I’ve been here in Miami for 3 and a half years
“Here is here” they say…not to me I say, I’ve had
years of “here is here” in other places, with
former friends & current enemies, without
thinking, without knowing why, I did it anyway
“Here is here” my ass but, I’m rambling and
should say…Miami shines even when it’s dull and grey
when oceans turn slate & flinty, skies
cloud up and shadows fuzz at their edges
and disappear

completely, leaving an omnidirectional kind
of cold glow, leaving a slightly acidic taste
a salty substitute to my own spit, it leaves
words in my mouth, under utilized, not going
anywhere good and I sense a sadness in them,
an unused sadness

So 3 years and change, watching it go by from
balconies above the palm trees, the kind that
I think of when I think of them…coconuts
iguanas, orchids..piss smelling homeless Joe’s
all assaulting your senses, my ideas of
Miami as I walk walk walk everywhere
walk like I’m waiting when I can’t wait
for something to happen, but,
nothing does for the millionth time so

I just walk some more and Miami says
nothing that I can hear, nothing
that I can see that wasn’t on the news, in
a movie, a Netflix series in Spanish and
English subtitles telling stories from
“not my point of view”

Fleeing NYC in the pandemic, leaving a
girlfriend because narcissistic me had to go, had
to escape madness, mad people & assholes
Miami was the bullseye for a casually thrown
dart, not looking too close, too hard,
just knowing it was different enough, open
enough, “away” enough to be new to me and
to become the latest “here is here” where
I could finally articulate the unused sadness

left in my mouth.