Urban

January 26, 2023

MID MORNING SONG

He leans against the wall
outside the Prêt à Manger
witting with his dog
on the old Mexican blankets
that look uniquely out of place
on a cool London morning.
He sips the now fetid coffee
in its Styrofoam cup,
its Burger King logo
and temperature warning.
His hair is long, mostly
gray with streaks of white,
his beard white
with swaths of blond, he
looks as though he
just stepped down the plank
of the great sailing ship,
returned from a voyage
save for his tattered, stained
Manchester United sweatpants.
I put 50p in his metal box
against my better judgment
and stroke behind the ears
of the placid dog.
“May you be many times praised”
he sputters, through teeth
stained tobacco brown,
“for with more like you,
Rufus here, and I shall later
enjoy a fine repast.
May Saint Dymphna be praised.”
In the taxi to Paddington Station
I wonder who my patron
might be, if Jews
only had Saints.

First published in Sideways Poetry Magazine, Issue Two
https://sidewayspoetry.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/london-issue-2-1.pdf

July 3, 2022

LUNA’S SONG

Tonight, when the sun
has finally conceded the day
to its distant but ever larger kin,
the moon will again sing
her ever waning song
hoping we will join
in a chorus we have
so long forgotten,
bound to the earth
in body and in waxing thought.

We will stop and listen
perhaps, over the din
of the city, the traffic,
the animals conversing
with the sky, our thoughts,
but the words will now
be an alien language
for which we have
no dictionary, only
the faint memory
of the place from which
both we and the moon
share cosmic ancestry.

June 9, 2022

THE LOBBY BAR AT MIDNIGHT

Ann Arbor a certain diffidence
Butte born of three rum Collins
Carmel the Gucci show windows
Duluth darkened, foreboding
Erie escalator rattle
Fairbanks a sound coffin
Grapevine grand piano
Hilo the restaurant empty
Ithaca seeking diners
Jacksonville by the exit signs
Kalamazoo conventioneers drool
Lincoln and slobber
Memphis over the ankh necklace
Natchez girl cross legged
Oakland engulfed in smoke
Providence the ficus droops
Rehoboth in the shade of the bar
Salem laughter turning
Toledo into controlled sobs
Urbana highball glass slips
Vidalia off the table edge
Wausau and falls
Xenia dropping slowly
Yuma through the night
Zanesville into sleep.

June 7, 2022

ALIVE IN THE NIGHT

I walked the city
in the heart of the night,
street lights casting the shadows
of ghosts of those long gone
to bed, unknowing
that the city has been
given over to ravening winds
that find no shelter.

I step into an alcove
and the fading light
of the flickering bulb overhead
urges me to move on
lest she bury me
in the darkness of her grave.

By day, this will all
be gone into hiding,
finding shelter we cannot see
and we forget that
when night again returns
the ghosts will dance
wildly in these streets.

May 17, 2022

CITY OF (TRAFFIC) LIGHTS

It is incredibly sad
when all you have seen
is Paris from a taxi hurtling toward
the center of the city, because
you are late for a meeting, and then
your view out of the conference room
window is another glass building
which, if you lean your head
far enough right gives you
the reflection of the Eiffel Tower.

As the meeting drags on
you realize you must pay attention
as another taxi speeds you
to the Charles DeGaulle airport
Hilton for a dinner meeting
and sleep before your 6 A.M.
flight to Zurich, and you begin to think
that Paris and New York
arent all that different
from the back seat of a taxi.

May 3, 2022

CEILI

He liked nothing more than slipping out the back of the Ritz Carlton and heading down Nonhyeon-ro, more alley than street, past the small bulgogi restaurant, and winding his way to Gangnam-daero 106, finally arriving on the great avenue, Gangnam-daero. It was buzzing with life at all hours, but in the early evening the Virgin Megastore was quieter. He’d slip in, ignoring the rock blaring on the first floor, the insane K-Pop on two and finally, passing through classical, arriving at the international section tucked away in a third floor corner. He’d rummage for Celtic CDs, certain he’d find things he never could get at home, for while Korea was so greatly influenced by America, Virgin, a good U.K. company, brought its CDs from England and sold them at surprisingly low prices. A bit of the ould sod in Korea, and hey, kimchi was once green right?

March 12, 2022

SORRY, CAN’T HEAR YOU

What I despise most 
about purchasing large 
dollar items is the fact
that salesmen know only
how to speak 
in superlatives, or
caught short,
comparatives.

If it isn’t the best
they will explain
why it is, or 
at least better
than anything 
I have now,
although they have
no idea what I have.

So I pretend 
to be deaf, 
and hope that they
do not know ASL,
or the will see
a miracle happen
as my hearing is
suddenly restored.

January 12, 2022

PARKING

It is the difference I always notice
between small and large cities: the parks.

When you sit deeply within
Boston Commons or Central Park
you can feel the city always
threatening to encroach and
once again make you its prisoner,
smell and hear the city, traffic
and trucks rumbling, horns
played in a cacophonous symphony.

In small cities you can sit in a park
and wonder where downtown
could be, distant, a whisper perhaps
alwlays unseen, and you can
get lost in dreams of childhood
smell newly mown grass, and
listen unimpeded to the stories
the trees are all to willing to tell.

October 15, 2021

FROM THE ASHES

I would like to go back
to the days when,
after a fire reduced
a commericial building
to charred rubble,
the onlookers and
the gawkers wondered
if it was an angry
customer or employee,
or sloppiness or
poor maintenance.

Now, we watch
as the fire marshals
comb through the ashes
and the rubble, looking
not only for the source
of the flames but also
the accelerant, always
wondering as we do
just how the business
was doing and if
not well, did the owner
at least pay up
on his fire insurance.