lateafternoon nyc — 47th & broadway

we line up for discount theater tickets on an island in Times Square

steel drum island 'goombay' bands beat out rhythms across from “The All Live Girly Revue” where the best of live vauldeville has long since past as yellow cabs still proclaim “livery for hire” painted-—on-—side ads line—up to collect fares below a bronze patinaed statue of songwriter/hoofer/showman George M. Cohan while rescue police sirens echoe

somewhere in another canyon and no one gives more than a glance

at the man from the yellow Con—Ed truck holding an acetylene torch as if it were a wand halos of sparks flick off his metal boots making rainbows in brilliant fading light shiny welders hat looking somehow like

a reincarnation of hatted-fleet-footed mercury perfectly situated here as the patron pagan god of actors we stand in line observing city spaces quickly filled with another and another face all of us supposedly leading less meaty lives because city air ripens flesh watching korean grocers performing one-act plays in produce sections while we smell hot pretzels knowing how good they’d be with lotsa' mustard seeing yellow electric chords snake out of manholes from where workmen and perhaps a workwoman watch with us an old woman in a tattered old long dress wash

dabbing her exposed arms and holding her lengthy-dress to reach no-longer muscular or taught legs with lukewarm coffee and thrown away paperscraps before she continues on her way down a trash-littered debris spattered street

shopping cart in tow possessions accounted for as a stunning blonde dressed in spandex baring her muscular midriff anonymous

in plastique fashionable helmet and dark glasses zips by on chartreuse rollerblades creating a slight breeze of erotic moment leaving this city of instant strangers with the ultimate realization that only tourists ever wear sandals on broadway.

© By Zyskandar A. Jaimot On 5/10/2007 2:19:59