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preservationman Aug 2018
Songs upon endless Songs
A Woman who illustrated fame
I am talking about Aretha Franklin that’s her name
Her life spans the globe
Ms. Franklin’s singing talent was a blessing starting in Church
Praises and Glory would be from the congregation
But it was the Lord’s name in appreciation
Yet Ms. Franklin’s honor followed and blossomed through the roots of her entertainment life
It was her music full of establishment and devoted commitment
Ms. Franklin’s singing even caught the attention of the White House
She sang with Pride and Dignity at President Obama’s Inauguration
Ms. Franklin’s singing was pure inspiration
But too the world it was total appreciation
But Heaven called Ms. Aretha Franklin home
It was her moment from Earth to come to Heaven to roam
Ms. Franklin was marveled with everyone she came in contact with
But now she will be communicating with Moses, Joseph, Paul, Isaac, Jacob and David
Ms. Franklin will be walking with the Biblical Greats
Heaven welcomed and the gates were opened in appreciate
So Heaven called and Ms. Franklin entered in
A soulful life that will begin
This is not Goodbye, but until we meet again
Heaven maybe so far away, but Ms. Franklin will always be in our hearts, but one day, a personal home we will all stay
Ms. Franklin will state upon your arrival, “Do you remember me”
You won’t have to think, but you will certainly see
You have inspired the world
Our hearts just swirl
Until last time, sing on as you are Heaven’s own and for all of us to come together in embrace and while on Earth get along.
Cedric McClester Jan 2016
By: Cedric McClester

Welcome to Franklin’s
You know how we do
Get on the line
If you want our barbeque
We open at eleven
And close when we are through
People from all over
Come here just like you

Welcome to Franklin’s
Pull yourself up a  chair
It’s four or five hour wait
Just to get in here

We sell brisket by the pound
So tell us what’s your pleasure
Put your money down
We have a scale to measure
It’s finger licking good
This we guarantee
If you ain’t tried it, you should
Are you listening to me?

Welcome to Franklin’s
Pull yourself up a  chair
It’s four or five hour wait
Just to get in here

A trip to Austin Texas
Ain’t nearly complete
Until you’ve been to Franklin’s
And had a bite to eat
We pride ourselves on barbeque
Unrivaled anywhere
It’s not bragging when it’s true
See we’re the best, I swear

We’ve become world famous
In the shortest amount of time
See we’ve only been open
Since two-thousand and nine
And we’re rated five stars
Number one in the Zagat
People drive miles in their cars
Just to be where we’re at

Welcome to Franklin’s
Pull yourself up a  chair
It’s four or five hour wait
Just to get in here

Welcome to Franklin’s
You know how we do
Get on the line
If you want our barbeque
We open at eleven
And close when we are through
People from all over
Come here just like you






Cedric McClester,  Copyright (c) 2016.  All rights reserved.
TW Smith Aug 2013
When last I had seen merry England
It was tattered with midnight soot that beckoned the denouement of the human condition.
Begrudgingly, the people meandered with heads held low
And dreams held lower.
The simplest way to determine the societal standings of each and all was by their clothing; save that all of their dispositions were ones of the played out and spent.
Happiness lay mountains, valleys, oceans away.

Aboard this great ship,
This hulking bumberdun of wood and steel,
I felt at ease.
Even upon these hostile tides did I feel an unraveling away of the self imposed mummifications that I had attached to myself.
I arose when I pleased,
I dined when I pleased,
And I drank as I pleased.
And not one such "captain" ****** himself with the responsibility of slavedriving.
No one had to.
For the man that suaded the great ship was John Franklin,
A man who commanded as much respect as we could muster.
And who deserved more honor than existence could give.

Franklin was never seen out of form,
Perpetually at the fore and scanning the horizons
Seemingly as if he could see beyond what that of a mortal man could,
What that of a mortal man should.
When we happened upon the mouth of the passage,
Naught but a slight smile escaped him
As the crew drank and shouted with jubilant glee that one might expect from a cathedral when the Lord Almighty had fell upon that place.
For this was Franklin's church
And this was his religion.
Had he believed himself to be God it would not have seemed so far fetched that others would not be led to believe.
But then a tear,
A small and just single tear,
Lazed from his eye
Leaving a trail that one might expect from a dove with no concrete destination.
A hush fell over the men.
All merry making ceased.
All stared in wild-eyed awe towards the regal, icy mountain ranges on the horizon.
Lush, full meadows blanketed the grounds along the mainland.
Whatever paths we had followed to this point were routes well cut.
The sadness,
Sorrow,
Joy,
And loss,
All things fell by the wayside.
Some men prayed,
Others began singing.
Regardless of religious preference,
Each man joined in,
Not so much singing as it were wailing and graciously weeping Amazing Grace
As Franklin led the choir.

God is a mountain in the farthest north of the Americas
And Heaven lay in his valley.
storm siren Dec 2016
I call the raccoon
"Theo" for short.

he has a twin brother
named Franklin.

Franklin likes to fly about at night,
while Theo likes to snack on stonefruit and
cold pizza.

they might look
drastically different.

they might be
drastically different

but they're still twins.

whether Theo speaks too softly
or Franklin plays music too loudly,
they're still Theo and Franklin.

it's a funny thing about being attached to someone like that, by namesake.

no matter how different you are from each other,
your names will still roll off people's tongues
together.

and while you think no one sees you as an individual,
know that your counterpart does.

so while he flies around and peers at you from the windowsill,
and you nibble on a plum and watch Netflix too late at night,
know that you know
you're different.
Woooooo Theo and Franklin are a metaphor for separation anxiety tossed in with the constant need to be independent from your sibling/friend/whatever.
Andrew T  Aug 2016
Franklin
Andrew T Aug 2016
You constructed a towering cathedral out of popsicle sticks
and blue Lego pieces, searching for deeper meaning
through building a foundation from discarded dreams
and stuttered melodies. I listened as you played folk and bluegrass covers on your acoustic guitar, wondering if we would ever cross our arms into a figure-eight on a rainy morning,
in the middle of a fire-fight between the Vietcong
and Francis Coppola.

Remember when we watched “Lost in Translation” and you asked did I feel isolated and anxious around large groups of white people? I wanted to nod, but instead
I smoked green out of an apple and ate the core,
as smoke lingered under my chin. You tapped my shoulder,
stared me down, and forced a grin, as though you knew
my answer would be nothing but manufactured nouns and verbs, gibberish, and Pig-Latin with no room for form, or design.

The sun belted heat rays down on our tired faces, stopping only
when a Mac Demarco song crooned from the boom-box on the
patio table and as we heard the beat and the lyrics,
we took shots of fireball and had a discussion on EDM festivals
and the rise of smartphones capturing moments of racism
and hatred with each video, each picture.

I wanted to read “Kafka on The Shore” to a six tennis players
from my country club, but they were too busy
staging a protest for an increase in minimum wage jobs
and besides Murakami spoke with a thick Japanese accent,
which turned off white people who revered his prose.
A shame you didn’t draw a faux Calvin and Hobbes
comic strip about Susi Derkins finding nirvana
in watching “Game of Thrones” while sleep-deprived
and eating half a bar of Xans. We drank the entire bottle
of Captain Morgan’s and still Drake’s Uncharted story mode
didn’t seem any less fascinating.

Your cousin Bonnie crashed
a white Ford Mustang into the back of U-Street Music Hall
and I cringed as I rode shotgun, the airbag releasing and smacking into my ruddy face, all the life I’d lived gleaming
beneath the shadowy figure I bought last weekend
at the thrift shop on West Broad Street.

You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
Dedicated to my homeys
preservationman Aug 2015
Benjamin Franklin’s theory of money spent
But I can’t figure out where my money went
Franklin’s way of a penny saved is a penny earned
Yet there is so much to learn
However our current economy way, “Make it the best way you know how”
Someone could really argue at the economy
But wallet you must behave
Credit cards there should be no crave
Penny’s that do add up
The idea is how to save so you don’t get fed up
But how does one keep up
SAVE, SAVE AND SAVE
But it is up to the individual spender being the wise economist
It does take someone to be a scientist
It is all those calculating dollars
A lightening charge with an idea
Planning is how you will preserver
Take it from Benjamin Franklin who knew back then
If you think on your actual cash flow, this puts you in the know
The floor plan was Benjamin Franklin’s presentation show.
Aretha Louise Franklin
Labeled "The Queen Of Soul"
She was expressive in her music
There was a story waiting to be told
Her voice was fierce and powerful
The sound was succinct and sharp
She was one to open up your mind
And give light to those stuck in the dark
Uplifting and exhilarating
Willing to enhance one's vision
Embracing love, life, freedom, and happiness
And carrying out her mission
When in a state of sorrow and pain
She still found a way to persevere
Her inner strength was profound
The messages in her songs were clear
At the age of 76
She has sadly passed on
The legacy of Aretha Franklin
Will continue to be heartstrong
CK Baker Jan 2017
cedar planks line the dim lit hall
morning snow begins to fall
sepia print in a chipped wood frame
embers spark from the franklin flame

rustling sounds from bunks below
records play in a tight alcove
bacon grills on an iron sheet
gloves are warmed by baseboard heat

bean bags tossed on colored ****
papka placed as a punching bag
red brick wall with mounted poles
windows filled with glacier bowls

whiskey jack on the southern rail
a frozen patch of wine and ale
pine cones fall in gathering white
brothers bathed in firelight

sleighs are on the table top
canyon road is at a stop
northern winds that bite the face
lines are up the gondola base

cornice clipped by gully goats
the rubber man appears to float
alpine depths are on the rise
peaking sun through parting skies

triple ropes and nordic luge
honored guests from baton rouge
gelande jumps on rainbow drive
nostalgia’s light and warm reply
Julian Jul 2016
Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam
Ari  Feb 2010
In Philadelphia
Ari Feb 2010
there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia
My best Ginsberg impression.

— The End —