"That's not writing. That's typing."

I still write about hospital bands chafing your skinny trees, the forest in your marrow, a winter--oh my god it's winter for a year----the song plays as I steal your ipod cable, an exercise in futility because, my dear, they all look alike.

Every house is the same, every headlight; every poem is a cat in the window licking the milk, I mean words, I mean agonized butterflies from her paws. "I will now talk about kittens" is the name of a post-structural poem, but I will not talk about it now.

I will now talk about New York.

The city is imaginary: 47,000 more dollars would have gotten me into art school, but no one pities the bourgeois. I knew I couldn't afford it--not in real life--but the city was always imaginary.

I live in an imaginary skull. The skull is wired to white, imaginary hands typing imaginary words for imaginary critics. Their reviews:

"Pretentious"

"The word bourgeois genrefies."

"That's not writing. That's typing."

To the first: undoubtably.

To the second: maybe, but I had to type "bugwise" into the Google search bar before knowing how to spell the word.

As for Mr. Capote, the high-pitched lisp from the last row: Your prose is tucked in the mustard tweed of your Imaginary City. Looking over my shoulder, Breakfast at Tiffanys is an overcoat scribble on the side of the road. I walk into the desert, and every book rewrites itself in my voice.

We all write about deserts. Negative space intrigues us. Beauty is two bell curves almost kissing. Statistics sing haikus from skinny trees---

Here I want circularity. Here insert your hands, two hospital bands corseting bone forests; but, like an extra i-pod cable, this falling apart has no explanation, only a cold wind in summer, I mean hot winter, I mean song--