when the wind blows right through you
on a somewhere street in Manhattan,
and certain smells take you back
to cigarette hands and sad folk songs,
it all makes the way you walk
feel different and purposeful,
as if the journey to the subway
means something promising and poetic.
But then you get on the subway
on masquerade night to see a minion
peeing on the seats and romance dies in a flash,
but when you really think about it,
there is something special
about a dude in a yellow costume
urinating on the Uptown 4 train.
Then I touch my face,
find out I am bleeding somehow
and realize that I am also one of these weirdos,
inspiring tales of witnesses
to recount to their friends
later at parties,
and then the publicly peeing person
looks at me and says with his eyes
that I am bleeding and nuts like him.