That Friday

That Friday
* a Hunter Slaton original

That Friday I was fizzing angrily above it all,
in a the hell with it, hail-mary mood. The clouds
were grey so the Empire was too, gunmetal,
like a battleship, or a battleship in the game Battleship.

That building had moods. Feelings
rushed through me like high clouds, quickly,
over a scooped, fresh-scrubbed valley. The reason was because

of the meeting. During the meeting (and after, and later)
I had seen red, like a Pamplona bull on the boulevard. A righteous fury'd risen
within me, a red mist a bulletspray.

Leaving my work building
the street was a curl I shot; I made appointments
left and right: a stalking,
deep-breathing, Serenity Prayer-saying
sneaker-clad tiger, burning bright.

Put a Geiger counter on me and
I would have fairly crackled.

After I got nearly to where I was going
in Bryant Park I paused. The grass
was all ripped-up and gone, sand-flooded. A small sign said

"The lawn is closed for reseeding." I should say it was.

Pacing through puddles I counted it down, checked the watch
did some breathing, before the interview. The meeting:
would it turn out to have been a good or bad thing?

I couldn't tell and couldn't smoke; I'd quit. That morning
I'd woke sober, for the 10th month. Ten times ten times ten times I hadn't, hating
the swim up from sleep. But not this one.

On the air was the smell of spring: fresh, newness, thaw;
the opposite of November woodsmoke. I remembered
my intro to the city'd been here, into 11 W. 42nd and the green chairs

of Bryant Park. The park was not being reseeded then
and soon it would not be again.

I pushed through the tall revolving doors and went in.