new york midnight express. Now is What.

chaos.

on the street

in my head

on the tv

in the room.

i stand innocent.

it swims around me.

i live the silent movie.

bam...fast

furious

fire

strong

midnight express.

sleeping in the bronx,

smelling deep history

race, creed, industrialized waste,

toxic to my system,

messy, grimy,

how do people live like this?

..fixing for a taste of home,

not going to come so easy

feeling queasy.

new york, new york, giant jungle

people fight to stay alive

dyin' inside but hungry like tigers

fast and furious they push

whoosh goes the train like

hunter and hunted,

subway speed and kids doing tricks street side.

do they know what's going on in the south?

nothing comes out of this boy's mouth but

"yeah, wanna buy my pet lizard

got no disease"

the dis-ease of our nation

is seen on these streets

exemplified thrice fold.

now what?

i am alone in my thought on this

how do i make it clear

without inciting fear.

while tears wash away in the floods of new orleans.

where do we all go from here?

fear is the one thing stopping.it.all.

i contemplate while i wait for my pizza slice

filled with cheese, grease and my god it's delicious,

down in alphabet city, with the sleaze and

cuban restaurants with melodic guitars and voices and drums

and beer and wine bars and young girls with tats

and black berets and striped socks.

sleeping on the street.

she sleeps. or dribbles not sure.

i eat. i look around and find i'm in hell

how ironic as i am in love with it all.

it drives my creative muse

and i refuse to be of it

but in it in any case.

alive and kicking i also am with it,loving it

performing in it, feeling it.

now what?

i find the keyboard and

feel the ivories at c-note,

a dive bar that

eases my mood.

i drink cheap beer.

magic of lower east side.

new york city has me by the hook, line and sinker

and i'm not fine with what i see,

the black concrete playgrounds,

and a city losing time.

no time, all the time, every time

people fast, forward

in your face.

..and hard truck sounds and taxi cabs that don't stop when you

put your hand up high and say "stop" i am crossing this god damn street.

"stop" with the cockroaches and the grit on my glass of water.

"stop" with the urine down on the L line

people live with this going to work and back

and they don't see this simple fact,

they live in tunnels on the way from here to there

tunnels under the roads, the labyrinth of codes.

"stop" the chatter inside my head of fear and 9/11 and clubs that don't pay

or leave it ambiguous like they don't know what an artist needs.

what does an artist need?

         the feeling of connection...

whispering my thoughts ....do they know,

...do they know what is really going on?

are we all so centrifugal to our own moment

our own journey?

was this book really created for me?

"go" with my heart, my pulse, the instinct to be alive, and enjoy this fast

journey,

the ploy, the entrancing feeling of living on the edge and feeling

history,.. on 42nd street.

where i stayed last year

in 5 star hell

and finally, finally

performed on broadway with a python at that.

new york city town hall.

i have done it.

now what?

how does it feel?

what's real to my heart my ambition to know

....to know i have grabbed what i wanted to do

in '92, as i rollerbladed through these steamy streets with Backstage mag in my hands

and dreams in my heart,

and naivety

in my lungs and all i felt was fun and cold and hot

and all the stuff that makes an artist alive, wanting, yearning, begging for a stage

to be heard.

living on adrenalin and hard dreams, ambitions to fruition

i want to be heard.. new york city. do you hear me? do you feel me? do you want me?

BUT i have done it.

already.

i have made it real

and lived broadway

and succeeded

for whatever that success means?  what does it really mean?

this constant fire in my belly that says

more more more

NOW WHAT?

i turn to the burbs

big houses, large windows

fancy mercedes SUVs and i sit here on the couch

wondering.

now what?

while... an old lady dies in a hospital and i'm left holding my friend's baby

so calm and soft

she smiles

with the innocence of mother nature

she calms my mind.

the innocence of children

reminds me that i must look at life through a child's eyes

at all times

to survive

my own ambition.

now what?

NOW. Now is WHAT.

i breathe in 

i submerge to dreamland to breathe some more

and feel the blue sky beating it's heat

reminding me of life and love and california and passion surging, coursing through me

. i live an extraordinary life.

give me another slice.

gilli moon . september 10. 2005. manhattan.