Surprises Still Happen

It's been a while since I've been caught me off guard. I'm usually pretty tuned in to my surroundings and life's general order of events. However, moving to New York and ingratiating myself with several new people has afforded me several opportunities to be surprised. This is one of the first poems I've written in years, and while it began as prose I quickly began to realize that often the beauty of poetry is that is encourages the space between words so much more than any other form of writing. It appreciates the "beat." So here's a little "beat" in my life that continues to resonate with me long after it actually happened.

Surprises Still Happen - 7/15/10

Love hit me hard in my stomach on McKibbin Street,

My body taut with sweetbreads and baconaise, lubricated with cava.

He was squat, and squatting.

We had been both praising and agonizing the gentrification of Brooklyn when suddenly, he stopped.

In a basement apartment of “the dorms,” there was a merry band of hipsters playing Fleet Foxes on their couch with the windows to the street flung open, 40 ounce Budweiser bottles strewn around the room like Santeria.

And from the street, he harmonized with them.

He broke their spell.

They heard him.

It was beautiful.

They heard one another.

And while they sang, I was the only one who heard them. And I was lucky.

And then, it was over.

Music, in my life, often functions as a bookmark to dogear moments I want never to forget. As my memory deteriorates and the pages of my thoughts begin to yellow and dry out, there are songs that breathe color back into my reverie.

I see that night not as black, but rather Chartreuse, not simply because we drank, but because we were it.

We were Carthusian monks, each of us filled with half the recipe of a dish neither of us had ever prepared.

And that night, we feasted.

And that night, we sang.

And that night, we were sated.