On the astral with a dead painter (feedback pls!)

I

A tourist falls on me
when the train jerks, literally,
across my lap--so sue me
for being a New Yorker
but I am hot today
and not amused.
I only forgive him
upon inspection
of his fine
philosopher's beard,
which I stare at the whole ride.
He'll have to accept that
as penance
for falling on me, something
I might have welcomed
on a different, frigid day.

II

The sound of coffee
percolating at 4am,
the sunrise in the kitchen.
I'm huddled in a blanket
on the floor, stoned,
but surrounded
by politics notes.
In the morning,
I'll discover
that there is no hot water,
I'll put on a t-shirt
and braid my hair,
I'll have slept
through my class. I'll spend
two hours pacing
the High Line, looking
for my friends
but never finding them.
There is a kind
of misfortune
that is amusing,
even reassuring,
about my life.

III

When I get home, my roommate
and her boyfriend
will be smoking
in the living room, listening
to Sublime. I'll have taken the train
from 23rd street, moved out
of the way for a man
with a box much bigger
than the car was wide,
watched a middle-aged man
with watering eyes, wondered
if he had a cold
or his wife had just left.
A girl my own age
with a child will look so tired
or so punk rock
she could be 50. I'll have considered
the soft frown
in the corners
of her mouth
while her child counts.
She'll stare back at me,
trying to gauge
our similarities
from behind my sunglasses.

IV

In the apartment, our
dead flower collection
catches ambient light,
the roses on the wall
hang upside down
on a nail, and fan out
like fire. I think if I came back
in five years, the kitchen
would still seem
like sunrise, like the mornings
I'd stand naked
over the sink with Frida Kahlo
reigning from our tapestry,
from the shrine where
she'd watch men
emerge from my doorway,
cupping their skins
so the neighbors
wouldn't see. She'd gaze back, alive,
from the sacrificial flowers
and burning bushes, with my blue fish
below her, from the basket of ashes
from Tepoztlán, from the brown
bananas and daisies waiting
to go into the collection.
She'd watch men scurry
to the bathroom, to piss
with the pride of young boys,
with their chests puffed out
and porous.

V

When the last embers fall,
I'll go to bed at daylight.
I will feel the heat
leaking in from tomorrow
and Frida will come down
from the wall again
in a lucid dream
and I'll let her. She'll show me
how dark
the brushstroke, the opening
of flowers, how to move
your eyes
and nothing else,
she'll hold
a dead rose
between her knees
and it will open.