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Lou Costello’s
bronze semblance
dipped and danced atop
his granite pedestal
spinning miasmatic tales
of enigmatic hope and
resplendent labor

“the sweet
unbounded
expectation of
hope once
surged down
this city’s streets”
... said Lou

"I was a self made man
until someone thought up
the idea to cast a bronze
caricature of me and
bolt it to this grand rock”

nostalgia
is the boldest form
of fiction
culling from the past
the things hoped for
in the now

“growing up
here
I clipped school,
played ball,
rolled drunks
and fought
nickel ante
prize fights
to get my
daily bread,
I literally
punched my
way out
of this town”

a smith smelts a
batch of liquid bronze
pouring molds full of
a fervent wish
a madman's delusion
a priestly promise
a Pollyannaish illusion?

baskets overflowed
gushing hope, offered
at the holy altars by
honorable workers

it was said that
a morsel of labor
could feed 5000
starved families
breeding hopes as large
as a half cup of water

hope
the size of a
mustard seed sparked
recovery of 1000 sick children
dying from the Asian Flu
at St. Joe's

hope
willed an end to war’s slaughter
which ironically was bad for
Paterson's war profiteers
forcing layoffs
sparking labor actions

hope
ignited conflagrations firing
the resurrection of dead industries
lately there is a lot of hope
circling this one

miracles spring
from the pronounced
lips of trembling hearts

the hopeful amassed
slogging forth on bloodied toes
along razor thin slices
of expectation
hoping to begin again
eager to build anew

new starts sometimes
grow old fast soon
hope expires
winging back home
on broken wings of
misspent labor

hoping for the snow to stop
a lump of coal to last
the labor of a budding crocus
rewarded, breaking through
the hard crust of winters end
blooms for a day then expires

hope is a beggars wish
gods give yearnings heft
prayers earnestly chanted
willing paradigm shifts

prayers of absolution
play the angles
calculating odds
of probabilistic mathematics
a sure thing long shot
the prayers of the
righteous availeth much

we hoped for jobs
we hoped for leisure
we hoped for love
we hoped for labor
we hoped for rest
we hoped for luck
we hoped for a life
wealth health blest

laughing at our follies
crying over defeats
our city a tragic star
a comedy of schemes

our
hope and labor
is the keystone of
our self construction
cornerstone of
a grand city’s edifice
its negation our
deconstruction

tragedy and comedy
invested and spent
falling and laughing
foibles and faith

belief trumps evidence
happenstance slays surety
horror and beauty
compose a life's mural
nothing happens
by mistake

learning and ignorance
fate and chance
the risk of randomness
expiration dates arrive fast

predetermination a bold
conviction, suspicion,
intention a splendid  
kismet  

banality becomes
sublime  
laughter is ******

...the mystery is in
the loam... says WCW
...the finished product
is what I’m after...

“what the
**** are you
doing here?"
the bronzed Louis
gagged

"Hey Abbott
look at these clowns
in the yellow plastic
garbage bags!

bobbing in a sea of
midnight mist

a posse of
neon clowns
donning glad bags
on the most dismal
night of the year

twinkling under the
gloom of my playgrounds
faltering streetlamps

“twinkling targets
easily tracked,
a trained eye,
a steady hand
could pick you off
at a thousand paces
what gives?

“what the **** are
you doing here?

“what the **** am I doin
here for that matter?”

“the second question
is easy to answer,

“I’m Paterson’s
finest son....

...“Wherever he is tonight, I want him to hear me," and went on with the show. No one in the audience knew of the death until after the show when Bud Abbott explained the events of the day, and how the phrase "The show must go on" had been epitomized by Lou that night....

"Mr. Bacciagalupe
he use to live on
Cianci Street

“who’s on first?
what’s on second?
I don’t know is on third?
was a riddle one recited
to get into his speak

“his Ginnie Red was legendary
and no one was ever known to
die from drinking his bathtub gin”

the old world ways
are made new
by the arrival of
new old worlds
supplanting old Italiano

“where is all the goodwill capital
we invested in this place?”

successive generations
thought it best to export
the capital of the
expired generations
elsewhere

it was ferried
across the river,
crossed the
city boundaries,
leaving for Wayne
and the fairer lawns
of Wyckoff and the
greener grasses of
Franklin Lakes

all the old wise guys
died off or were sentenced
to life by their children,
some still doin time in
old age homes in
Rockaway

all the sport clubs
boarded up but their spirit
lingers like an espresso
ring on a post slurp
demitasse cup

“hell my body is buried
in Hollywood but here
I am, holding court in
Costello Park
talking with you
knuckleheads
a baseball bat
my royal scepter
a brown derby
my crown, truly a
King of Nothing,
Lord of All

“the soul of my city is
eternal,  like the comedy
of tragedy or is it
tragic comic?

“here I remain
omnipresent,
spinning about
frozen forever
in a magnificent
bronze age,
erected to my likeness
beholding me
to stand witness
to this litter strewn park
decorated with corrugated
Big Mac boxes, plastic
Big Gulp tops and discarded
rubbers bagging the ****
of this cities arrested
citizenry”

never actualized
never naturalized
citizenship denied
at the commencement
of ejaculatory flows
of joy

unfulfilled spirit
of citizenship
never to experience
the splendor
of yesterday’s
modernist
metropolis and
Lou’s stand up
routines

“look at that John
over there, that guy
wheezing like a
ruptured blacksmith’s
billow, pounding away
laboring to get off

“the poor little
******* just hopes it
will end soon

it does
**** he’s done

I” knew that guys
grandfather,
getting off
runs in the family
and remains one
of the few things
that draws the progeny back
to the old neighborhood

“you can still glimpse
snippets of the old ways
rising in new ways

“an Armenian
sports club
around the corner
is a new
incarnation of
the old Neapolitan
social clubs that
once demarcated the
neighborhoods

“these days
great grandsons
of once proud
Sons of Italy
come back to the
old neighborhoods
begging for hand-jobs
from crack ******

“welcome to my
burlesque world

“since the Gumbas
moved to Franklin Lakes
the wannabe wise guys
became ***** whipped
dumb *****
making ***** of
themselves with
their painted ****-job
Jersey Housewives

“they ***** their families
out for a bit parts on
MTV and a free lunch
at the Brownstone

“their grandfathers
labored long hours
to assure the well being
of their families in the expectant
hope of a better shot at life
but the children squandered
the hard earned bequest lovingly
bequeathed by reverent forebears

“in the wee hours
one can sometimes hear
a weeping chorus
of concrete Madonnas
musing melodious lullabies
to the sleeping
Lombard's lying
in uneasy repose at
Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

“they twist in their graves
dreaming of a last dance with the
Lady of Unending Sorrows
at weddings for unrepentant
wayward daughters and prodigal sons

“its small
recompense for a
lifetime of an
honest day’s work”

the dashed hope
of squandered labor
begets a city of ruin”

at the
parks northern corner
the Salvation Army’s
rumbling bivouac rests
in a dreamless sleep
its residents
patiently waiting to
inherit this city
abandoned by
nuevo wise guys

this tragedy
is all comedy
the comedic hope
of tragic labor
buried snoring
the millenniums away
awaiting resurrection
day

Lou was getting ******...
“get outta my park

“the artists
in the rehabbed
factories across
the street
are resting

“nothing much
going on there

“if you're hoping
to find some
homeless slogs
head over to the river
you should find some there”....

Music Selection:
Frank Sinatra, High Hopes

jbm
Oakland
3/26/13
Part 5 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Hope and Labor is the city motto of Paterson NJ, nick named The Silk City.
Josh  Jul 2014
News
Josh Jul 2014
Islamist Extremists. Boat Capsized.
Obama and Nelson Mandela. Celebrity Lies.
Plane Crash. Forest Fires.
Missing Girl. Handgun-buyers.
Amazon Lawsuit. ANT-MAN. Low Supplies!

Walmart Empty Shelves. Chinese Food Scandal.
Microsoft Layoffs. Heat and Gasoline. Oil.
Mad Max! Comic Book Convention Drama.
Breast Lumps and Swelling.

Television. Veteran's Hospitals.
Israel and Gaza Fight On.
Beachgoers Hit by Lightning.
Baseball Drinking Songs.

Sci-fi, Wi-fi, Ebola, and Libya.
Ukraine. Venezuela. Marriage. Liver failure.
Allen Webster. USA. RACE CARS.
Global Catastrophe Down to Warming of the Earth.

Dinosaurs Had Feathers. MH17. Profits.
Desert Bakery. Syria. We Must be Mad.
Philippines: 100 Million People on an Island.
Salmonella Lawsuit. Cheeseburger Diet.
Twinkies Never Going Bad.
Putin, Palin, and the Tour de France.

Fracking. Cats and Dogs.
Just in case you missed it.
John F McCullagh Nov 2011
An Infinite number of Monkeys,
furiously typing away,
provided with paper and ribbon
would, in time,write Shakespeare's plays.

Off-shoring and Corporate mergers,
Massive layoffs, death and disease,
plus the lack of typewriter repairmen
Decimated those bard-chimpanzees.

Instead of that infinite number
these days I'm afraid it's just me
churning out corrupt Shakespeare Quartos
titled "Piglet, the Prince of Belize"
Pondering that old saw about the combination of infinite monkeys and infinite time being able to reproduce the Shakespearian cannon
One day as leep by a captivating woke essence in your handscaught in your arms woke getting up after nearly having died ...you gave me your breathing air and calm your back to life, releasing the fear more gregarious, after opening my senses almost incinerated i learned that the stars trembled me to reach it

I started a new life to sharing with you,
sometimes i feel that in your hands sap this life to revive my acuity,
what to unfold my body, she quadrupled making me shiver by quakes your tenderness.

But today on the eighth day of the universe,
divided my feet walking to you for every step of light sonica,
road on it being over your carnal finesse frosted still light beams for aboriginal embracing love with your gutted threat to the end dump body, being today only light story emerged from any pythagorean indigo.

Eight feet by my raving not walk on forgetful slip hugs and achieve that without it on my feet, making you a path of kisses on a piecemeal moan  covering your pleasures in quiet regia union, sealing and my memories to mummifying the most sensitive areas disown make me when you suffer from almost feel much pleasure.

Your feet chafe my eighth willing body as your hands it to me, this is your feet eight  feet, and your finger eleven flute my way to you open your columns wet and trembling, born in the tropics decorative colors flashing your eyes when mine yours take on your innocence as a mother's dismissal, genesis as a maternal layoffs in the grotto shaggy times makes me roof for to paint with my kisses and my mouth full of oils,  full streaking manias those desires that are further under your skin, deep lining up to associate to me ...!

My seven feet is the semi - obese and language lenticular spider mine, unleavened filling the food, its highest sing syllabic, make your paint  blue and moan molecules liquid call themselves, with its concavity make the bio - live surgery last transplanted hallucinate ... vibratory column of my responsibility on your body, cutting all fear, every element of your flesh lying addict to me hanging on my conscience all descontrol physionomy, losing my light steps sonica falling into the abyss of your distances fragrances, falling in ovation interapeutica licking your body my breath, like a sixth sense.

I meditate burning between your legs, dying as i was born of a woman wild servant, fawn as an almost died for a hunter, i prefer my conscience advance day and night to your legs to die of living where one day saw in the recesses; the greatest pleasures with ambitions to break all your secrets, all your defenses to break your falling on my tyranny, allegory huge walk along the invisible to other united take that helped me your surplus usages, enter you and your being, feeling peace penetrate you, not feeling loving preact, or not to have you in the distance but hugging everytime you Drodida to moisten your words to me,  stuttering of desire.

My six feet organizing penetrates you feast on enraged cowbells,wishes with malice and early pregnat, alcamphor extreme longevity and erectile espermiosicotic, with smoothness and irradiating polish your rattling,
spitting cushion on my bones,
like a sapphire on until your clothes,
and as a inseparable attachment unit dispensable.

My bringing night of Saint John in your prayers for imaginary pain coexist
in between taking you doing it my trees by spoil collude copulate,
taking you stormy ray to the phenomenon with the masses elephantine hitting you on your shoulders, your ******* armpits challenge your beasts i want my grind with canines and incisors to create a new universe of shed your joy to laugh about our loving.

The five feet; rub your skin like a shower delicate pituitary
******* kilometers of rivers into criminal triads morbid on your face ...
as well as the sand masturbates the waves,
on the sand and wave nail with my eyes my spells dominating you,
rolling you thousand times to my love trades.

You shall be called Drodida; worship the everlasting orbit of my sight,
when i go for your absence mount your toxin grotesque gasp;
the stalk watered voluminousity  your mouth singing your sweating my
groaning  telling my cries thinking with my worst vanity,
the turn on rotation vanitatory what you just do me with your stalks and not my serous waters in my effervescent mouth in your ******* astral, arrested in any language your thinking lubrication retained me and your touching, what i always touch in you.

The five feet as a tightening necromantic porosity your skin that change shape your temples and declaims pretending aridity lovers bad; lords nomades covered them your area leafy tagled branches covered to neat legends of penalties appealed fables o mytofagic eaters; brotherhoods of the worst disease of not having small Mt. in high with it my staff rooted in resisting demolition and other eroding sorrow, reverie spoil it captive in your infinite journey of ecstasy explosional femic.

The four feet light make a gentle sonica, dry your language lenticular stalk ciliary zone, enter your supra entails, the cave unexplored wider,enter with both arms with herbs pulsating symmetrical cottoned sleeping in your walls and grotto forms  desensitized, insense redeem the pain of window pastoral bishop uniting both peni-***** areas full of gems balsamic, percusionatives full of eyes.

The three feet,
running is my hand movements on your ******* imprisoned,
they are my two hands scratched by scratching the delivery of your birth.
touch my hands that know not touch, when he was born without willing,
but my biohands touch your skin attached to transfer and progressive evil of love for the shores of cry to the center or your body centers clung to my hands over your thoughts rampant, wanting to stay in the fact to see you perisphery merge at twilight of our our sunken eyes friction and wet kisses dormitation delightful of travel and destructive of wickedness;
fulgurative but doubt of living or dying your enjoyment perpetuate.

The second feet,
you are you loving me on my feet vertically like a weak tower,
ash as rain that spread my fire for you.
i take my hands and i took a walk in the seas of ******* bellowing.
you took the scrub the eternal holy and spinal vocabulary of your mouth muted outrage both enjoy your subumbilicales areas.

The first is my feet Drodidaged,
it full landed liquid bathing you, your eyes full of ***** petals and replete, as bastions fallen with their helmets  gnawed your moans, that resound in memory of trees expectant that divert all about us practice,
only your tilt knee …will exalt   the  time for my happiness excessive.

My feet first,
it is my son music turret  ram rope breaking your every arbour grotto, asleep by the dream Drodida you commanded you do to me,
to rock for you and cutting wheel kissing my return to continue all apocalyptic dreams and your most ****** on my ways about it forever astral.
Plane  it me  come the way to sleep with me,
come see how i am able to teach Drodida
ways of sleeping next to me !!


Jose luis  / 0ctober 2003 -  Copyright 15 – all rigths reserved
Metaphysic Spirit  Erogenous Desire...
Name Redacted Dec 2015
My group therapy ended today
Termination is such a violent word
For such a soft thing
Termination is harsh
Reminiscent of layoffs
And Austrian-born California governors
No. This wasn’t a firing.

It was a funeral.

Round robin reflection at a somber dinner table
An exchange of platitudes and promises
To stay in contact, to be available
And we all meant it. Every word.

But no.

We were demented sorcerers,
Holding tightly to fading magics

Ex-lovers
Trying to be friends

Though it was, ironically, a machine that once said.
“A thing is not beautiful because it lasts.”
And every part of me I found in them
Now is a part of them found in me
Carried in my self-revelations
In strides straight and confident as an honest Keyser Soze.
And though I am a penny none the richer

Today I am indigo.
Sean Flaherty Jul 2015
I’m from rearranged furniture
I’m from “asleep in the bathtub”
I’m from biting hands over
store-bought candy.

I’m from vinyl-white-siding,
No better at keeping in heat
Than keeping out punks,
Four guinea pigs named
“Gamber,”
And a spotted rabbit.

From searching for answers
At the bottom of a bottle,
And not stopping, to think “maybe,”
When the answers aren’t there.

I’m from thrown phones, and
Broken Home,
And diseases they have
Yet to cure.
From layoffs, to layovers, to
A car, that careened
Down the street that I lay in,
And broke the door off its frame,
Leaving an impression on
Unshakable wood.

A Golden Orb-Weaver
On a storm-door handle,
Painted purple and black,
And a blood-curdling scream.
From a run to the backyard
And irrational fears
And the accidental rhyme
Of your mask-haunted dreams

I’m from people who loved me,
Without knowing how,
And people who couldn’t,
Without saying why.

I’m from loving her, a
Little too hard, that when we finally
Broke, We both emerged.
Scarred, and scared.
Groundhogs, and rabbits, and
Cats that weren’t mine.
Being told, at times,
Simultaneous, that I’m
Less than, yet
“Above grade level.”

I’m from baring the blunt-force,
To numbing it all out.
I’m from jazz, chess, and
Tonic water. I’m from
The Wolftones classy sound.
I’m from turning up the
Music so loud, that when
The world covered its ears,
I tried my best
To listen

.
I’m deciding to recreate the world
As I see fit.

I’m going to do something important,
 special,
Before I die. 


I want to invent. An

Existence I feel more content, in.

There’s no wagon to fall off.

Just looming things,

And avoidance. 


I’m deserving of the option to keep

Calling it as I see it. 

Advocating character development,
And suppressing my own hamartia.

Experimenting with sobriety,
And the ending of days.
Fighting off the Great Greyness, unstoppable,
Laying down land-mines, and
Bear-traps, on the
Terrain of Winter.

*I’m going to turn the music up
Louder still,
Until protest, drowned out,
Is inseparable, from
Cheering.
There and Back Again, written a full two years before Essay # 2. Most similar stuff I've done. 4/23/13
Paulos Ioannou Apr 2016
The great equalizer
stood by the bed
watching his laborious breathing
and the pain quaking the emaciated body.

It's almost time.

No more layoffs to increase profits
lock-outs to break the unions
hidden caches to avoid taxes
mergers and acquisitions
under the table payments
price fixing, loan sharking
no bribing and extortions
no naive women to exploit

The great equalizer
stood there watching
with pity and loathing
patiently waiting
The end of the line.
Jack Trainer May 2016
Every morning at the same time
Get up and do your business
Business can be business or a combination of one and two
It involves paperwork and need not be in triplets
Try not to push too hard, lest you become: Stressed
Smell the coffee brewing as it lingers like gym sweat
Read the rags as they’re piled high. You really need to discard the old.
Did you remember to wash your hands and disavow
The pipes clang and rattle as the tap is closed
It reminds you of the 2009 Earthquakes that brought utter destruction to your life
Furloughs, pay cuts, layoffs, and lost dreams
How times have changed in seven short years
Every morning at the same time
Same **** different days
Cedric McClester Nov 2015
By: Cedric McClester

I don’t want to be
The devil’s advocate
But Carly Forina
In the aggregate
Looks like a demon
And better yet
She’d be a president
We’d live to regret

Donald Trump
Might have made a case
When he enjoined us
To look at that face
Who would elect her
And in any case
Her Hewlet Packard tenure
Was a disgrace

Anyone can provoke
Massive layoffs
Like a non-contender
For the playoffs
She says she’s a savior
Former employees scoff
It’s campaign rhetoric
She should knock off

I’ll give it to her
She’s very well spoken
But a business genius
She’s got to be joking
Which prompts me to ask
What has she been smoking
By the end of the race
She’ll clearly be broken




Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015.  All rights reserved.
Joseph S Pete Feb 2018
You’re at a journalism conference
a few years back,
a welcome bit of professional development
that's become increasingly rare
in a time of budgetary leanness,
a rote exercise
whose attendance was padded
by college students, deep discounts
and last-minute appeals.

A speaker said,
look to your left and to your right.
The number of working reporters
has shrunk by a third over the last decade.
Only two-thirds of you are left.

After the last round of layoffs,
another slash of the scalpel
that seems unsustainable,
that seems to bleed off too much,
you notice all the empty desks,
all the absent computers,
how sparse the parking lot looks.

— The End —