{"id":436,"date":"2011-11-09T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=436"},"modified":"2011-11-09T11:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T11:01:00","slug":"kevin-ridgeway-is-in-times-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/kevin-ridgeway-is-in-times-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Ridgeway is in Times Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pacing Outside of a Hamburger Joint in Times Square<\/span>
 <\/span>
When I was seventeen years old<\/span>
I lived in my brother\u2019s window sill<\/span>
over looking the George Washington Bridge<\/span>
riding the trains and prowling the streets<\/span> <\/span>of the city,<\/span>
and on several of those nights <\/span>
I perfected my fledgling standup comedy routine<\/span>
in front of one of his floor length mirrors<\/span>
 <\/span>
a British Royal guard hand puppet and<\/span>
a potato masher, and an explosion of<\/span>
impromptu lack of preparation<\/span>
were among my cauldron of props<\/span>
stuffed in my winter over coat<\/span>
as I paced the front of the <\/span>
Times Square hamburger joint open mic<\/span>
<\/span>
I never went in<\/span>
I perused the discount discs <\/span>
at Virgin mega store<\/span>
riding its escalators<\/span>
with music on my megaphone mind <\/span>
 <\/span>
I stared at the roaring lights of Broadway<\/span>
the whirling cars and people snapping by<\/span>
in constant instances of postcards<\/span>
that they sell <\/span>
in Times Square<\/span>
 <\/span>
I was afraid of all of those scary bastards<\/span>
the headphones and the music drew out the pain<\/span>
I never tried out the comedy act<\/span>
the props are still sitting idle<\/span>
 <\/span>
In storage in my mother\u2019s attic<\/span>
I\u2019ve walked that stretch of light<\/span>
many times since<\/span>
high, drunk and flailing my arms<\/span>
 <\/span>
I should have at least bought a burger<\/span>
and gone into that angry abyss<\/span>



*Kevin Ridgeway<\/span> is a writer from Southern California, currently wood shedding in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend and their one-eyed cat.  Recent work has been published in Unlikely 2.0<\/span> and Underground Voices Magazine.<\/span>  <\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pacing Outside of a Hamburger Joint in Times Square When I was seventeen years oldI lived in my brother\u2019s window sillover looking the George Washington Bridgeriding the trains and prowling the streets of the city,and on several of those nights I perfected my fledgling standup comedy routinein front of one of his floor length mirrors a British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}