written drunk(ishly) last week...It was meant to be a paean to philadelphia

I.

as is true for any other city, everyone that is here
wants to be, at least at this moment.
also possible: their distinct journeys to somewhere
else have placed them here.
this is true for, at least, this moment
which, coincidentally, is a time that has haunted me
since a middle school friend told me her birthday,
three numbers repeated in the standard form of dates
that i've seen far too many times to count over the years
when checking the time.

is there something attractive about this minute
more so than 1:11 or 3:33
on any given day?
do my eyes drift towards clocks in the same way
that so many have drifted here?

at twenty-six years old, 'here' has been
the same place for the past six years,
now a significant percentage of my life.
i've broken these years down so simply
to so many, but the things that have happened during
this time could probably fill a book...a book that very few
would want to read, partially because there is not much
blood and sex (compared to the theoretical autobiographies
of my peers), and partially because not as many people
read books
now that our vocabulary consists of verbs that should
look like names in a science-fiction/horror/fantasy tale -
"netflix", "google", "blog", "wikipedia", and "tweet"

at twenty six years old, here is specifically
1452EWiltSt.Philadelphia,PA
(feel free to embrace the written word again.
perhaps we could keep the price of sending mail
from increasing more than it has
in recent years - I find it distressing that the cost
of sending a postcard is now twice what it was
when I was only two years old
and who the hell was i sending
postcards to then? nobody, that's who.)


II.

the house that I am talking about
that has the clock that shows the time
that makes this particular brain remember an
otherwise forgotten friend, the house
that I am talking about right now,
stands proudly amongst its sisters on a quiet street
in a tortured city where
the isolation of a few hundred-thousand
suburban childhoods are constantly being dissolved
into another night's contribution
to a collective lost weekend which extends calendar-ignoringly
into a few hundred-thousand question-mark futures.


III.

who can blame us for our little brother complexes?
for our silently-held knowledge that this place
will only ever be a better version of what it now is?
who can blame us for coming anxiously
to an insecure city in a scoundrel country that leaves
its once prized metropolises to their inferiority complexes,
inept leaders and inadequate budgets?
for our defensiveness concerning the choices we've made
in location and vocation?
the choice of where we are is the common thread among
God-only-knows how many
broken and breaking bits, baiting one another to bury
the old and embrace the now and promise nothing
to one another and nothing to ourselves.
and suddenly, this place can be anywhere,
and the questions only asked of our most intimate relations
become irrelevant, for intimate relations are found in 19th
century novels and in frontier families, in the ideals of every
religion and in hollywood-manufactured romantic
fantasies (are any of them really funny enough to be
called comedies?) -
they are not found in the real people
of the real world and in the real present age.

and it is no longer 2:22 and I am no longer
thinking of a friend from my youth,
and I am only thinking of this city
and not of how to fix it or even how to make it
"a better place", only that i am here
and so are so many others. we share something
beyond an awful transportation system
and a high blighted-to-non-blighted-block ratio,
beyond a few streets cobble-stoned with historical significance,
beyond frustratingly few public trash receptacles,
beyond distinctly drawn neighborhood personalities,
beyond 'townies' and 'locals' and 'DINKs' and 'transplants'
beyond barely-breathing aspirations
and beyond too-easily-announced resignations
and beyond.......

IV.

i wonder how many of my neighbors
are sobering up right now in the early morning.
i wonder how many of my neighbors
have high school diplomas and high school sweethearts
and how many have college degrees and sick parents.
i wonder what my neighbors want for the neighborhood
and i wonder if i can answer anyone's questions they might
have for me with a smile and a 'hello' when i walk
by them. i then wonder why it is that i do not
ask any of my neighbors these questions and
quiet!!!
an epiphany:
"who is my neighbor?"
makes sense.

suddenly, this place could be anywhere.