The pawn sits
Twenty-six stories up
Outside my window
That is nailed shut--
Watching, without eyes,
Sensing, with its stone pores
Absorbing everything that floats
Up from the steam from the street grates to the smell of engines laced
With the sweet scent of rotting garbage, all the bags lined up
On the sidewalk next to scurrying
And hurrying, bustle and hustle,
Self-cares a bubble around each
Individual, at twenty-six stories,
They are ants.
They travel throughout the deeply cut man-made divots in the earth and pray to the buildings that
Scrape the sky that their purpose
Is shared, that the buildings promise
To hold their alliance, to stand tall
And not fall like domino's in a game of the hereafter.
The streetlamps let us peek
At the night life that starts to seep
Out of the shadows of the neat
And tidy crossroads of the
urban peak of immaculate synergy.
If you squint, you see the cracks,
The weary, the unfortunate, the left behind dragging their cares
With them, the lingering smell of ammonia and fear, the ambition slapped from their worried bones, their tired hands outstretched
For any kindness, any recognition
That they are still an 'us'--
part of the human flora that blooms
Even when their roots are in a crack of the sidewalk pavement.
Vendors, senders, returning
To their marked blocking spot
Down Broadway, even the taxis
Feel rehearsed, pedicabs peddle,
The fake designer purses' buckles
Glinting, glaring, the tourists
Picking--staring, the natives
Mumbling, shuffling--daring to
Brave the underground
Where the pawn no longer sees,
Taking the people away to places,
Then regurgitating them from
The depths, flooding up
from some other
Hole in the ground.
Years ago,
From this spot,
Construction workers sat
Nine hundred feet up
On a cross beam suspended
With metal rope,
Eating their lunches,
Having a smoke,
Near the new home of
The Pawn,
Before it understood
What pigeons were.
Before it was stained
With flying excrement,
Beaten with heavy rains,
Accosted at all hours
With the sound of horns
And traffic and people.
This is the Pawn's city,
Watching over it with
Cleverly disguised senses,
Not a gargoyle hanging
Over a precipice,
But a silent narrator,
Absorbing the culture,
On the twenty-sixth floor,
From which it never moves,
And calls this place
Home.