New York City hums,
but Coltrane shreds through
a sharp sound,
a sound that shakes you awake.
His notes don’t care,
they push through the hums, Clearing their own path.
The streets are loud,
full of cars and people, but his sound
feels like it’s always been here,
timeless and priceless,
like a breath held too long,
released with urgency.
In the middle of all this chaos,
His sound is still here.

It haunts me ever so
In the most mystifying and laborious way
It commands its attention
Attempting to summon me into its depths
I cannot
But I must
Get out of my head
Get out of my head
Get out of my head
It haunts me ever so
It revolves throughout my mind, growing louder
“Just get it done” I say
“Later” I reply in response to myself
Rain falls onto the city below
Release me
It haunts me ever so
Time moves ever forward
Time doesn’t rest
Please take me into your embrace
I don’t want to do this
Please

The streets hum with a thousand tongues,
but they do not speak
they murmur and break.
Echoes of footsteps long since passed.
Sparks in the wet air.
Wasteland this is no place for a name.
A yellow light flickers on the corner.
Familiar faces,
but their eyes betray the same vacant look.
“What are the roots that clutch?”
Tangled wires,
bent telephone poles
suspended in a dream.
In the cafe,
the bitter clink of spoons against porcelain
not so much silence as a certain noise.
Is it a vision, or only a reflection?
“Time is a river,”
but I drown in it,
not in the waters,
but in their currents.
A clock,
ticking without any hand to mark it.
A shadow passes
Is it his?
The Fisher King?
A whisper through the cracks:
“The only hope is despair.”
A dead leaf floats on a forgotten river.
Beneath,
a cry to the city,
but the air chokes it.
Streets like veins,
cobblestones like old bones.
And so the light flickers,
the night crawls,
the words bend and crack
the city is a puzzle,
unsolved,
Broken.

She moves,
like train smoke dissolving into the sky,
like postcards never sent,
like the echo of a place before it’s home.
She laughs,
a windchime in borrowed doorways,
it rings,
And even gravity could be charmed into letting go.
She smiles,
brighter than the sun-flared road,
something to hold onto when everything else is packed away.
She wears sundresses,
soft fabric catching in the breeze,
bare feet against shifting ground,
a flower that never gets the chance to root.
She is a sister
a compass when the world spins too fast,
a lullaby, a lighthouse in the storm of goodbyes.
And yet,
she loops, she lingers,
drawn into the gravity of the same old roads,
spinning in circles like the hem of her dress,
Whispering, maybe this time, maybe this time.

but not.
The sky cracks open,
She watches—
no feeling.
The coffee’s warm,
but she’s cold.
Hands move,
but not hers.
She speaks,
the words fall—
too far.
People talk,
their mouths open,
but she’s listening from somewhere else.
Time breaks,
she stands still,
but she’s moving.

A hollow wind, a rustle in the bone,
The city’s husk, a concrete monotone.
No nightingale, but sirens’ fractured cry,
A splintered moon, a glass-shard in the sky.
The pavement cracks, a rhizome of despair,
Where phantom feet, like shadows, softly fare.
No golden bough, but neon’s pallid gleam,
Reflecting back a fragmented, waking dream.
The coffee’s dregs, a bitter, muddy stain,
A ritual of loss, a whispered, dull refrain.
No prophet’s voice, but static’s empty hum,
A broken circuit, where no answers come.
The typist’s keys, a rhythmic, metal click,
A hollow echo, where the soul grows sick.
No garden blooms, but ash and cinder spread,
A barren landscape, where the gods are dead.
The river flows, a viscous, oily stream,
Reflecting back a fractured, dying scheme.
No water nymph, but plastic’s ghostly sheen,
A modern Styx, where lost desires convene.
And in the room, a silence, thick and deep,
Where memories, like moths, their vigil keep.
No sacred word, but whispers, thin and frail,
A hollow prayer, upon the urban gale.

I’m looking
Into an organized mess
a drawer filled with pens
to write my thoughts
and lists
and memories.
I’m looking
At teabags (I’m out of ginger)
Behind the pens…
(Why do I still have this spoon in here?)
I’m looking for
Gum
Straws
A Tatte gift card (Do they still have that pumpkin spice latte special?)
No
I’m looking for
I’m
Looking
At everything
Apparently
(I always do this)
I‘m looking
For that thing that’s never here when I need it most.

(“Tank Man” is an alias given to an unidentified Chinese man who stood in front of a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, the day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He repeatedly blocked their path as the tanks tried to maneuver around him, and even climbed onto one to confront the
soldiers.)

“Don’t take me home—
I don’t want red stains on my shirt—”
Blank sheets of paper won’t protect me from sticks and stones
We can’t speak,
We can’t see—
They plug our ears immediately
At the speech of a man who preaches
a bourgeois mentality—
“Ignorance is bliss”
Is what they say,
And ignorance is what they need—
They clamor,
They shout,
They scream
That the TV is infected with an American dream—
So they cut the cables
And told us a fable
Of a stable stable
As they carved the abled
On the butcher’s table,
And enabled
The labels
That left the faithful
Unthoughtful—
Turned the power of the people
Against the people—
And the rooster flew on high.

It all started to make sense
On a summer night
Of 1989.
The stars were dazzling bright
Against a crimson sky—
The songbirds were hushed forever,
And the rooster flew on high.

As I was escorted down Chang’an Avenue
Along a row of concrete brutalist buildings,
I overheard a voice being broadcasted through the PSA:

A broken clock, ticking in reverse.
A stopwatch frozen at the 19th minute
The sweet taste of freedom poured into your morning coffee
The grass smells of must and plastic
The apartment windows tinted and shut
Looking down at the blur of faces and hands

“Freedom has never tasted so good”
Footsteps fade into the rhythm of music
Each step syncing to the bass
Each step quieter then the last
Each step blurring into the concrete
The quiet hum of your thoughts
against the city’s roar
The smiles from strangers feel like a warm sweater
A blanket to shelter you from the cold
Yet even cold water feels warm when your freezing

You hear the siren humming through the ocean of concrete
Blaring, alerting the people on the street.
The song lures you to the outside world
But you’re chained to your mattress

You think of the silence before the siren’s song
The comforting hold of familiarity

You think of a time before the plastic
Before the rhythmic footsteps
Before the blurred faces
Before the freedom
You taste the bitterness of your coffee
Before the sweetness of the cream
Freedom never tasted so good.

Train window reflects his face
While the clunking noise from the train continues

Constant in color
Waves in wave
In the nocturnal blues

As he touches the surface
The tide once seamless line
Terminates with just one finger

Once the parallel has been broken,
And separated,
They form a new tide

His new life has begun
On the lonely horizon
Train window reflects his face
While the clunking noise from the train remains

Clunk, clunk

The streets echo a soft little hum
(Was it a song or just noise in the air?)
People walk by, faces half-masked,
Unspoken words passing like cars on a highway.
And there it goes again, the echo,
“Taa ta ti, Taa ta ti.”
The sound lingers in the air,
People attracted by it like the smell of Mama’s food in the air.
“Taa ta ti, Tii ti taa.”

A room filled with “what could’ve been”
A room filled with “what could’ve been”
The room had bookshelves of unopened books,
Everything is covered with a cold blanket of dust on it.
At the center alone, there it was,
The piano. Untouched.
“Taa ta ti, Tii ti ta.”
The sound of something or someone calling.
Reaching out to someone,
Having such a strong presence around it.

This noise to some sounded like rubbish.
But to a few,
Sounds of trumpets and angels falling forth.
The room only let the innocent curiosity in it.
The chosen,
Falling before the presence in the room,
it came and swept them off their feet,
robbing them like a thief in the night.
Mournful crying filled the night.

It was all a misunderstanding,
The natural side, the chromaticism side all wanted to be pressed.
Positive sides, difficult? Or can it just be meaningful to someone?
Realizing the fate of the present, and future.
It suffocates away,
Sinking in the quicksand,
Falling deeper into despair,
despair, despair, despair,
A coffin created and filled at last.

Is she who she said she was?
Titi called the other day,
Wants to know if life here is better.
Melodies and harmonies flood my veins
Will the curls on our heads
Be enough to take us further?
Is she where she wants to be?
Mami me dijo,
Camina por donde no pudo ir
Bachata flavored piraguas flood my brain
The clear blue water calls
But instead,
I’m left in Back Bay
Is she who she wants to be?
Imposters make you second guess
Are you a true musician?
The world’s opinions flood the drain
Platano leaves wrap my heart
Rhythm and blues remain

When I was a child,
I reasoned as a child,
I lay awake at night,
Perceiving the reality I spawned unto
I found solace under water,
The space free of sound, and feeling, only vision,
The change in medium made my eyes heavy and my arms light
as I regularly escaped the seductive grip of the ocean’s pull.
But once remov’d from the bewitching cry
of the water’s siren song I saw my efforts easing,
the shadow of Neptune giving me peace
letting me sleep
Finally,