Stephine Matteo
Dear manhattan
You have been a bane and light of my life and I love you but let me tell you,
As a child you were famous in my neighborhood of Queens.I surmised that if I could get my mother to take me there I would be as famous as you. Every year we would visit you for my birthday. I remember wearing a pink shirt a white jacket and a skirt. I remember feeling like the chubby little pale Kate Moss. But man do I remember walking down your streets soaking up the waves of electricity pulsing beneath my feet. I ate chicken Parm in Soho(the best around) and stared at the Casablanca poster as an old bartender with a funny nose told me to finish my food. You were my home away from home until you actually became home. Exhilarating until I got hit with the reality of being impoverished in your womb. The old bartender at the Soho spot was actually a played out bookie in a beaten down tenement apt and the chicken Parm place was no more, probably bought out by Starbucks.the wool was almost completely pulled from my eyes. But We had a good time in youth. ABC no Rio on weekends, magical episodes of trotting the city in my docs, then robbing the jewelery at the corporate stores. Sleeping in central park protected by a bob marley blanket . Studying fashion in its capital. Fucking bankers and artists and teachers and scum.They won't win we said. The old you would have liked me stealing from corporate Enterprises . But you were young .the new me certainly did like it. But As I got older I grew tired . You werent the person I knew anymore. Or maybe I just met the real you. Lou reeds walk on the wild side become walk on the mild side. You let people with no heart live in your womb and you pushed me the fuck out. People who care more about money than your spirit. They shoved my mother out too. You ate my mother whole and let her rot in the LES and took the fucking book shop to be replaced by who knows. The old you would never. Hey maybe you're not meant for us though. And golly gee good thing because you're to great for anyone else. Your death stings but your peace makes up for it. You may have died but your spirit is elsewhere. I love you and I miss you and even if you spit me out I respect you because you know the ones who loved you most like it rough. The ones who loved you most could take your ravenous mouth and maybe in the end we're the ones who couldn't live for you anymore.
New York new york
Stick a fork in ya
your done
The over sung hero of many a marvel movie
A place evocative of the groovy dylanesque freedoms
An artists retreat
Cheap wilderness suite
A place where work could be art
A place where work could be life
Fiesty ,sensitive, break your back and fuck you up all in one breath
All murdered by the fork of a hungry dweller called death
just the metropolis of the enslaved
The workers like bees dying off for the smog and steel
All not conducive to producing sweet nectars
Instead all the bees get wings chewed off in the financial sectors
The odds are against you for the reaper sings in the old Chelsea hotel .
Billie sings the suicide song on a loop for culture that has been bombed.