Madison Avenue

It’s a little souvenir

of a terrible year

I was already off track

No one really lives
on Madison Avenue

No one spends money
at D'Agostino or buys grilled cheese
behind Eliot Spitzer

No one has a fancy bike stolen
and refuses to believe
looks around for weeks

I will grow older for not having
had to carry that
piece of shit  up stairs

In July a French girl
knocked on the door

Below me, below my
nearly nonexistent apartment
there was gas in the air

Messing around with matches
and a pilot light
we could have
gone to hell

But no

On my shin
six years later
a crocodile scar

The ugliest thing
you ever saw

There weren’t always lovely
French girls downstairs

There were dogs in distress

And I guess I’d take a scar for that

I guess I did

I’ve got the worst
goddamn scar on my leg
from being kicked in a corner
at the top of a staircase
on Madison Avenue

Where no one ever lived