For NYC

You grinding silly machine. Daedalus couldn't have done it better, with all the trappings and nautilus, isinglass and honey. They swish, slap and stop. The borders are all water, and not the kind you'd swim in unless there were no better options. A man could stop and think in a town like New York City. A quick fish in the pocket and a sulpherous match to create just a little bit of smoke to go with all those mirrors. The beautiful witches on the train asked me what I thought of Spain. I told them, "Romantica." They asked me if I were a writer, of all things. I told them no one paid me for it.

"Oh, they will," she assured me. She smiled at me like I was welcome. Then I knew my stop, the stop that wasn't actually mine was up. Zip zip zip and the Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Like I had any idea what the hell she was on about. My accents and language flipped through their rolly dexters and I emerged in the belly of NYU. Rich girls and their flimsy accents. Can't shatter a glass with that, love, I'd leave it alone.

Mario handed me a book. We were talking about cryptography. I professed to be a natural cryptographer, just waiting for my turn at the NSA. I'd show those stiffs a thing or two. In the meantime, the challenge was to decipher what psych patients had claimed was alien divination, the scrivening through an ethereal link to another being. Oh, no... this is not a new idea. Enochian and many before it. For as long as a man couldn't read another's handwriting he'd have imagined magic.

Babylon pissed off god because who wants neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors and haute temptation of the wrath of gods is always a fool's errand. Still, the towers they construct today, the satellites and fabled men on the moon are allowed? Please reconcile that for me, religions. Because as it stands, evidence seems to indicate that doesn't end well. I'm not suggesting we go find a nice cave and a club, but what changed? Maybe there is an answer to that.

So I flipped through the 8.5x11 inch pages, neatly bound and gramatically tidy. Mario wrote about where he saw the insane modelling their "alien writing" after experienced, seen, or naturally imagined scripts. I learned about alphabetic languages (this one), syllabic languages (blends of consonants and letters, this could be slapped on a few languages), and idyllic languages, where he meant by that strange word the ideographics of the Far East. He was Italian, after all. Cut him a break.

I tried for all my eyes would pour onto those pages to make heads or tails, but they were rarely or never in their original context. With no clues, like geography, life experience, or mental state they were a cold case. Still, I tried and I tried. Do you know what I saw? I saw that he was probably right and while the insane do some fascinating things that only a madman would attempt to make heads or tails of them. Maybe it was then that I decided to give it a go.

In NYC the "words of the prophets are" written well beyond "the subway walls and tenement halls". If those children could write on the moon, they surely would. Speaking of which, I decided the best way to do so would be to charge the moon with some sort of expiring photofluorescent matter that had a quick half life. Who the hell wants to look up into the sky and see the bat signal forever? Not I.

The living children in NYC bounce along and conduct the great orchestra with waving hands and furrowed brows. The old give up and in to fear and chaos. They curse and spit and beg. They become bent and perpetually look down. "I am not really afraid," I told the wild eyed girl on the bus. Everyone wanted to help me on that bus in Brooklyn but I didn't express any problem. I was just wearing a nice suit and I think they wanted to know why. I shouted the only Yoruba I know, a salutation and they quieted the fuck up.

Soon enough I met a girl studying the bible and asked to use her phone. If someone's nose is in the Christian bible, it will be hard for them to look up and tell me to go fuck myself. I told her to read Hebrews 13:1. She thanked me and then the dark New Jersey night fell. I'll be back, I thought to myself. Whether I want to or not.