Hudson Terrace

Meanwhile-
just across the river-
contemplated, anticipated
is always how the folly rings-
abounding, resurrected
and in venturesome darkness.
There is peculiarity
in the unbounded rhythm
so flayed and flawed in its own fragility,
rounding the turn
peeking out from behind the building-
glinted, blazed in sunlight bridge-
adorned as it jumps up each morning from beneath,
constant and deliberate
in its steady hang,
unlike my merry-go-round of plights-
solidified and dendritic-
every new connection
some devil in the details
of vulnerable paranoia.
Just another nerved dose of change
with distempered dissonance
humming.
You hear it
against a gummy smile
of despised bottle-red,
at someone else’s insistence.
Be yourself already.
But it can’t be done.
Casually abided with a heavy sigh,
disparately lovely
in knowing the truth of it,
confronted by the ordinary
deliberate hardness-
halfway under the bridge
is as far as I can go.
Those two massive magnets
repel facing alikeness with aplomb;
antithesis with rejection-
not new,
and nothing bodes unusual
in this way.
All is different and the same-
together the unchanged meets
just as before
with its purpose eroding
diminished confidence
into a purgatory of magical thinking
emerged as absolution
blatantly worn with garish flip-flops,
still warm to the sandy imprints
of glistening toes, now mummified
in bleached blue-white socks
and heavy signs of dejection.
It doesn’t chip away at me-
what is said-
brutal honesty can’t undermine me anymore.