Stepping back in the room, I caught myself
Frozen
Like a cat burglar who had lost his cool
And for a second I thought I was Mahler —
Perhaps it was my high forehead
And my reversed sloped hair
As if my roots were growing out of the crown of my head and up backwards
Towards the sun (or the Aliens who had neglected me)
I was disappointed to not have looked like Prince
But maybe that’s the price you pay
For living past the age you wanted to die at
I thought I knew that profile anywhere, having seen it stretched across the banner of an old friend’s door
He was a classical musician
and loved all things sad
He would play Elgar on a piano
and insist that it sounded better without an orchestra,
We traded stories of madness and caught each other once again
years later when we both did our stint at Paine Whitney
Our vitals were low, we were anemic, we were angry, we were young
And once when I stepped into the sun, my wife cried
And when I asked her why
She said I reminded her of something she had forgotten about in her heart
And while I was hoping it might have been Prince or some rock ‘n roll revolt
That jarred her memory —
It was the moving shadow around my head, landing into the new apartment we
had just rented —
And I cursed myself as I heard our new neighbor jerking off his new leaf blower
in a coarse Sunset Park afternoon up on the highest hill of Brooklyn where some
Rich and poor are now living closer and closer —
I heard the faint notes of a symphony spilling out of a broken heart.
Tagged age, art, Brooklyn, Dennis Leroy Kangalee, existence, Gustav Mahler, heartbreak, identity, love, mental illness, music, NYC, poetry, short story, Sunset Park, truth 
Dennis Leroy Kangalee 