#gentrification
My gibbet is a fine and private place
where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon
elevated and untouchable--
an ideal love just out of reach
like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.
Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,
pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose
carrying his harmonium
singing about plutonium,
barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.
He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite
dangling above the street in my gibbet
making other women's children
point and cry
demanding candy or weather reports.
Someone climbs up and ties tin cans
to the bottom of my gibbet
in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.
I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti.
Here I sway to this very day, high above
the Emily Dickinson Parkway
a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,
dead as hell
black as a bowling ball
ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife,
until gentrification when they'll take me down
because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.
_______
Jul 24, 2025
Jul 24, 2025 at 3:22 PM UTC
High rises burst from soft Earth’s flesh
Was it even ready for us?
From an extraterrestrial’s perspective we’re a disease upon this gentle cerulean Elysium
I’m living in the mouth of duality
I hear it speak as I leave my block and give a peace sign to the abandoned residences in progress
On the block I currently live, the sidewalk is cracked into drunken mazes and yet
Directly across, the neighbors stand upon freshly minted asphalt and into a metropolitan construct made for the modern brain: built in amenities, contemporary textiles and garage parking
Are we next?
To be bought and sold, if so, can we at least have a plan for the residents?
Will tenants be invited to the newborn paradise? We have the budget to feed cement trucks faster than hungry mouths. It’s become a bad habit
yet I sit by the man-made imperfections
hoping someone cares enough to drip their Eden into the palms of my neighbors
If time will tell I’ve been getting quite the silent treatment
Travel a little deeper and….
Cosmopolitan crossroads coexist with beggars and lost folk….
Since when was the speech divided between affluent and broke?
"IDK?" The duality replies
I thought you’d say that.
Aug 4, 2021
Aug 4, 2021 at 6:14 PM UTC
Rubber soled trainers broke the brick
Like the boom of the people tether the streets
Tight strapped caps wander and roam
Strolling the daylight for a place of their own
Screeching and whirring filling the room
Monoxide smog frogs that cling to their moulds
We the people; hardened in soul
A splash in the distance tearing a hole
Enoch and Edna turn in their grave
Darkened cobble flattened; all glazed
Mirrors and cladding click into place
A village that weeps, constant refined
Express the formidable now done and alone
Never your own
EST marks the alleys; so nuanced, so cool
If you knew the truth; that's a tenner!
You fool
Jun 7, 2020
Jun 7, 2020 at 5:18 AM UTC
there were dandelions on the grass
dear girl, the smell of an Alcatraz flower is fresh on my linen
but sometimes I look back
and wonder if this city wears a too thick a coat
while it struts pantless over the sidewalks of
Macarther Park
there is liturgy mumbled, a woman waving her hands in the air–
Sunday school prayers being learned in Spanish
tri-folded pamphlets on the floor
and gum over the pavement blackened by the cooperative march
of immigrant workers speaking in all tongues and carrying
on their backs, the tower of babel while halted at a red light
heavy cargo trucks speeding down Alameda Street
wearing down the road and the patience of drivers
tents multiplied, and R.V's lining the streets
the old buildings being torn down and neighboring apartments getting face-lifts
"beautification"
costs
more than headshots–
more than a rhinoplasty–
more than the real estate of DTLA–
when you see two kids come out of a tent with their school backpacks on
–you begin to grasp the price
Is this what Keats meant: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever "
even while destitute
the neon pink on their bags seemed like another gift of spring
and their perseverance the paragon of a psalm of life
Mar 10, 2020
Mar 10, 2020 at 11:07 PM UTC
I dreamt recently
that a girl fell from the top of
a skyscraper so tall
by the time she collided with
the concrete below,
they had already told her
she would not make it.
I wonder if they had spoken
with soft, mellow voices,
or if they had given it to her
matter-of-fact. I wonder
what the firing synapses of
her brain looked like the fraction of
a millisecond before impact.
I wonder if she had time to
go through all the stages of grief.
And maybe that’s why I
could take a jackhammer
to the despicable skyline,
the ugly glass prison in
that new, hip neighborhood
They™ are calling “Van Mission.”
Everything reminds me
we have terra cotta bodies.
Everything reminds me
my bones are not bird bones.
In some years, if I die falling off a higher-rise,
know that I fired through denial,
then just anger, anger, anger,
all the way down.
Mar 8, 2020
Mar 8, 2020 at 2:37 PM UTC
Oil
Exhaust
Handstand theatre
In the back of a van
Underground avenue
Has the scent of
Stale black licorice
Melted into the sidewalk
The familiar odor of traffic
Is a pedestrian substitute
For the Old World charm
This renovated place
Paved over
Long
Ago
Feb 15, 2020
Feb 15, 2020 at 5:48 PM UTC
I’ve cried a lot over you
It was a nasty break up
When I left I said
We’re through
And
I’m never coming back
It’s been 18 years now
And I’ve seen and heard things about you
In the meantime
And I have to say
With no ill intent
That you have really let yourself go
I wasn’t prepared for this in coming back
It’s ironic because it’s why I left you
When I washed my hands of you
I consoled myself
With thinking
In fact
Knowing
That you were a *****
Who gave it up too easily
Or a monster like Frankenstein’s
Electrified on a table
Not quite dead
But not quite alive
A friend once said that you were
Always nicely coiffed
But walked about
With a long trail
of **** smeared toilet paper stuck
to the bottom of your superb shoe
Scraping under and behind
And unbeknownst to you
I’ve walked and walked
Everywhere
With a book
So as not to look
Crazy
And I’ve sat waiting
For you to appear
Suddenly
I’ve sniffed the air
For you
On this street and on that
Stalking you really
But you were gone.
I sat in that park for a long time
Washington Square
With my little book
After
One short story or two I closed the book
I left
There’s nothing here.
You’re gone.
The first time you made me stop
in my tracks completely
I was bewildered on First Avenue
heading south
It was long ago
Now I realize that it
was
a premonition
I was suddenly lost
I stared at the sign that read
K-I-E-V in neon to my left
I told myself
“You know where you are”
“You know exactly where are you are”
And in any event, keep heading south
“You know where you are.”
Upon my return
all these years later
it happened again on Canal
I stared hard at elderly Chinese couples
Hoping for eye contact
which I never got
Looking for an answer
An explanation
Their strategy for survival
Is this Co-Existence or a Time Loop gone WRONG?
How many of us are actually ghosts?
An old boyfriend told me once that they don’t like you.
And neither do the Poles.
“Is this the real life?”
I forgot until quite recently that
Not so long
afterwards
in Astor Place
I thought about you again
I thought that you must have moved over one block
West
But that’s just not possible.
It really is you.
This is you.
So casting you to the side
as I have done
As I had done
Will it help me at all?
Has it helped me at all!
Now I wonder if you are
a captive monster
rendered impotent
by steel and concrete?
Or a jammed low frequency
that dulls the mind
which Science won’t render mute?
Was it a healing potion
The perfect ratio
of
**** and **** and rage
That was
The Most Holy of Trinities?
Spurned and now this
If we made it again
A perfect batch
Could it re-start your heart and keep it
beating?
Like the Doctor in the stormy moonlight?
Do the tides help at all?
I don’t miss you if that’s what you’re thinking.
Apr 22, 2019
Apr 22, 2019 at 11:04 PM UTC
There are poor neighborhoods
that are tucked into towns,
where the less educated,
where the lesser of means,
find in the dregs, the ability
to coexist with higher society.
Society is grown to the point of disease,
killing the feeble, disabling the lost,
in the name of and for some ease.
So here comes the city, meaning so well.
They said, "Let's add a train line
to a town that has none!"
Well, there goes the block.
There go the people who
barely have homes.
The Council wants to drop a line
where they see shoes bounce power lines.
What's the harm in displacing
the part of the community already dead?
The town now seems to be just fine
now that the poor are paying fines.
Why not double down and just
gentrify when history tells the story best?
Expand Portland, rid Tigard of blemish,
trade your rug for cement and track.
Beautify Tigard, please your ill desire,
don't be surprised when your eyesore
comes back.
Go ahead, pave your poverty.
Go ahead, clean your streets.
You're thinking, "Lines for dimes."
What do you think a new line means?
What do you think the traffic brings?
The sweet guillotine repeats.
Jun 14, 2018
Jun 14, 2018 at 11:27 PM UTC
Doubled over Stella cans
crawling from last night's 10p home.
Late brunches for the new majority
waking within a block who's characters are now alone.
Previously untouched by the new,
the heavily worn and stained wooden
chair now longing for stories of the few.
The old exacerbated, they couldn't
see it coming. Their home.
Now a haven for the new.
A new Mecca for creativity with no retreat
For those left behind.
Doubled over Stella cans.
This used to be free the old fuss.
Now there's no home for them.
Their 10p shelters gone with a gust.
Sep 7, 2017
Sep 7, 2017 at 9:04 AM UTC
They're digging up the cobbles in our street,
moving them to a classier area.
We'll be given tarmac, black and soft in the sun.
Yes, even here it shines - on men's vests.
They're red faced, drinking from lager cans,
while their women finger scarved curlers.
At least, that's what others think they see.
But neighbours do talk with us.
There's a code of decency,
though Mum says, 'some have hearts
as black as the tarmac'.
There's a hierarchy,
in minds and heads,
if not in pockets.
Some day the toffs will turf us out,
gentrify our street. We'll be moved,
filed vertically, pigeon lofts in the sky.
Then they'll bring our cobbles back.
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 3:19 PM UTC
Go walk the streets of dust city remains
where fragments of your rubble houses linger.
Feel the bleach injected in your veins
as you press the jutting steal against your fingers.
A glittering tornado tears aged bricks away
and new pristine white walls strike you down blind.
Where wooden skeletons of homes gave way,
now empty windows flash down the street side.
When your lungs are poisoned by the disinfectant breeze
and you kneel down to cough on grimy cracked concrete,
when the toxins take you and hands start to seize
lay your worn head down and feel your city’s fading heartbeat.
What kind of people spit on the condemned
and cover up the suffering with phony plastic gems?
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 1:35 PM UTC
Housing waning
Where do you expect me to go?
Stop selling me Harrow
(Not even if you talking Road).
Imma Grove gyal…!
I got my vibe spots and chill spots, my food stalls and book haunts.
We - SJC are not just a Safer Neighbours blight
Given half the obstacles - gentle gentry
maybe more of us would be standing free
I’ll take myself outta Grove when I’mmmm ready.
RBKC done turned up that pressure though.
Knocking down to wipe out
The enriching colour and spice that grew out of adversity
Permission to “celebrate” over the August bank holiday,
No amount of stop and searches g’on make me forget.
We belong here too.
So get to know and stop putting up my rent.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 12:39 PM UTC
Escape from Planet Hipster
They're nostalgic for a time
When wearing the peace sign
was a revolutionary act;
Now propaganda of the deed
is free shows on ghetto borders
Craft IPAs, grandpa's clothing,
and dismissal above all.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
Monroe Ave c. 2018, in my own dream land. K. Daniel's Revelation, cannot reverse what's starting to happen. Darker, more forlorn. No more bar and restaurant patrons, the streets are just a scattered herd of pestilence. No cars, the somnambules own the streets in silence. Honey dripping hipsters, years gone. ***** clothes, hair past their pearls. Asking for boy, asking for O.P.s, asking for girl, asking for crack, asking for methamphetamines. The only noise.
We lost the reclamation of the city our parents left. Escaping dead end cul-de-sacs of basement poverty, we no longer had to drive. Stacked with our friends in tenement commune. We delivered the body we consume in service, catering to a more privileged few. Only responsible for one when long work was done, I ensured my red blood's full of fun. We drank and inebriated with design when allowed more free time. But, darling, I think this town was already gentrified. We changed no thing.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 11:03 PM UTC