162 City poems

Possessed of this city, we are born Into kinship with its people. Eyes that looked upon Cool magnificence of space, The calm of marble, And green converging on green In long distances, Bear their wonder to refute Meaningless dimensions, The Old-World facades. The city is ours irrevocably As pain sprouts at the edge of joy, As grief grows large with our years. New seeds push hard to topsoil; Logic is a grafted flower From roots in a changeless bed. Skeleton steel may shadow the path, Broken stone snag the foot, But we shall walk again Side by side with others on the street, Each certain of his way home.

the archive dance of frank gehry crumples to the sky its finger and walking bridge. the mummers disappear my city sounds. dance crumples to the archive sky of fela. the breaking public crush a lot and pilgrimage from greenville (to farmville) to ruleville up the road. let me place Mrs. Hamer, who crush like an architect outside, like broke composition, in parchman. lula and helena strayed to the dock, founded the hiding republic of the westside trucks to come (inland curving bridge, endless waterways) dragged the repeating public folds into the open work we made, unembarrassed with children, out of the expanse’s closed walls from Béère’s market to black saturday, loved by old hands, the breaking law of movement of farms like wagon wheels to christopher street and dim lights on the edge of abeokuta, mississippi, damn. “we may not have a home to call our own but we’re gonna make it”

Topeka, half the moon is rotten with shadows pooling in the Sea of Topeka. Topeka, where first I wet my brain with a 40oz bottle of Topeka. Topeka, is place name, is damn shame, is a mirror made of sand & Topeka. Topeka, you are substandard. I am not. Yet I’m the one on my hands & knees, searching for the lost keys in the prairie grass, ripped on acid, loving the fallacy that the black keys equal melancholy, the black keys being Topeka. Topeka, miscast capital, you’re no more political than a handshake with your dream-self upon waking, in my case dream-self lives & dies in Topeka. Topeka, the sickness cannot be cured of Topeka. Topeka, tigers laze about the yards, a man with a box balanced on his head, his possessions stuffed to brimming, trots down Topeka Ave. Topeka, the sickness will go unnoticed. The vaccine is composed of rare sentiments, the kind that love & hate with equal abandon, love & hate, love & hate, love & hate. Topeka. Topeka, there was a night when the moon didn’t appear but it appeared everywhere else in the world, what happened that night? Topeka? Topeka, I fear for your life, the intersection of 29th & California is a portal to Hell. I died there twenty times in my youth. Today, driving through, I toss a bouquet of roses to mark my third death, the one that had a soundtrack I can’t shake free. My sister sings it from the shower every morning. Forecast calls for occasional showers, with the possibility of late-morning sleet, in Topeka. Topeka, cast off the reliquaries! Call your men to war! Me?  I’ll be tugging one last hit from the bong I fashioned out of the shrapnel of Topeka. Topeka, pop. rarely exceeds one, as in each trip home happens in rewind, stepping back across the creek, bird in hand throwing up the worm, further back, unbreaking  its wing, bird flying off as if resurrected but from among the living, there I am, eight years old, seven, six, now a slug of semen sucked back into my father, now, as the waters roll back across the plains toward the river, a dog coughs up water, lifts its head, sees nothing, puts its head back down, this, Topeka, is your history, although it never happened.

I   Red Slippers Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey, windy sleet! Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas. The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window. They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets. Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops. They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement. People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair. One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before? The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers. II   Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station Study in Whites Wax-white— Floor, ceiling, walls. Ivory shadows Over the pavement Polished to cream surfaces By constant sweeping. The big room is coloured like the petals Of a great magnolia, And has a patina Of flower bloom Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall— Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water. Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar Above the lighthouse-shaped castors Of grey pepper and grey-white salt. Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”: Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines. Dropping on the white counter like horn notes Through a web of violins, The flat yellow lights of oranges, The cube-red splashes of apples, In high plated épergnes. The electric clock jerks every half-minute: “Coming!—Past!” “Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,” Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily. A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair. Two rice puddings and a salmon salad Are pushed over the counter; The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them. A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone, And the sound throws across the room Sharp, invisible zigzags Of silver. III   An Opera House Within the gold square of the proscenium arch, A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds, Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind. Gold carving edges the balconies, Rims the boxes, Runs up and down fluted pillars. Little knife-stabs of gold Shine out whenever a box door is opened. Gold clusters Flash in soft explosions On the blue darkness, Suck back to a point, And disappear. Hoops of gold Circle necks, wrists, fingers, Pierce ears, Poise on heads And fly up above them in coloured sparkles. Gold! Gold! The opera house is a treasure-box of gold. Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit: Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas; Gold—spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold Of harps. The conductor raises his baton, The brass blares out Crass, crude, Parvenu, fat, powerful, Golden. Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes. Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped, Crash. The orange curtain parts And the prima-donna steps forward. One note, A drop: transparent, iridescent, A gold bubble, It floats . . . floats . . . And bursts against the lips of a bank president In the grand tier. IV   Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil. Like a four-sided wedge The Custom House Tower Pokes at the low, flat sky, Pushing it farther and farther up, Lifting it away from the house-tops, Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin, With the lever of its apex. The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely, Scratching lines of black wire across it, Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface With the sharp precision of tools. The city is rigid with straight lines and angles, A chequered table of blacks and greys. Oblong blocks of flatness Crawl by with low-geared engines, And pass to short upright squares Shrinking with distance. A steamer in the basin blows its whistle, And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings, A narrow, level bar of steel. Hard cubes of lemon Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings As the windows light up. But the lemon cubes are edged with angles Upon which they cannot impinge. Up, straight, down, straight—square. Crumpled grey-white papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, A white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for full thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe. V   An Aquarium Streaks of green and yellow iridescence, Silver shiftings, Rings veering out of rings, Silver—gold— Grey-green opaqueness sliding down, With sharp white bubbles Shooting and dancing, Flinging quickly outward. Nosing the bubbles, Swallowing them, Fish. Blue shadows against silver-saffron water, The light rippling over them In steel-bright tremors. Outspread translucent fins Flute, fold, and relapse; The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles In scarcely tarnished twinklings. Curving of spotted spines, Slow up-shifts, Lazy convolutions: Then a sudden swift straightening And darting below: Oblique grey shadows Athwart a pale casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of rose, black, silver. Short twists and upstartings, Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles: Sunshine playing between red and black flowers On a blue and gold lawn. Shadows and polished surfaces, Facets of mauve and purple, A constant modulation of values. Shaft-shaped, With green bead eyes; Thick-nosed, Heliotrope-coloured; Swift spots of chrysolite and coral; In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations. Outside, A willow-tree flickers With little white jerks, And long blue waves Rise steadily beyond the outer islands.

Where moonlight angles through the east-west streets, down among the old for America tall buildings that changed the streets of other cities circulate elevated trains overhead shrieking and drumming, lit by explosions of sparks that harm no one and the shadowed persons walking underneath the erratic waves not of the lake but of noise move through fog sieved by the steel mesh of the supporting structures or through rain that rinses pavements and the el platforms or through new snow that quiets corners, moods, riveted careers. Working for others with hands, backs, machines, men built hard towers that part the high air, women and men built, cooked, cleaned, delivered, typed and filed, carried and delivered, priced and sold. The river and air were filthy. In a hundred years builders would migrate north a mile but in these modern times this was all the downtown that was. And circling on a round-cornered rectangle of tracks run the trains, clockwise and counter, veering through or loop-the-loop and out again. Why even try to list the kinds of places men and women made to make money? Not enough of them, yet too many. From slow trains overhead some passengers can still see stone ornaments, pilasters, lintels, carved by grandfathers, great uncles and gone second cousins of today—gargoyle heads and curving leaves, like memorials for that which was built to be torn down again someday, for those who got good wages out of all this building or were broken by it, or both, yet whose labor preserves a record of labor, imagination, ambition, skill, greed, folly, error, cost, story, so that a time before remains present within the bright careening now.

Metropolitan Forecast

The street I walk along I often see As if I'd long since left the moving surface Of the world for the endless other side that disperses Us all some day without return but free Of care. I apply myself so well to this fragile proceeding That very quickly my gaze ceases to be Part of the cloudy clump of hope and memory I'll have given my name to. But for this to succeed, A feeling of absolute happiness has to make Itself felt, as if from outside me, so much That at that moment the very street has a hunch That it, the entire city, and its uncertain space Have become one with the mobile but faithful pattern Of phrases written by our steps when we move about. I no longer know who's walking and marking out The ground, bit by bit, to the corner. My gaze then patterns Itself on tomorrow's unknown eyes, which will shine When from the roofs, posthumous and vague, mine glow, And my invisible trace on the asphalt below Might guide the élan of hardier passersby. Will they know what I sometimes suspect: what appears To be the distracted gaze with which we see The world is the world itself?—It sees and hears Itself through the thin transparency of our screens.

Under the edge of february in hawk of a throat hidden by ravines of sweet oil by temples of switchblades beautiful in its sound of fertility beautiful in its turban of funeral crepe beautiful in its camouflage of grief in its solitude of bruises in its arson of alert Who will enter its beautiful calligraphy of blood Its beautiful mask of fish net mask of hubcaps mask of ice picks mask of watermelon rinds mask of umbilical cords changing into a mask of rubber bands Who will enter this beautiful beautiful mask of punctured bladders moving with a mask of chapsticks Compound of Hearts   Compound of Hearts Where is the lucky number for this shy love this top-heavy beauty bathed with charcoal water self-conscious against a mosaic of broken bottles broken locks   broken pipes   broken bloods of broken spirits broken through like broken promises Landlords  Junkies  Thieves enthroning themselves in you they burn up couches they burn down houses and infuse themselves against memory every thought a pavement of old belts every performance a ceremonial pickup how many more orphans  how many more neglected shrines how many stolen feet stolen fingers stolen watchbands of death in you how many times Harlem hidden by ravines of sweet oil by temples of switchblades beautiful in your sound of fertility beautiful in your turban of funeral crepe beautiful in your camouflage of grief in your solitude of bruises in your arson of alert beautiful

S TUDY IN W HITES Wax-white— Floor, ceiling, walls. Ivory shadows Over the pavement Polished to cream surfaces By constant sweeping. The big room is coloured like the petals Of a great magnolia, And has a patina Of flower bloom Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall— Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Thru the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water. Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar Above the lighthouse-shaped castors Of grey pepper and grey-white salt. Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”: Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines. Dropping on the white counter like horn notes Through a web of violins, The flat yellow lights of oranges, The cube-red splashes of apples, In high plated épergnes. The electric clock jerks every half-minute: “Coming!—Past!” “Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,” Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily. A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair. Two rice puddings and a salmon salad Are pushed over the counter; The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them. A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone, And the sound throws across the room Sharp, invisible zigzags Of silver.

1642 Argonne Place, NW Alley of giant air conditioners, you roared your ill wind our way day and night. We burned you down, little house, but you rose right up again. We played guitars by candlelight and sang songs to the cat. We stole each other’s cake and dope, dancing all night, sleeping late, driving down Columbia Road to the Omega for Mexican-style chicken, which two lovers could live on for an entire day. We threatened you with a sledgehammer if you wouldn’t let us go. Enough, you finally stammered, be gone from Argonne! 1920 S St. NW: The Chateau Thierry If you opened the door without thinking, the entire neighborhood gushed into the apartment like an open hydrant.  We gathered around the black and white tv  like it was a tabernacle containing the secrets we yearned to know.  The first Gay Pride Day made the building tremble so violently the roaches scurried from the cracks and crevices looking for safer quarters.  Theodore, Edward, and Al ran the only manual elevator still going in our part of town. Casey, violent and crazy, dealt coke out of his first floor apartment.  Mara owned a dozen petite dogs to be avoided at all costs. Zoltan Farkas wrote The Baltimore Poems and disappeared completely from the landscape. I had a brass bed, my altar of love, and a cat named Spooky.  People yelled my name up the side of the building, I threw them a key out the window, and they rose up to the fifth floor and through that open door into my abode of bliss, which I still miss. 3701 Massachusetts Ave. NW: Cathedral Court They told me I was moving to the geriatric district. No Metro up there, they warned.  But I was now on top of the hill, across the street from one of God’s most prestigious addresses. I would stare at the naked bodies carved above the Cathedral entrance, like a page torn from the Playboy version of Genesis, thinking yes—this is the way religion should be. A bus took me back to Dupont Circle in three minutes.  At night I’d walk home up Mass Ave, past all the embassies, loving to touch down momentarily on Irish soil, salute the statue of Gibran, great poet of wedding-vow love, hail Mary and Tom and Cyn and Steve.  Pick up the mail. Waltz with Susan in the enormous living room, then lie in bed at night, by the window, hypnotized by the big cake of a church bathed in its rosy blush of light, fireworks erupting somewhere in the city’s distant dark.