New Amsterdam Triptych

I.

The plumes of blue forgiveness open

Their closed blinds – and onto the white lights

Of the City, on rooftops, fluff and tobacco shops,

The Village night of Shih Tzu’s and vintage clothes

Through someone else’s eyes to not see through –

New York turned to California while I was gone,

Cigarbars now organic smoothie sheds, the smell of weed

Replacing that of hoisin.

                                                   Every 5 years one should check in,

As on an old lover, the one you made laugh and thought

That meant they cared. Though lambs now graze to

Gregorian chants by the locked church graves of saints,

And unicycles now have brake lights, Afros are jejeune,
And the Village Voice is nothing but a yard of weeds, 

Not much else has changed; they still complete each other’s 

Sentences, the beard on Peter Cooper’s statue still is

Growing, the Jews for Jesus still are chanting along

With new white folk song protests against white supremacy,

And the old man with the gut bucket still plays for change

On the pallets of a long-defunct gas station.

II.

The same moving, to the same unknown destination

Happens here, where light islands through the trees

Shine on passersby who look any which way but the sky

In a world a few miles away, where hemlocks imbued

With college ivy open for sun from the expressway,

And birds move the light as they dance on the leaves.

The trains skim golden, overgrown green

Satellite towns of leaf and seed, where high-rise strands 

Are lifted by sun, the river uncovered to its silted branches

And fly-whipped fish, its leaves and ripples flowing 

Without a gate but light.

                                               The ancient dappled trees 

Are lines of reasoning that reach to the sun, spread bolts 

Of branches charged with new green thinking, as horizon eaves 

Hang like rotted slabs, and roots unable to loosen 

From sodden banks turn fruit for bracket fungi shelves

That give their smoke to the light, like white-edged strings

Of butterfly wings caught in mid-flap up the bark ...

The sheen of mud ... the shine of berries …

                                                                                What formlessness

Feels like, against the shadows of expression. The white

Glints in winks across the warping water ridges. The pockets

Of light are their own sphere, that joins with what is there, 

Inside river canopies, where capillaries fill the sweeping 

Curve of sky, with its still, equally unreadable calligraphies. 

Eyes at all levels revel in the reveal, though knowledge is 

Patchy and the robe doesn’t touch except as heat. Yet, 

Wherever such light joins, there is beauty.

III.

Waiting for it, on Crosby Street again, where the ghosts

Of the art from the dead who once lived here vie

For no eyes, while pigeons drop from trees on the people

Putting it out there at Washington Square. Here, a man

With mouse shoes and continuous talk tries to catapult his glory

Onto the next passerby, unaware of all who’ve come before,

Who made him what he wants to be.

                                                                    The Manhattan wind

Of mind, once it’s passed through, offers nothing but concrete,

The windows that once saw the crystalline vision of a city

Still see nothing by themselves, but refract back 

Whatever the onlooker brings, and the ateliers 

Still live only in the sound of their pipes, 

And the way their lights turn on and off.

                                                                          The walls outside

Are a stiff impasto palimpsest of the posters of events

Of yore, as if they lived forever, as if the thick black letters

Now on top are memories of nights their magic cast

Its spell … but it was made to be disposable, to be of use

In the endless longing to be seen and known, and the

Endless need to see and know –

                                                            The girl has moved on

To be part of another place that will take her temporarily,

In a flutter of chatter how "she fits, she fits" magnificently

In the center of a world that was created in that moment.

Everything else is history, the rust of water borne from

Tower tanks above; it all exists, like the vokka moon,

The CBD mocha, the skater’s knitwool beanie, to clothe a wound

That isn’t even aware of its own bleeding,

                                                                            So when the gallery

Viper passes by the earnest faces and thoroughly conceived plans

To reach for some amorphous splatter of blood, it’s also of a

Moment that’s already past, so there's no loss of hope, as they look

To the sky for the new, despite endless crushing disappointment

That at the time seemed like a pleasant waste of time,

To exalt something that might just do the impossible,
What we’d never otherwise let it do: Define us
In a way that includes.

99% Business, the Rest How the 1% Lives

"No crazies today," she cheerfully reported
and vowed to continue to upscale disruption
across the whole Carmen Miranda enchilada hat,
but she practically begged to deliver on a platter
as many diabolical show biz accounts as we could handle
though we were full already with images of oil drills
in people's yards and how the British gunpowder was stolen,
and then Oscar Wilde was waved over the proceedings
like a thimble of commie rum with burlesque bitters
to look down with benevolent animosity, like any good Victorian,
and I knew the velocities of change would find the right ecosystem
after all.

Friday Afternoon in the Green Room

The door hit me on the way out
Like cactus at sunset as the sandbox turned to dust
And the puppeteer laughed,
Prickly-pear, once-mighty,
At the thought of another fool
Like yours truly, as disposable as razors
But never nearly as sharp,
To grimace under her fingers
And call it a dance.

While the players writhe in pathos
At my poor, unfathomable fate,
The take back of the golden handshake,
My emotion is not hate, but crazy love,
That she thought enough of me to cut me off
Like an alkey at three lime-green gin philosophies
Before the madness set like concrete,
And she was sweet to kill the light
So I didn't have to see leftover faces nursing miseries
Their soft, unfeeling hands
Rehearsing their own ghost limb shake.

And I wish that she and I could meet
In a nicer place, where time has healed
Enough that together we could laugh
At the gift we concocted in limitless love
Instead of this head let loose from the bag at parting,
This waiting for the black hole our legs will soon fall into
As if we are illusion, not the trap doors each steps through.

New Canaan Morning

The men in blackest suits
Emerge from dim white mansions
To walk the pre-dawn highway
With grim eyes fixed ahead
Suitcases sway in rhythm
To the Talmadge Hill Train Station
Where their crosses await.

Goodbye Mamaroneck

The peacefulness of flowering weeds
        Draped along the waterline
The green that reaches through all grime
        In summertime

I see they're all not there now
        To be seen
They're paintings of the train
        That stays on rails

Its cargo is too fragile
        To look within -
And Willow Auto Sales
        Will do for now

May

These trees move much too quickly
Like thieves in the night
When the leaf vale finally flows

A softness far too perfect
To ever compensate
For the hard-luck lock-down winter
Where all was lost, all forsaken

This new thing at the gate
Has no pain left but the future
It must, like a spring, await

Monday Morning

The traipse - commuter shoes -
burdens hung from shoulders -
a root for breath from underground
- to dirty New York morning.

Alone in the Woods at Sunset

Bountiful day,

Intelligent evening,

The fire-tempered branches lean straight in to me.

The woods have thinned to valleys and rocks,

Brown and orange suffuses the green.

The leaves are all leaving for the light now

And falling back on black mirroring streams

And on meadows clear enough to receive them,

Alive enough for ghosts

And carrying such wisdom the boughs keep their pride as they bow.

Nothing here wastes a moment of its life

Or resists death's tender dissolving embrace.

Gold ferns seem older and firmer than I am

Sensing the smoke from my kind.

The Bristow

The chipmunks cheep in shaggy underbrush

as cricket-throb in auras hugs the grove.

The hissing stream’s the same as leaves above

while crows and wigeons tell the woods to hush.

September’s fresh cathedrals of the sun

glow on goldenrod and ripe crabapples.

The first dead leaves are honey lacquer dappled

and new white flowers run where there were none.

The Bristow's now familiar as a friend,

still alien, but touching who I am.

The water darter skirts across the pond

just like a spider drawing on a hem.

Fuzzed cattails geese still scavenge silhouette

the pastel incandescence - this - sunset.

An Unexpected Moment of Freedom

Fractured by obligation, the diaspora of SUVs
          bears to uncertain destinations
                   to tend unknowable brains
                            while the sun maintains transparence.

 The maddest of poets lives in the squarest of houses,
           presides like some rooftop vagabond
                   as the children squeal "Malatesta"
                              in long shadows of the lawn.

"Summertime" by Abbey Lincoln plays
            at the neighborhood hot dog stand.
                    Birds above the trees are crying.
                               Life is for me, and me alone.

No Trains Today, Buses to White Plains

White apartments for the elderly,

a touch of red in the trees,

their empty chairs arranged around

the rusted cannon mounted in the town square.

It turns out there’s a history here,

you've been inside me all along;

I can see the sleeves of the glee club,

hear the Swedes' long talks in the park.

The people are all on the platform now

impatient to leave this new city,

Reunion Coffee is served on the way out.

Outside

The beauties of Manhattan weave their goddess resemblances

         through the vapor of a still afternoon

while the plaid September suits deal to try to earn their ardor

         with conjured reassurances and smiling words.

It’s the kind of a day a cat stays in the window for,

         where even the men in blue look on benignly, beatifically

as they collect by the thousands at the Waldorf Astoria

         war-zone fortified for the heads of state visiting.

Blondes beam at me behind black sunglasses

         while men try to pin their words to my lapel

but still I don’t exist, amid the chandeliers of crystal and amethyst,

         the river of mirrors, the golden gleam of pretzels in the sun,

the feeling that we’re walking through a painting in a museum as one,

        but then an Asian woman, without speaking, presses a piece of paper

to my hand: “Organ Harvest of the Falun Gong for China’s tourist trade”

         and I realize I have been alive the whole time.

The Longest Wait

While they perfect their buddhahood mere towns away
the bananas wait in the freezer,
roses blue in the fridge,
avocados lay next to the stove.

I put away the witch hazel, geranium, eucalyptus
and collect 26 hibiscus flowers.

I have become less than human, and more
than a God, as the veil between imagining
and knowing turns dangerous, any thought
can turn to pure light, my body at any moment
may no longer be my own.

                                              The brand new country
music station accompanies the ticking clock,
reminds me how deeply I need to change.

Overgrown Path Through the Forest

New purple in the sun
peels from the primordial skin
the last ash of time and space away
- they're optional now, as faith is
prerequisite. Black streams surrender
to the moment - forget what they know.
Green dragonflies guard the flow.
The pond's solar systems simply show
that somewhere, beyond the living mud,
intelligent toads and tragical wasps,
the Swedish girl waits and you must
treat her like a queen, always.

Some Clews at the Dog Fair

I'm nothing but a pretty face, a sense of place,
a taste whose trace can base from wayward glance
a possibility - and then I see a woman
so at one with he - I'll water ski
in South Bay with no other.

The Softness of Spring

New York
speaks gibberish
because it is so very old.

It deserves all its jewels
to cover up the scars it has endured
from a lifetime of watching
ground balls go under
the glove of the shortstop
over and over;
a lifetime of so much hope.

The only thing it is good for anymore
is to teach the young
with a kindly kick to the teeth
and a bill for how much it costs to be wrong
—the best way of learning—

and I, unbelievably, am young.

The Financial System Explained to a Five-Year Old

Paper covers rock
Scissors cuts paper
Rock crushes scissors

Money covers gold
Trust cuts money
Gold crushes trust

Green Curtains in the Closet

The insomnia house
with its working-class planks,
now bequeathed
to a family from Queens,

while my fat candles burn
in Victorian spires
filled with Indian drums
and bookshelves of poems.

This facade that seems so frivolous
is the shell of my protection
for my own most peculiar religion
(the only kind that matters,
the one that accepts all others
(because it is so crazy
and so true to me)).

The birds and the squirrels
who were calling me away
are now looking in through my windows.

The town with the last reputation to uphold
wakes up in the glow of spring's promising

and I sleep
right through it.

Of Rocket Scientists & Hedge Fund Managers

They think 'til every second is perfection
They strain 'til every moment is more pure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

For only in their minds is some protection
Building to forever some vast sewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

They navigate the poles, collect the seasons
Have every guidepost marked along the tour
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They circumscribe all peoples into sections
Apportioned 'tween the greater and the fewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

The borders that they make are grounds for treason
To teach the young who cross to be mature
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They calculate by hand precise directions
But even then they really are not sure
They think 'til every second is perfection

They tolerate some crying within reason
Will let some longing sighs remain obscure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

Erections for destructions for protection
The greatest minds find lightning bolts to seize on
They think 'til every second is perfection
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

Some Implications of the Piri Reis Map

The polarities are melting,
glaciers flow like vast unclogging toilets,
and an albatross on a stony promontory
emerges for the first time from its nest
to learn all there is to know
about the ground
until it finally finds its eight-foot-wing true nature
and flies without the need to land again
from the Chrysler Building’s feathered spires
as from the pyramids, and below its windows,
like love, a flow, not black and yellow cabs
but Emperor Penguins tobogganing inland
to incubate eggs in what is now the most hostile place on Earth,
the South Bronx.

Everything has a purpose, towards a larger order, a larger justice;
it takes 1,000 lemmings a day
to keep the Snowy Owls in cubicles in love;
polar bears rip manhole covers off to paw at seals;
on an old New Jersey coastline
five million walruses lay on one beach
and bulls fight to the death
in front of the children.

Seaweed hangs like banners inside Madison Square Garden
as kelp waves from the rafters of the old Grand Central Station
to disguise the sharks and bottom-feeders who battle on the floor.
Killer whales can fit inside the subway tunnels now
to feast upon translucent grunts
swaying like no dance troupe
peeling back the blooming onion veil
in a universal spiral that furls and then uncorks
and baffles the armored sawfish
who subsist on rainbow smelts and hake hag slime.
The octopi climb cathedral walls in deft pursuit of mussels;
the black eels chase pink pogies through barnacled art deco;
dolphins circle round the tank that was the UN Building
- they like its peaceful vibe, and besides, they can hunt
the hammerhead sharks that lurk on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza;
tautog, cusk and pout
with eyes so blank and purposeless
all leverage in on a grouper’s food
to try to gain a crumb, and they all join
each others’ conversations, completing thoughts
with a wave wand of their tails;
and the dogfish swim the streets in the most
outlandish costumes, but no one blinks an eye
unlike in LA, where everyone wants to be discovered, here
everyone wants to disappear.

The Times Square lights have crystallized in mid-air
and even the headline reels have become frozen in time.
The Jesus Petrel minds the shop on the top of the Empire State Building
while shags roost on the ledges watching white wolves track musk-oxen
down the tundra hills of reddened Central Park;
the beluga blissed out molting over stones like a loofa
have gone much further north, past 86th and Columbus Avenue,
the caribou click their electric antennae
like no bulls or bears before could ever do;
there’s starfish all down Broadway,
sea urchins in the Bowery,
oyster beds at the Waldorf Astoria,
torpedo rays along the Battery,
sea horses run at Aqueduct,
skates glide like Rockette skirts through Rockefeller Center,
tuna in the Meadowlands are eating soft sea grass,
snails cling to the Village walls quivering in their shells,
bluefish are getting schooled at the project bball hoops,
but there are no fish in Chinese restaurant tanks,
some lobsters though are skittering through FAO Schwartz
and some are at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t much matter,
for their lives are far too natural for them to have a care
about the subtle structures of their templates.

The blue whale at the center of town
breathes in every fact with the plankton,
and unknown lips are kissing
the gifts of this remembrance
and the blowhole breath, having formed it
into a variable of useful truth
can exhale now something of its original state,
what no longer must be solved,
not scrambled as it was
when it was sought.

There’s no need any more for lox or jewelry,
newspapers or cigars,
vodka or watches,
ermine or guitars,
for the people are
somewhere else,
living with the Gods
they thought were killed
instead of grief.