You've got your whole life to do something, And that's not very long. So why don't you give me a call When you're willing to fight For what you think… - Ani DiFranco

I was terrified and devastated and thrilled by the vastness of human experience that was suddenly all around me. There were punk bands playing in the bandshell in Tompkins Square Park and illegal squats in all the abandoned brownstones. (The driver of our van was staying at one of them.) There were elaborate shantytowns popping up on the Lower East Side and even a faint bohemian aroma still wafting through the West Village. CBGB’s was still CBGB’s and Times Square was still nasty old Times Square. The City seemed to be in the hands of immigrants and artists, punks and queers, and I felt drawn to it like iron to the center of the earth.

I used to be a superhero.
No one could touch me, not even myself.
You are like a phone booth that I somehow stumbled into,
And now look at me, I am just like everybody else.

spring is super in the supermarkets
and the strawberries prance and glow
never mind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless
as strawberries go
meanwhile wild things are not for sale
anymore than they are for show
so i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty
it takes more than eyes to know