“We” could call it a crack binge, but then would arrive, aroused, the question: did Walt Whitman, while in Mannahatta, have access to crack?
Then would arise the question: did it, specifically, matter it be crack? What’s so perfect about crack?
(Perfect in the negative sense of crack inducing Spam, not poetry.)
We are talking Mannahatta here, meaning “they got everything you need.”
Who, then, is this vague, hinted at, innuendo burgeoning– THEY?
Is it the aboriginals?
Is it,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
If the latter, are they “high” on democracy? Is that Walt Whitman’s point? If the latter, without the former, what are we talking about here? In stark terms, neither “high” nor “democratic”.
Spam of Human Affection 
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