I Dedicate This City To You

as if the roots which I had abandoned, the land
lost with my childhood, suddenly came searching for me,
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering aroma.

I Dedicate This City To You

I owned this city
The day I moved in
Now I just have to work
And make it official

I dedicate this city to you

I am a Third World guy
I love the filth, the crowds, the obnoxiousness
The unpicked garbage, I love the package deal
If there is any Third World in America
It is in New York City

I own this city
I dedicate it to you

I have measured the grounds of this city that I own
With my own steps
I have crisscrossed this city like sun rays
On foot
To claim what I own

I dedicate to you

To walk through the outer boroughs
Is to go on world travel
Manhattan is magic
Times Square
Center of the known universe

I love this city
But if it were not for the parks
I would go mad
Homo Sapiens are not designed
To stare at concrete all day
Day after day after day
Hour after hour

The lights in Times Square
Are so rude and in your face
They are sound
Pretending to be light

From my room I can hear
The bells of icecream trucks
I dedicate to you this city and its quiet

Trains are cheaper and better
When you ride a train you feel like
You are riding something
Cabs look awfully like the cars
Out there in the Midwest somewhere
So small you can barely spread your legs
The cabbie revolutionaries of mini Nepal in Queens

I dedicate to you this city
The Amazon forest of humanity
There is not a human life form you can't find here
Every town on earth is represented
No language not spoken
This city your gift to me
My gift to you

My Back Against The Wall

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue

the month of June trembled like a butterfly;
and you, Matilde, passed through noon,

Two happy lovers, without an ending, with no death,
they are born, they die, many times while they live:

I Dedicate This City To You
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the wholesomeness of your busy feet

But I can not give up your love, not without dying.

Love Is The Reason

while inside, a ferocious love wound around
and around me - till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword,
slashing a seared road through my heart

Love Is The Reason

It is the season for loving
Love is the reason for loving.

Loving you is the best thing I could do
For my people, though that is not the reason
In claiming you I could reclaim my family
That I never lost, but I have not seen in ages
Like Lord Rama in the Ramayana
Who was gone into the vast jungles for 12 years
I have been a goner

It has been my destiny
To be gone

It would have made perfect sense
To hook up on day one, during week one
The first month, the first year
I might have been able to skip
Utility bills
At least

You would have known to help me
With my urgent work for Nepal
My ambitious attempts for my startup
I would have liked being near you
I would have liked to have someone to talk to
I could have played with time
Made it go faster, slower

But how I have struggled
The past I never left behind
Just because I moved to New York City
First hometown I ever had
Do you know what it means to say that
Can you imagine

I have had to relive so many of the past experiences
In attempts at liberation
Kathmandu and Kentucky are like fingers to me
Those landscapes are part of my identity
And I will not have it any other way
But the institutional abuses of power
Those two places
Kept getting at me
Had me immobilized
So many times
When you were only a look away
A word or two away
So many many times
I dropped the ball
And made you feel bad
I sent out signals I did not mean to send

I have had to struggle
It has been a shame
Because I look normal, and happy, and ambitious
The pain lurking beneath the calm exterior
Has been a shame

But I have dug with my own knife
And taken many bullets out
While never stopping the fight
I have fought much bigger fights than any in the distant past
The scales don't even compare
But the memory is a strange thing
Especially if your mind video never lost nothing
The past looms large
The past is never past

I feel better
I feel ready
I will dig deeper for more bullets
So I can feel even better
But I am about ready

I am so very sorry
It took me a while
I have been foolish
For love is the antidote to pain
Solitude is not as strong
That is what wisdom says
That is what instincts say
But as if I had a choice

But I got stuck on the vast symbolisms
From accumulated experiences
Real and imagined slights
Having the night vision goggles on
While surveying a near all white room
Seeing the threads of the perceived value system
That binds all together
Yes, I have doubted you
Because you were in the room
It was me doubting me
Me struggling not with you
But my past that was refusing to let go of me
Until I stared it in its face
And threw it to the ground
I fired my guns

In seeking you
I seek nothing less than rebirth
And I have worried
It might be too much for you
Unfair perhaps
You should not have to share
All that I have lived

Especially when
What really fascinates me
Is the future
What fascinates me
Is this world before me
Not me
I am but a conduit

Every time I was made to feel lesser
For being a Madhesi
For being not white
My instincts got stronger
My dreams became bigger
Some day the possibilities will catch up

Have I played safe
Perhaps not
The safest thing would have been to look you in the eye
Instead I have been paralyzed by my past
I thought I left behind at the city boundaries
But obviously I did not

I am sorry it took me a while
But I take solace in that
Amitabh and Jaya did not hook up on day one

Woman, but this is not even the beginning
You must have your own elaborate story
I should listen up

To think anywhere along the way
You could have bought me a drink
To wash away my 10,000 years of male guilt

Or perhaps
The fights were necessary
The points had to be made
There perhaps are no short cuts

Woman, who are you
Really, but who are you

The time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.