Sometimes I think it might be easier
to give up and move to India.
At least my one hundred thirty dollars
would go somewhere there,
at least I might find something else to do
beside slave away in this
insufferable city. I feel like New York
is an experiment gone wrong,
and we artists come here
to try to turn this broken place
into a beautiful dream
of utopian art, but instead we struggle
and live heedless, headless lives
that end up tearing us apart.
So let’s move away to London,
to Paris, to Rome, find a home
in the simplest of places
and live quietly out of suitcases
full of dirt, growing vegetables
that travel around with us
and keep the tags on our skirts
to return them when we get back,
with all the dust of the world
enveloped in their wrinkles and cracks,
making travelogues of our clothes
and a worn covered knapsack.
Let’s engage in political discourse,
in native rock’n’roll, lift vintage
ideas out of our wounded souls
and disburse them amongst the locals,
leaving them with questions about who they are
and what they eat, and why they live
in the place they do, except
these are all questions
we ask ourselves without exception
and can’t find the answer,
so we’re sampling everybody else’s
way of living and finding happiness
because New York can’t give you that,
it can’t give you happiness
it can work you to the bone,
leave you feeling cold and alone
at the end of a long day,
when you have nothing to go back to
but your windowless, airtight room
and all of your dreams are an ocean away
living life the way you wish she would
when she was with you,
but couldn’t, because you couldn’t
make her happy as she is when she plays.
So you write.
And your dreams exposit reality
in simplest words, turns of phrases
that conjure banality
and lost potentiality.
And you don’t write for the masses,
you write for yourself
and maybe that’s why you can’t find
a market to dwell in, can’t find the courage
to share all this beauty
your head conjures from nothing,
can’t believe your thoughts
could be worth hearing
much less reading,
but maybe they are
and maybe you should try
and learn why you love
putting words down
on paper so much.
Maybe that’s right
and New York is just a stop
on the way
to make you realize
that life
is what you make it
and dreams are what you dream them
and the road is where you go,
not what you follow.
And ultimately,
all this suffering
leads to learning
and leading a life
that is worth something.
That is earned,
not conjured from nothing.
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