The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as Manhattan schist. Schist is foliated or layered in appearance. Quartz sparkles, micas, and amphiboles are primary minerals in schist. A melted rock, just like the city resting above, it too, a famous melting *** of humanity.
This one poem too, composed from pieces of other poems,
folded in layers of many others that melted together,
in harmonious discordancy
<~>
this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee, I am composed
the city I love,
where I was born,
schooled and fooled in,
by many a woman
the city where I named
and raised my children
will probably die in
this city, and when
I am long forgot,
my name never uttered,
who, will think of me?
Perhaps,
whenever someone says,
"he was such a rascal"
these tales I took,
some or all,
from beneath my skin,
where city streets grit,
was injected beneath my skin
and came with the title,
City Boy
so today, on a reborn street,
near tall towers no more,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn,
but nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the typical NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
unsilently weeping, thinking that:
We lose or throw away so much we should have kept,
We keep so much we should have thrown away
street prowler, heart growler,
Art Deco lampposts,
the mountain range of east seventy second street,
begs the bagger's question,
each post
begging each other,
"from whence will come my inspiration?"
licked the stubbled sidewalks,
fell down into their living caverned cracks,
light needed, needy softly heated,
orange and green pizza neon signs,
saying here,
if you see upon what be,
these are your city's homeland colors of veracity
perhaps
NYC was model precursor
for our internet presumed-to-be-alive-but-who-can-say-for-sure
model for the world today,
where I know not my apartment's neighbors name,
yet carry his second child
in my arms,
when the fire alarm
summons us all to flee
to street safety...
and still only
"know" his child's first name,
and his father,
as Apt. #16D
all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing,
are his defrocked muses him annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
their coronets trumpeting his unmasking,
*making this essay, his revelations,
a product of their harmonious discordancy
See the photo (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/NY-Central-Park-Rock-7333.jpg/300px-NY-Central-Park-Rock-7333.jpg).
this was the climbing mountain of my early childhood.