the water
on my cheeks? I barely noticed too.
But then you said : “Body and heart.”
Body and heart.
You spoke of fire between our souls,
as if you knew about souls.
You only know about fire.
My tears don’t fall
I do
every single time
— how many goodbyes did it take?
So elegant in your detachment, like it was an art form.
Precise in your choice of words,
I fell in love with your philosopher brain.
I still fall in love with it every time — liminal.
A New York minute.
You were the space separating
Love and reason
I was addicted to a city
giddy at the thought of walking her streets beside you
how do you fly and walk
at the same time?
Even if you don’t see her torn feet
the effortless dance of the ballerina
is a flower bloomed out of pain.
Take each sentence, rearrange as you wish.
This is not to scale.
The timeline is not linear.
To hear you whisper, half-asleep: “When?”
Zero things better.
I heard that New York is the heartbeat of the world.
In that heartbeat a part of me is marked by your passage.
We will never go to Tokyo.
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