This bright morning

There's a car on seventh avenue that's covered in yellow confetti from the falling leaves of an overhead ginkgo biloba tree.

A black tomcat lies in a fenced off corner lot off 5th, cross-pawed and seething.

Leaves are getting kicked around by Lucy.

The Beatles are singing
because the world is round
it turns me on....

Lots of coffee is being made in the big jug.

When I lived in Denmark, every now and then, I would meet a woman in a burka while strolling on Nørrebrogade, my local big street in Copenhagen. She was young, dressed in a full length light black burka. The only part of her that was visible was her eyes, which were very heavily made up with black eye liner and mascara and heavy toned eyeshadow. Many layers of mask. She reminded me of pictures of elaborately made up Sicilian widows I've seen in the National Geographic. I always looked her in the eye, though, and she did the same with me. We didn't see each other a whole lot, but when we did, we always greeted each other. It was kind of an unusual arrangement: her burka rendered her both recognisable and unrecognisable. I knew her, principally, by her make up. She was a friendly face on my beat in København. Back to Brooklyn.

A woman is rolling a basset hound in a pram along 7th ave. She does not look insane or out of place.

A tiny little old lady is gathering up leaves on St. Marks ave.

Billy Bragg doesn't want to change the world. He's just looking for another girl.

A pair of skinny whippets are shivering in the cold as they pee on leaves.

A brown tortoiseshell cat is rolling around on a basement carpet in anticipation of her only chance at a bit of human contact today, from the woman who is coming to feed her and change her litter tray.

There's a carpet of leaves of different colours all the way along 3rd ave. and a Dominican woman is blissed out as she walks along it, dressed snugly in her winter coat.

A piano technician is fixing a pair of keys on Dean street, which were whacked out of shape by a fiercely improvising French pianist.

A woman is addressing strangers on 7th ave with the question, "Do you have a minute to stop global warming?"

I wonder what's happening in Red Hook. I wonder what's happening in Dumbo. I wonder what's happening down by the sea.

The Seven Buck Butter Blues

The blank page. And not much to say.

Hm.

Continue like this and I'll soon have a masterpiece of the ilk that Jack Nicholson produced, in The Shining. All work
and no play
makes
Lucy a dull girl.

All play makes
Lucy's
work dull.

Apparently. What a pity. Though I could just hang on in here and see if something comes along sometime soon. You know, I've done that at plenty of buses that never came, so why not a blog post?

It's a rainy dark day in Brooklyn and new york. Blowing hot and cold. Wine is getting poured. Elvis and Nick Drake are getting listened to. Lips are getting kissed.

So I'm here on Dean street, listening to Nick Drake, sipping a glass of red wine on a sofa, next to this bloke I've sort of fallen in love with. And this is where I am. And this is how it is.

Yeah, of course there's more texture than that. Stevie Ray Vaughan is playing now, for instance. And I've just been out to the place on St. Mark's and 5th av for organic butter, and come home with none, because I didn't bring any money out with me. So he's gone, now. To get us seven buck butter. We're cooking dinner of chicken sausages, sweet potatoes and spinach yummy shit.

See ya.

You know it's gonna be alright

I woke up in Denmark this morning. In a little loft in Valby, København.

She was a daytripper
one way ticket, yeah
it took me so long to find out
and I found out

I came to Denmark in December 2003 on a one way ticket, and left with another one, three and a half years later. The first thing I noticed about Denmark was actually in Sweden, where I flew into. There were photographs everywhere of Naomi Campbell in her knickers, looking Christmassy, faking happy-in-her-knickers bliss. She was everywhere in København too, when I got there. I stopped noticing her after a day or so.

My first impression of new york this July, after a three and a half year absence, was the train, as it roared into Howard Beach station. It took my breath away, every bit of it. It got me right in the centre. And in the midst of that gorgeous chaos, I had the strong thought, that within a few days, even this was going to be absolutely familiar to me. I knew it. I was wrong about that. It never got familiar. It got more breathtaking.

I was in love with the subway the way I am in love with Dean street now, when I lived in Manhattan in 2003. I've never slipped out of that love; it's just evolved, the way it evolved from a room of maroon paintings in a London gallery into the new york city subway, from a grand old velvet curtained theatre into a room of maroon paintings... The lover changes form.

If this post is a little avant garde for you, hold your horses. Rocknroll is never far from the surface.

So I'm here again, in København. Just arrived yesterday. It feels good to get into Danish again, and to find myself jivin' in Danish feels GOOD indeed. But this ain't no one way ticket, yeah.

This time I've got a ticket to ride back to Brooklyn.

Oh Dean street, I love the arse off of you

newyork newyork
brooklyn to me
newyork newyork
is brooklyn to me

and brooklyn to me
is a pair of small shacks
with a length of twine between them and a metal can either end.

Reaching right over Flatbush
sometimes the yellowcab drivers have to pass the intersection of Dean and F
with their hands raised aloft
out the window
so they don't drive right through
the delicate connection.

Such a flimsy piece of string
and so well taken care of.
he walks the line.

did something happen? fuck,
i think i fell into a pit of scorching hot love
this afternoon.
And I'm being eaten alive by these tongues of flame.

This thick pit
and nobody owns it.