(and Masturbation)…
The passion of sex has become intertwined within our modern notions of love. Sharing loving moments with another person is the most primal human desire. And SEX is the most intrinsic physical expression of that love.

BUT if you’re home alone on Saturday night, without the tender touch of another, how could you possibly fulfill your desire? Read a book of course!
Each turning page contains a poem of loving tenderness. Skim the pages one at a time OR watch as passion explodes!

As infamous New Yorker Woody Allen says,

“Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love.”

Enjoy!

All the hoping and praying

all this city

ever did was

crawl

like a tot to a tit

trying to squeeze milk, milk

and more milk

from her blemished breast.

The harbors’ mother

tarnished to reptilian green

slowly bows to the burden

shows her chameleon skin

and crawls slow

into deeper waters

leaving her pedestal, cloak

and pointed coronet.

Holus-Bolus

The bus driver keeps telling us, “Move back to the rear.”

But no one is listening, people plugged in

with their white earphones, their bluetooth headsets

singing and talking to no one, but loudly.

The driver’s not going to move unless we retreat further into the bus.

I can’t go anywhere, pressed against a heavyset man wearing a backpack.

I’d rather walk, but it’s 30 degrees out and windy.  No one wants to move,

did I already say?  We finally go and at Calamus Street, I almost crack up,

literally, like Van Gogh, my head almost splits in two.  Forty people

cramming to get on and we’re already 10 over quota.  Everyone’s a critic.

I’m a critic at 7am when I just want to get on the subway, get a seat,

go to work to make my money and pay my bill.  ‘It boils down to bills,’

my dad used to say.  Boiling bills, we work to pay and we pay

to work, but not really in that order always, though it seems so.

Oh the subway, we finally make it and people are pushing and shoving

and It’s no goddamn race someone yells.  People come to blows at 7am,

did you know?  Have you ever witnessed two elderly women having a slapping

fight?  A homophobic man reapetedly yelling FAGGOT FAGGOT at the top of his lungs

because another man bumped him?  It’s not too pleasant

traveling among strangers, among that energy.  No wonder we plug in,

pretend we’re alone, horse blinders protecting us from the universe.

Melanie Daly

Vaticinator:

On the local train

the seer in the corner rhapsodizes

to all, but really to himself, he knows

what is good and true, but he’s lost sight. 

He sleeps fitfully splayed across the bench

a waking dream, recurring nightmare,

the lullaby of Next stop

36^th Street

and Steinway

and Northern Boulevard. 

I’m going home,

I’m going home.

Melanie Daly

Children and a woman at a street fair in Woodside, Queens. Copyright 2006.

In New York City, agriculture takes on a whole new meaning in the urban landscape. Agriculture is not found in fields, but in apartments in the form of plants and food. The roots of co-op’s and community gardens lie in the kitchens of the city’s elders, who feed us and raise us and preserve memory of simpler times past. When I think of urban agriculture, I think of my grandmother who never runs out of things to say and would never turn down a hungry mouth to feed.