Polonia.

                                                                       (photo: Alia Kate)

             I live out my days in splendid hallucinations of happy and beautiful places I’ll never be.  Sometimes I go to Breckenridge Colorado, to the highest ski lift in North America to hit the powder for a cascading mile with my blonde wife, when the breeze hits back the right way and the smell of the fresh snow is unsheathed, the underlying black asphalt of the city street reveals itself holding flattened papers and frozen rotten food of the gutters of Chinatown. 

One morning I will be in the Hamptons where a woman rides by on her beach-cruiser bicycle and her straw basket has a bundle of fresh kale and a hot loaf of Italian bread sticking out of it, on the beach at Coney Island, this mirage lasts as long as the hotdog cart smell does not interfere. 

Speaking of baking and bread and other beautiful golden gifts of this earth, when a Labrador Retriever is let loose on the ducks at the Ponds at Prospect park, I really become a part of a khaki’s commercial, in that copper purple setting sun, which in the present eyes is preserved by the New Jersey chemical breeze.  And if I ever get to stick my head into a dumpster behind a catered wedding event in Boerum Hill, the Midwest wildflowers and endless sway of wheat fields hits my head; it rocks me with the stalks and cools me with its perfect freshness until the sog rot at the bottom of the bin begins to creep up. 

I am a high noble soul of British National bloodline hierarchy, if you ever ask me for directions to Grand Army Plaza, I might lie to you about Sir Walter Raleigh and his blood lineage dating back to me and how he commanded those soldiers featured on the monument.  I am a king and a fundamental symbol of this city.  I am a prevailing unhindered figure of this land. Pardon my vomit and give me some change. I am hungry, thirsty, and the truth is hard to swallow.