Easter on Broadway

April 13, 1980

She tends weeds

Raises them like children

Opaque wild flowers,

Cuts them and prunes them

Sometimes, she finds tea
among their rickety strewn limbs

And for her, it’s a pleasant surprise

But not one totally unexpected,

She always picks good seed

From pastures of bad

Finds lost wind blow petals

Like me

Shadows on her doorstep

She just picks them up

And plants them

Knowing that they will grow

Into something beautiful

To love and hold.

Oh well, it’s Easter, and I sit here on Broadway and 62nd Street a block or so from the Mud Club where the band is filming their video, and I’m wondering what I’m doing here.

The band plays upstairs – well, the demo we made at Electric Lady Land plays and they pretend to be playing at the cameras roll, a weird partnership of dubious merit.

Me? I’d rather be here on this hard wood bench staring at strangers, rewriting the poem above I had originally written for Michelle – the woman I fell in love with at the cosmetic warehouse were I worked, unrequited love to which I have become a connoisseur always wanting women I can never have, giving heart and soul to someone who has given theirs to someone else.

We are weeds, my friend, stuck between the cracks of asphalt arms and concrete fingers, we grow with our heads bent, our hearts bruised, our bodies aching, vulnerable always.

The city stands around us, threatening to condemn us to a hopeless future and a forgotten past. A corrupt city, large and arrogant, mocking us pathetic weeds and our petty ambitions,

We don’t laugh, but it’s pointless to cry.

We just grow to spite them, trying to be as beautiful a weed as possible, hoping that somewhere our roots can crack open their stone hearts, we grow despite them, we defy them to destroy us, and if they do, what have they accomplished, destroying what, a mere weed?