this evening, open-mic at the Knitting Factory
I read poem bout Arizona Green Tea, my newest addiction
next reader Ryn Gargilinsky
said she had a new addiction ‘swell
it wasn’t Arizona Iced Tea, but rather walking across
the Brooklyn Bridge
then Miriam Stanley, who operates the Rogue Scholars collective,
hands me a note scrawled on a napkin
tells me to email her the poem bout Arizona Iced Tea
so as she can put it on roguescholars.com.

I wanna correct them both,
cuz I’m addicted to Arizona Green tea (w/ honey and ginseng/,
not the iced tea, but

walking after the reading to Mike’s Papaya for some cost-effective sustainence
I see a poster pasted onto a closed deli door,
reads,
“Arizona Iced Tea sold here”
I realize, it’s the marketing, imprinted,
they hear commercial say, see poster say Iced Tea,
they say Iced Tea,
they ehar me say Green Tea,
still say Iced Tea.

So I sit down in the threshold of this deli
reeks of urine and beer (go together like love and marriage)
littered with bottle caps and blackened bubble gum stains,
And as I write, intrigued by the combination of coincidence
one old withery wiry tall black man
turns his head back at me as he passes,
and gives a 10 second stare forth all the way back down the block,
then a man explaisn to his significant other that
the worth of money is based on the price of gold,
and a man with itchy sideburns
shouts “Boom Shaka Laka” to his companion.

I figure these events
are too incidental
to write of
so I’m off now
to Mike’s Papaya.