THE FORBIDDEN BIG APPLE

I am crossing the seven seas

To wash off your smell

From my mothball-stuffed drawers that I

open and close—obsessive-compulsive,

In classrooms and coffee shops,

Conference halls and airports,

On the streets or in bed--

A fresh-rain aroma of musk and dead roses

brewed in desire and betrayal,

Suffused with midnight kisses and racing away

on white steeds in chivalrous reins.

But I do not know if all the waters

Of all the oceans can ever achieve that task,

and I know all I really need to do is take off

these glasses that I hold in tremulous hands—

these rose-tinted glasses that have

made me hope against despair,

love against knowledge, want against wisdom.

But oh, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t

bring myself to do that,

Though it breaks my heart every fortnight

into slivers of china on a varnished floor;

Because then, when I am happy,

the whole world wouldn’t be New York.