(Fair warning: If you read this poem out loud, you might have to wash your mouth out with soap.)

Remember that time you went with me on a business trip, George?
We stayed in Midtown right in the middle of all the New York madness.
You slept in while I went to meetings in the Fox News building, then
you got up and went walking in Times Square and got bird shit on your good
linen shirt. Fucking bird. Fuck you, you fucking bird! you kept shouting
at the sky. Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t there, maybe you didn’t shout, but
I would have expected you to shout at the fucking bird.
Whole place smells of garbage and shit, especially in summer.
Who would want to live there? A nice place to visit but…
And remember we went to shows? 9 to 5 with that woman from The West Wing—
you know, the tall one. I hear she might be gay but I think they just say that
because she’s tall. It was OK, but not as good as the movie. I mean Dolly is a hoot,
not to mention Lily and Jane. Oh boy, listen to those names—“Dolly and Lily and Jane.”
Is that generational or what? And then we went to see August, Osage County—
that was before anyone knew what it was, before Meryl and Julia had to go and turn it
into a bigass movie. Better on stage. Had that guy from Northern Exposure—
what was his name?—and Phylicia Rashad, that football players’ wife—you know,
the one who played Mrs. Cosby. And after the show we wandered around
Times Square and the neon lights were so bright I expected to run into fucking
Bob Fosse around every corner. And before the show we were eating dinner
at that famous Italian place and the service was so goddam slow we had to gulp
our wine on the way out. I mean it was a weeknight and not even busy.
And I’ll never forget standing in line at the cheap ticket place and the girl
in front of us with blue hair and her boyfriend with magenta and how they were
pierced all over the fucking place and thank god they kept their clothes on
because no one needs to be seeing that. And as we walked past Bubba Gump
and David Beckham hocking underwear on a billboard you said Don’t tell me
he ain’t packin’—that is just not natural.

***

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a “New York School” poem following this recipe. Now I need to go sanitize my keyboard.