By Button Poetry
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Phil Kaye, performing at Honey in Minneapolis, MN.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
there is something about walking in New
00:05
York City in the plump lilt of August
00:07
with a pair of mediocre headphones
00:10
blasting I know what you want by Busta
00:12
Rhymes and Mariah Carey that delivers
00:14
unto you a sort of swagger or maybe it
00:19
is just my legs avoiding the sweat
00:22
dripping onto parts of my body I had
00:24
forgotten for a season or maybe it is
00:26
just Mariah hitting the high notes the
00:29
holy summer the goddamned summer both
00:32
this city a flag unfurling to show the
00:36
threads that it is made of or chata snow
00:40
cones sidewalks have become a catalogue
00:42
of small prayers praise you well-dressed
00:45
family from Spain the Whitney Museum is
00:48
that way praise you man on Christopher
00:52
Street with your fishnet shirt praise
00:53
you boys on bicycles who tell me to
00:56
watch your skinny ass when I know they
00:59
mean to say please be careful we care
01:04
about you and you’re relatively average
01:06
size ass this city a staggering mentor
01:12
wonders aloud about a cocktail at
01:14
daybreak this season summer a Cathedral
01:18
of evaporation the sweat rising up my
01:22
own body leaving my own body unkissed my
01:26
own skin is that any wonder our lips
01:29
feel so lonesome these long evenings my
01:32
chest a pair of glass doors with an ice
01:35
rink behind freshly Zamboni
01:38
scrapes smooth it over this city
01:42
whispers a reckless promise into your
01:44
ear that it will not forget you hails
01:48
you as king though you know yourself a
01:50
popper and the street lamps no and the
01:53
sidewalks no and the other people no but
01:55
they too believe the whisper a roomful
01:58
of royalty the season of the contented
02:02
fiction the untroubled lie it is 546
02:06
a.m. on the Lower East Side
02:08
and I walk in the dark yet to sleep
02:12
suddenly across the sidelines
02:15
morning emerges with a strut only in
02:17
August Sun can have lights my face and
02:20
the empty street bellows I remember you
02:29
[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
