Manhattan Morning Dream Sequence

NEW YORK - Time Lapse - Tilt Shift - Scales by Fernando Livschitz from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.

 

Manhattan Morning Dream Sequence

Silence and stillness don’t actually live on the island of Manhattan. There are flashes though, before sunrise, when they are sensed in the city like the quiescence that precedes a quake. In those cool moments, towers made of Portland, fly ash, slag and aggregate groan and weep in the dark spaces above the carbon arc and incandescent illumination of the streets. The pavement labyrinth, scared by decades of Checker Cab and Crown Victoria abuse, has time to heal and sometimes in those early hours, you might even catch yourself dreaming.

In the tick of a clock the stillness of the dawn is shaken by tin horns and steel cattle as they herd through the tunnels. The Midtown, Battery, Holland and Lincoln belch rubber and chrome, and foul the air of daybreak. The city’s veins course, and crisscross with Pullman cars packed like trains bound for Birkenau.  The blood pressure of the borough rises in sync with the sun’s ascent in the eastern sky. Hundred year old bridges sag under the weight of Detroit and Tokyo wheels and the dreams begin to dissolve with the dawn mist.

Subway steps erupt with molten commuters that bubble up and out across the city. The irresistible flow washes over the cars and buses locked in their cross-town crawl. Soft associations form and disband at every intersection then resume their persistent crush. A symphony of whistles, horns and profanity rattles the air and reverberates off the walls of canyons. The din grows, and the motion accelerates until they overwhelm the asphalt maze and I know that I am home and the dreams are but a memory.

SMG

Like the Moon

Like the Moon

The sun lost its battle

with darkness and slowly

set in the west once again.

It flashed in final defiance

off the high canyon windows

of the Thirty-Fourth St. corridor.

The night ignored the brilliant

epithets of rage and continued

to move across Manhattan, not

so much a thief, as a conquering army.

New York welcomes the nightly invasion

like a hooker greets a sailor on shore leave.

She revels in the cover of darkness

as her wrinkles disappear in the dim,

her marquee lights dazzle and distract

the critiquing eyes of daylight.

For the city is like a waxing moon,

its gravity--its pull ever present;

but it’s only when the sun goes down

that it really begins to shine.

SMG

Screw You Walt Whitman!

Screw You Walt Whitman

Obscurity and irrelevance
are scarier than death,
so I write to leave my mark,
but I am writing in chalk
on the sidewalk of 7th Avenue
and 42nd Street. Tomorrow
my words will be washed away
by fashion footwear
and afternoon thunderstorms.

My fears breed behind decorated walls
and seem to be immune to bug spray,
but I can still chase them
out of the living room
when I turn on the lights.
I have no philosophy
that explains the nature of man,
and my lexicon is the product
of a public school education.
All I have to work with is Silly String,
Paint by Numbers pictures
and an old Poetry Writers Guide
picked up at a yard sale in Queens.

I have Body Electric nightmares,
and Walt Whitman keeps hitting
on Jim Morrison while he plays
the piano at Rick’s Café Américain.
Despite my best efforts the hairy bastard
won’t even look in my direction.

*(Re-Print from Notes & Grace Notes September, 2008)

Manahachtanienk

Manahachtanienk

Henry’s boys
on the Halve Maen
must have seen
something in 1609,
sliding up river,
mapping future
condo projects
up and down
the Hudson.
For 400 years,
disappointment
has left its mark
on this city, ground
into the pavement
by centuries
of footsteps
up and down
the avenues.
Concentration
8 hours at a time,
57th to Wall Street,
Standard &
Poor Sobibór
as trains carry
their daily load
up and down
the tracks.
The lure of Gold-
man Sachs logic,
so we keep coming,
as fortunes rise
and humans fall,
like marquee names
up and down
Broadway.

SMG

Eastern Terminus

Eastern Terminus

The eastern terminus of the Lincoln
Highway is Times Square, New York,
New York; the confluence of Broadway,
Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. Three
thousand three hundred and eighty nine
miles from San Francisco to the Cross-
roads of the World, cut through the
Rockies, across the broken heartland
and over the big shoulders. There is no
poetry here only clichéd mannequins, neon
buskers and Moriarty’s ghost. Pale travelers,
blown in from Bountiful to Bedford, stand
on line at Bubba Gump and an old stripper
cries in the shadow of some forty odd stories.
Jesus used to ride the crystal ball but now we
seek our salvation in the ticker’s rise and fall;
God is dead after all. This is jazz, blues and
rock n roll, marquee lights and urine stained
sidewalks, the end of a long road, destiny
manifest and an innocent kiss at midnight.

Two New Yorks

Two New Yorks

Punch drunk
Pedestrians
pinball
down Broadway
and Seventh
all bobble heads
and silly smiles.

Eyes skyward
they clog
the crosswalk
from 37th
to 49th Street.

Mawkish
expressions betray
their two story lives
and slow histories.

Tourists
will never
know the hurt
or the heartbreak
that walks
the four hundred
year old
sidewalks
of Manhattan.

Times Square
maybe Disney
light but the real
New York
is a cautionary tale.

To all would-be
dancers, actors
and writers;
don’t believe
too much
and never
let the city see you cry.

SMG