In the vernacular. Early 1980s. New York City.
Some parts -
well, some parts
were third world countries really
not like the glitz in the advertising charts.
Unpolished banquets
of flea markets on blankets
selling broken light bulbs,
a bumper,
watched over with a bagged liquor gulp
and a mutt by the side
that when lucky was fed a slice from the corner.
Chain link fencing behind the stench
dented, climbed,
hubcaps displayed on ‘em.
The broadleaf weeds,
the miserable trees
their only nature’s gem.
Yeah,
some parts -
some parts
were cruel and shifty.
Far from the jewel presented
on a postcard and a 15 cent stamp -
wonderfully ******.
The city back then gathered up
washed-up teens or young adults
on the Lower East Side
not even knowing why they were there.
Misfits really
not fitting into a family or town -
no money.
Perhaps once church-going girls
who knew more than the native what a pine tree was
and plus, this is the place where stars are born -
now working,
squeezing,
cocking,
paid to do what they were disgraced to do:
parloring to get the moan,
******* to produce the white honey.
And this was before the crack
and vials crunched on the steps of the subway.
Men would squeegee for cents and cigarettes -
Marlboro or Kent.
A mix of Lincolns, Jeffersons
throw in an Eisenhower, a Washington.
A decade before Broken Windows
and a lord mayors attempt
to take back control of parts lost
to appease the nobility.
Yeah,
there were sections -
sections that you brought a gun to deliver milk.
“Protection.”
And people carried things:
broomsticks cut down,
crowbars in a city in neighborhoods with the motto:
“Do what you gotta do.”
“Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Where grandmothers would be mugged on the subway
in a city on the verge of Chapter 11,
a city of pushbacks and organized crime
where everyone seemed fit,
gang patches
before Angels wore red berets
and offered a hint of safety
in light or dark
and guarded a canvas
of moving steel plastered with graffiti and grime
and the cement crime sublime.
Where one could still dream in a city of bleakness
before,
good or bad,
it all went theme park.