Amy Middleton Loves New York

We have made
unscheduled service changes
on the line

you were probably
hoping would
not make you
twenty minutes late

Please be patient
as you sit motionless
between stations
during this unavoidable delay

Yesterday while riding the 1 train from 18th Street to my transfer at 42nd, I had an idea for a project. It was a momentary stroke of genius that would surely lead to greatness if carried out. This idea was succeeded by a thought. “You don’t need any more projects. You need to follow through with the projects you have.” The thought was right. I am the illegitimate parent of too many project ideas to count. These projects, scattered across the universe, denied the nurture and attention they require, have little chance of survival. Maybe I could track them down and gather them together. I could put them in a repository. A graveyard. At least they’d be accounted for. And I would be their groundskeeper/webmaster, maintaining Amy’s Eternal Resting Place of Abandoned Projects and adding to it periodically.

But…they are not dead yet. Each has been brought to the same emergency ward, and each is crying out to me. I am their physician, capable of restoring their lives with proper care and attention. With my assistance, they could recover, thrive, and reach their potential. But there are so many of them. And their desperate cries pain me. I who created them am responsible for the consequences of their neglect, and yet I don’t know where to start, whom to save. I am overwhelmed by the task and, poor physician that I am, seek instead to be distracted. I pursue other pleasures, parent other projects, in part to forget my debt to those already born. Having the ability and obligation to do good, I passively elect to nothing. How can I live with myself? No more projects. I am too careless to be trusted with such precious and vulnerable creatures.

where you sit, Joe sat
Sometimes I think it’s his desk
and I think you’re Joe

“The currents that determine our dreams and shape our lives flow from the attitudes we nurture everyday”
truancy is my best friend
I love “Adventures in Babysitting”
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?
I sleep in a drawer
bjork…possibly maybe
Livin it up in NYC!
I’m longing for flip-flops
dean & britta - mar 30
Spasm
weddingness=woooo
steer clear big tuna

2:14pm March 30, 2007

Willful rebellion against my
Saturday alarm
leaves me powerless to “get ready.”

One quarter of a cupcake later
and I tread the morning,
the orange and yellow road
of dead leaves
leading to the subway
makes no sound.

(I get where I need to be
before I need to be there,
on top of my game
inspite of myself.)

Elevated conversation
in yesterday’s jeans.

At Target, I show Corina the earings
I will give to her
when she comes to her own
and declares herself
Queen of the Taranchula Farm.

I absorb Billy Collins on the downtown express.

Your love cannot fulfill me,
I announce in my head
to no one in particular.
If it could,
I would die, and you would resent
my corpse.

I get off the train and wonder
if there will be time to straighten my hair.

Across from me on the platform
is the beautiful boy
who also got on the train at 200th
and is now waiting for the local, reading
“How to Win Friends and Influence People,”
which I occasionally read,
cover always conspiciously folded over
so no one else knows.

At 110 we both exit,
metaphors of Edward Hopper sunlight
reconstruct my thought patterns
as I look back to confirm he’s no longer behind me.

Basil plant in one hand,
groceries in the other,
I clutch my purse and run
out of sync with the flashing red hand

again, sometimes i am just amused by the status messages of my online friends.
November 6, 2006 1:34pm

Sexy French Horn
xing(1)qui(2)wu(3)=friday
is it hot in here?
bad medicine is what i need
open your eyes.
Ami I here?? Am I? Am I? Hmm…
at work
renewed hope
twitterpated
“Nobody told me I had to check my work”
I’m away from my computer

status messages of gchat friends who are currently online. 12:33 pm, Thursday: 

U.S. Open Obsessed
in the eternal moment
chipwich!
do you have Aspergers?
i hate my pot belly
word!
at work
Busy
i like to boogie
because I’m worth it
is imagining things

To the children of the Revolution; to those who with fake rhinestones wear its ideals across their chests.
To rich men with unimpressive girlfriends.
To poor men whose idleness is their greatest accomplishment.
To greasy pharmaceutical reps putting a price on healthcare with every catered lunch.
To those who dance the Macarena, to those who’ve raised the roof.
To those who have matching towels.

To college boys who substitute Billy Madison lines for conversation.
To the girls who will marry them.
To the summer regulars at McKinnley Square playing card games atop trash cans.
To black babies bundled in Old Navy scarves and coats; my most precious memory of New York winter.
To those who preach arrepentimiento on crowded subways.
To those who connect to each other through white headphones–secretly, silently.
You are Walker, Texas Ranger. You are synchronicity. You are creating me.

To the makers of FastBreak, the purchasers of Go-gurt, the producers of Fox.
To Catholics who go to mass daily, and those who don’t go at all.
To young women too big for their designer jeans.
To Atkins dieters refusing homemade bread, to fourteen year olds stapling their stomachs, to ageless females chewing but not swallowing.
You are chilled glasses without coasters. You are overstated. You are humanity and always.

To those who believe in democracy and voted for Schwarzenegger.
To those who can’t escape themselves, the ephemeral, the known…
To the men on stilts in Greenwich Village, quoting Kafka and doing the running man.
To the girl with a narrative voice that is no longer hers–separate, Buddhist–plagiarizing her own words, standing alone, reverencing the ineffable.

(1964)
February 7th: the Kennedy PA announces their arrival.
A Yankee Clipper Plane delivers Beatlemania to the world.
Long hair. Clanging twin-guitar.
The birth (the beginning) of music-
Giving song to our souls and opening our eyes:
All we really need is love.

(1965)
Outside Shea, official pins and handmade posters profess our love
Shaking, screaming, Yeah Yeah Yeah-ing the arrival
of the Fab Four, or maybe just Paul…with those eyes…
Breaking young girls’ hearts all ’round the world
and in the stadium. Adolescent energy drowns VOX-amplified music.
We watch them sing and play guitar.

(1966)
Revolver and Rubber Soul give unto us prophesying guitar;
Preaching peace, spreading The Word (love).
Lennon’s comparing Christianity to rock music
Eclipses their message of Inner Light and existential arrival.
Respectable citizens bemoan the fallen state of our world.
The believing know where to cast their eyes.

(1967)

And so we follow that girl with kaleidoscope eyes
to the rocking horse fountain where George trades his rhythm guitar
for the harmonium and its sounds of the eastern world.
India’s ancient medicine and psychedelic love
welcome us to surround sound and acid– this is our arrival.
This is the measure of the creation of music.

(1968)
Through the double album, ballads and folklore become the music;
Bungalow Bill aims for the eyes.
Gideon and Rocky plot the showdown demise of a rival.
George’s gently weeping guitar
Unfolds our sleeping love
To a revolution that will change the world.

(1969)
A long, cold, lonely winter, and nothing would change our world.
Mother Mary again awakes us to the sounds of music.
The love we take is equal to the love
we make; golden slumbers no longer fill our eyes.
A rooftop concert (John’s fingers too cold to play guitar)
One last time, until the Heat’s arrival.

(The End)
Their divorce shakes the world, but years before in sunken eyes
We saw the separation. Negotiations over music, money, and guitar
Broke down the love that inspired early Sunday drives with no arrival.

an awkward robot
alone in the crying rain

wet and exposed
malfunctioning

does not seek shelter

this internal flooding
is the sack cloth and ashes
of its redemption