the gypsies have left

"Christ you know the moon is full tonight
I’d like to run out wringing wet
and shake my hair loose under it
instead my nights stretch beneath this tent
balance balance got to keep
my wits and invent new tricks
to knock them dead
I am a tightrope walker
trapped in a carnival
they will never let me go. no.
I have a long-term bond. oh
balance balance I got to keep
and should you pass while I’m rehearsing
please don’t startle me
I’m not one to use a net
I might fall for you
I might give it all to you
and the crowds would bleed
I’ve been theirs for as long as I can remember
but Christ when the moon is full
I’d like to get the hell out of here
Step light like their angel
then shimmy like evil
And you sure look good to me
And you know I’m willing to come down for you…Save my circus soul"

P. S.

Patti used to release her poetry at St. Marks Church. When I went to one of the lastest nights of that same St. Marks Poetry Project, there was little else in the bare, bony church but a sense of chill. The few attendees were barely awake. Once upon a time things were exploding all over the place in that very area of the City--fragile capsules bursting just as they were unburied.

It seems New York's soul is asleep. Of her own volition--stubbornness or sleeping pills or maybe she drank herself to a mediocre-death.