Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sandy in Words, Pictures and Music


Menacing omens
sent for three days straight, still the mind
little pilgrim, as low pressure climbs;
you may not be lost in gadgets
for a time, let that slow and crazy 
diamond rise like snow
and drift like sand, it is you
as imitative crow
swirling round a nowhere
center, stirring up a witches’
vat of gold, to whip the gray shades from
the wicked ditches of the East
singing low, in overtones,
as you open out your button-down
overcoat, put the computers
on their blocks, trundle summer
to the garage, wrap the engines,
nail down skeletons, see to it that
guitars rest comfortably
on sofas, for the horns’o’plenty
are blowing towards Poughkeepsie,
and Rowayton’s underwater already
and the karma freight train roils the skies
but it’s nothing really nothing but a cry.
Lights lurch and flicker, like a death row
promenade. The birds have disappeared
to sing to themselves for awhile.
The wind blows like an acid trip
destroying all you know in waves
that crash on all night shores.
Morning and the squirrels work
harder than before
like all New Yorkers, trying to wrest
the broken nuts, deny
the powerlessness
nature suggests.
The masters of this universe
are not amused a mere three feet
of water on its floor
and the New York Stock Exchange is closed.
The rest of the country meanwhile
takes the whole day off to watch TV,
catch the aftermath of a story
told by a wizard storm named Sandy.