Poem-A-Day #337 : Manhattan

Manhattan

On rocky tops the lighthouse beaming
its mirrored sun - arms
spread a veritable wide embrace -
there is a sand in the gleam - winking
causing pearl in the ducts of the eye

That pool created dip of earth
sinkhole - cocksure - earth loosing itself
a new address would be best - the beam
pressing buttons of travel making lease
on a room in Crown Heights

Oh the sound of gulls - this city on a hill
garbage belched from below it echos
reflects itself - reminds
what could an echo be - the
whole a twin sun binary edging

Poem-A-Day #82 : There Is

There Is

The rapid transit of us into us
there is a word for it :

The trees are :

They point their tiny fists of spring
they have opened their fingers have gone yellow
then turn toward chlorophyll :

If it goes quick then let that go
the word is is :

Pose the mannequin like it is a painter
staring into a mirror
painting a self-portrait :

Trumpets blare and they are only car horns :

The public transport of us engages the turn lane
there is a word that is is and is not :

We are searching for prose like Gershwin
that conveys a man carrying packages on a busy Thursday
on a Manhattan street :

Dropping seeds like ribbons :

Windsocks popping brass :

Is not the word also rapid in its sphere :

Fighting for Life

If you walk around a city, any city, avoiding the tourist spots and purposefully heading down small back streets you will eventually become aware of how close together everything is. How on top of each other the spaces are.

Today you can look at these spaces, especially on the nights when trash is piled and rats are hovering, and easily think of them as hotbeds of illness and crime.

Lower East Side today

You will not be surprised that at one time these spaces were deathtraps.

In the 1890s the Lower East Side was the most densely populated square mile on earth. 1/3 of children in the area died before they were 5. Typhus, smallpox, and diarrhea were rampant enough that many wrote off the entire area and the people living there.

Of course this part of the city and those tenement buildings are pretty fashionable these days. But in 1908 the area was still referred to as 'the suicide ward'. That same year S. Josephine Baker became the first director of New York's Bureau of Child Hygiene. By 1911 she had more than halved the death rate of children.

New York tenements 1910

Which is amazing.

And she did it with simple education. Teaching mother's how to properly make formula. How to keep babies protected from the sweltering summers and freezing winters. Basic things, like clothing, and checking in with health professionals.

And it was all a public work. All for free to the woman and children.

In America.

Baker's memoir of that time, Fighting for Life, is a fascinating glimpse into the very recent history of our country. And of the very recent problem of health and living conditions in our cities.

And the whole thing has the air of relevance today.

I couldn't help while reading this to be overcome with a sense that Baker's fight to get poor, immigrant mothers the help they needed with child rearing is akin to the fight over health care today.

It is expensive, unwieldy, and clearly taken for granted by a lot of the country.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been rocky. But no more so than any other government program going into effect. In the end it will help a lot of us to be healthier. It will aid our future generations in the same way social security has.

In the same way Baker was able to lower the death rate of children, the ACA will eventually make us healthier people.

The fact that we seem to not see the benefit of this is shortsighted and depressing. But unsurprising. As a country we react to things, we do not pro-act. And we tend to be shortsighted. It is rare that we gaze generations ahead and attempt to set ourselves up to succeed long term.

The New Deal was one of the times we attempted to reach into the future and fix it before we got there. The space program was another. The ACA is yet another.

We just need to not get in our own way.

NYC

NYC 2/2

The broken tower that is Manhattan -

(I was about to say 'looms' but that is a cry in the wind
a promise to no one and an explanation of nothing)

- drifts to sea grazes its bow against the bridges
and cradles itself against the edge of Governor's Island

What occurs next is murky

Is a record dribbling against the over door of Long Island

Then everything pushes out - in - to the openness

NYC

NYC 1/31

Metal of the city,
wrought, melting rust, bending hy-
-phen to time. You pause.

Ransom

Ransom (Henry Hudson Maps Manhattan Island 1609) 9/11

The French Blue was stolen today

Then re-cut into the Hope Diamond

And Henry Hudson came across this

Ridiculous island and named the river Hudson

He sailed on to Albany leaving the natives

To their Manhattan

Pinochet began a coup in Chile and ruled 17 years

Somewhere in Maryland

Ground was broken

On the building called The Pentagon

It’s like a dare

What are you thinking about right now?

Involucre

Involucre 6/3

The bench is uneven beneath me
The night is misty – everything smells cold

I pull my vest around me and look
to the faces of the people walking

It is late at night and New York is going home

Eyes don’t contact – it’s an unspoken rule
the second you connect there are needs to fill

The color of streetlights is the color of cantaloupe
and I want to pass it among the bodies of Brooklyn

I count the bones on the sidewalk at my feet

I feel the boundaries of my body heat
this is a suitcase – I carry the daylight with me

And pass it off as deep love
the buttons on the case is heart-shaped

I walk the stairs to my apartment and slide into dark

Go to this...if you can

If you happen to be in NYC on October 23rd Birdsong a great lit mag will be holding a show to help raise funds to support their various publishing ventures.

The show will be at Silent Barn (915 Wyckoff Ave off the Halsey L stop) and the doors open at 8pm, show starts at 9pm, $5-10 dollars sliding scale.

The show will feature sets with B0DY H1GH, Paps, Algae & Tentacles, Baby Alpaca and Making Friendz.

These guys are putting out great content and are doing it on a shoestring budget with a great home made feel. At the least head over to their site and check out their goods.

Hoard

Hoard 7/30

You’re endlessly turning towards Manhattan
constant pirouette            your coat a balloon            Why
are you leaning into the Verizon building
Your face a crimson checkmark            eyes vanishing
under clouds of reflected blue light

These buildings with their Nazi marching
are cramping up and floating            having eaten
too recently to bridge themselves to Brooklyn

But you still turn toward them
away from

Confessional

These strange surrealist poems are what I consider dreams in word form. They resonate in a strange deep place for me. There are connective threads in them but they are tenuous.


Confessional 5/28

I say I want curtains to keep out the sun keep the rooms cool protect ourselves from summer and the bracing swarm of humidity

Dark wood-lined and smelling of oranges the box is always this damp - a tomb - a calm sigh from my mother - a metal grate a preacher

I crawl through the sharp inclined tunnel of blackness in my sleep and see into a valley of searing greens there is a tree filled with pears

What I mean to say is that I find myself thrashing in water while I sleep that the water is my bed and my bed seems to be made of bones

Pear flesh feels like sand soaked in cherries - harder - pearls - smaller - spider eggs - I feel like I am popping everything

And the sun always comes in year round it is light - a growing thing - but it does blind

I am n love with the idea of being in love I don't understand a picnic from a parade - there s a rose bush taller than Empire State and I am clipping the thorns...

Profession Advent

My internet is back up.
So here is a poem for today:

Profession (12/3)

The labyrinthine mold of my brain aims to be the sun
It’s darkest corners alight over lands yet to be founded

I knowledge a room into existence
Purely to break it apart into microns

This particle of sand was a chair and it is now fodder
A tree was once a lily or a bedpost

I upright the world along a horizon that I cut from void
The maze will trick everyone in the end

It will pull you towards center then reveal nothing
There is no center that can possibly hold

This sun is a Milky Way spiraling outward alarmingly
Pulsing with the quickness of my heart and blinking

with my drumbeat eyes my mind is a guillotine
snapping at the necks of anything that comes close


And one for yesterday:


Advent (12/2)

New York opens its arms
The spreading expanse of Brooklyn pulling
Across the waters of the East River an aunt dies

Somewhere a leaf shivers on a bough – not having the good sense to fall
Snow drifts lazily and the bosom of winter is a subway ride at 5am

New York screams at all hours
A hushing sound more in line with an ocean than people
The leaf is still holding as buds begin to unwind

In the botanic garden the magnolia bloom
Each a teacup collecting water – a fragrant ivory curve

The arms are open but the breast is cold
Stony – she is too busy with the millions others
Across the waters of the Hudson more family drift silently away

Smiling and full of hope – dripping like the buildings
New York is a quiet succubus