Tag: New York City

Poem of the Day 10/1/20


Walking through the Irish Hunger Memorial,

Up the sculpted ramps,

To look out over the composed ruins

Built to resemble those dirt-floored stone cottages

That my blood might remember

And the wild grasses sway gently in the breeze

Until I reach the top and look out over the grass and stone-

Turning away from the Hudson River,

I look up to from the roofless hovels

Up to the blue glass of the condos

Up at the Goldman Saks offices

Up to the impossible heights of power and wealth

And wonder if anyone is looking down,

If they can even see down to this place,

If it looks like anything at all

From such heights

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Poem of the Day #21- 9/8/17


Morning in Times Square
In the Canyon of Midtown
Harsh light glares from the East
Grey streets blow out
To blinding white
Tourists squint at the Marquees
And Flagship store.
Locals hide in sunglasses
Or bury their heads
Against the sun,
Walking fast to escape the morning crowd.
I am alone with my camera,
Searching for something else-
Not a landmark or tourist trap,
No blue-glass cage-
Searching for all that brings them out
Into this harsh morning light.

Poem of the Day #19- 8/01/17


Outside a Bank of America branch,
A small plaque catches my eye
Here once was the Filmore East it proclaims

Walking through city streets
These memento mori abound
Telling tales of places now gone
And where people once danced and got high
Here they raged against the dying of the light
And there they wrote and there they drank and here they died.

And for this a plaque.

Here stood CBGB’s
This was once the Bell Labs, where once people watched quarks dance
Home of Janis and Dylan and Cohen
At this bar, George Washington drank the Brits under the table

After I’ve walked through half of Manhattan
And I’m worn down by these ghosts
I wonder what the plaques will say tomorrow
Will they boast of apps created,
Deposits made

A rage begins to grow in me
I want to find the last seedy street
In Alphabet City
Score a dime of shitty street weed
-No Botanists-choice-Cannibus-Cup-artisinal-kind-
a bag half dirt and seed

I’ll storm bank branches and mobile phones shops
I’ll fire a joint and dance

Dance to Jerry’s Guitar
Dance as Jimi wails
Dance to Janis’s blues
Dance to Yardbird’s sax

Just so one day
A plaque might read
This is where he danced until they dragged him away

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem of the Day #3 6/9/17


The City-
     That being the only name she needs-
First, arrives at the eye
Over the great gray rivers of highway
A bloom of steel and brick
A dream
And like a dream,
You enter it first by delving into darkness
Borrowing down to the burnt orange
The halogen subconscious
Only to emerge again,
Not in that glistening dream
but in the canyons
Of glass and concrete
But you cannot let that first dream go
So you carry it with you
And paint it over the red brick
Drape it from the fire escapes
play-act in the coffee shop
     reading Delillo or Proust
Singing its course into cell phones
All while the roads stretch out again
To reach more who will dream her new again