"boroughs" poems
Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
12.7k
it is
an impossibility
to have a foot
in two camps
for those who choose
to have divided loyalties
there is
no bridging ramp
either they are friend or foe
they cannot have
a toe
in both boroughs
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 1:09 AM UTC
Walkin' thru the grocery store section,
To that aisle, yeah, it's not just con-cession...
Turn every crunch into Hea-ven, -yeah
(Oh, you are...)
Crun-chee on the coldest day
Taste buds explode, every, 'kind-of-way'
Make me wanna savor every moment of cheese-y, slow-ly
You pleasure me, my taste, taste buds, you put it on!
Got the taste-y, know how to turn it on...
The way I nibble on a pair, a clutch of fried corn, not an ear...
I take it easy, baby, so we can last long!
Oh! you, you feel crunchy 'in-my-mouth,' salivated,
not full...
Mouth like tasting, like an,
an amazing plan
Feel your taste, my mouth a pulse-Oh!
Oh, yeah -Ya, ya me in store aisle,
so nor-mal
Tostitos and Doritos, I say No Mas!
And so, no chip will, will replace you!
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
Please respect, it's just Cheetos,
No, no, I don't want no Doritos!
No matter what you ask it's not Dorit-o-os!
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
Nothing taste quite like Cheetos,
No Tostitos, no Doritos, nor a burrito.
I sound Spanish or Latin when I end words in a -oh,
Oh, OH YEAH,
Oh-o...
When I end my words in 'O'
Sounds like I know
Something like, I'm not loco?
Cheetos brands, -favoritos
(Favorito, favorito, ba-by)
Morning I don't like to 'Eat-oh'
Breakfast, eggs or -gritos
Instead I woof, -the Cheetos!
And know I voted, twice for Obam-ma,
Didn't even have, -American Mom-ma!
Car tires, Yoko-hama...
Back to my Latin voice, now, Oh-o...
You say to get that face and taste -eh he bang-bang
You say why doesn't it explodo like me mi bang-bang?
For me those chips you know there is no other
No question, fill your mouth, tongue, smother
Yo no other makes me sing it so suave
Impressive crunchy, disputes 'saliv-eh'
Pass it to, pass it too, suave to cheese oh?
No want your Doritos, doritos, ha doritos
Put that bag back in front, me, I'll destroy ya
Stop being malicious or I'll destroy yah!
Pass it to, pass it too, suave cause it Cheetos,
No want your Doritos, doritos, ha doritos
You want friends you better break out cheesus
There's no other way now to please us!
Oye!
crunch
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
When I end my words in 'O'
Sounds like I know
I know...
Something like, I'm not TA-CO?
Cheetos brands, -'favor-AH-ri-tos'
(Favorito, favorito, ba-by)
Morning I don't like to eat no
Breakfast, eggs or -gritos
Instead I woof, -some Cheetos!
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
This is how we do it up in Long Island, boroughs,
No tacos, burritos and no churros
all we ever want is those Cheetos!
Ay-o no burrito
Pass it to, pass it too, suave to cheese oh?
No want your Doritos, doritos, ha doritos
Put that bag back in front, me, I'll destroy ya
Stop being malicious or I'll destroy yah!
Pass it to, pass it too, suave cause it Cheetos,
No want your Doritos, doritos, ha doritos
You want friends you better break out cheesus
There's no other way now to please us!
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
Des Puh -CHEE-TOS!
Aug 21, 2017
Aug 21, 2017 at 9:00 PM UTC
The dragonflies and meadow-sweet
Follow the banks of ‘The Wandle’
Allowing what is hidden and not heard
Behind posted iron railings
To be noted, found on a map, imagined
Its very name conjures up the river’s journey
Drawing one into its currents and flows
A place of beauty where time seems slow
Rippling the edges of thought, living as a space,
Exploration, given by inclusion and exclusion
Forever to ‘wandle along’ under the sky
Between the gaps in the real
And what finds itself from what
Came before in experience and words.
Love Mary x
The River Wandle is the largest river of the south southwest sector of London, England. Its name is thought to derive from the community around its mouth, Wandsworth. About 9 miles long, it passes through the London Boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, Merton, and Wandsworth to join the River Thames on the Tideway..
Mouth: River Thamesnn
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
For those among us who lived by the rules,
Lived frugal lives of pubis-scratching desperation;
For those who sustained a zombie-like state for 30 or 40 years,
For these few, our lucky few—
We bequeath an interactive Life-Alert emergency dogtag,
Or a dog, a colossal beast of a pet,
A humongus Harlequin Dane dog to feed,
For that matter, why not buy a few new cars before you die?
Your home mortgage is dead and buried.
We gave you senior-citizen rates for water, gas & electricity—
“The Big 3,” as they are known in certain Gasoline Alley-retro
Neighborhoods among us,
Our parishes.
Our boroughs.
All this and more, had you lived small,
Had you played by the rules for Smurfs & Serfs.
We leave you the chance to treat your grandkids
Like Santa’s A-List clientele,
“Good ‘ol Grampa,” they’ll recollect fondly,
“Sweet Grammy Strunzo,” they will sigh.
What more could you want in retirement?
You’ve enabled another generation of deadbeat grandparents,
And now you’re next in line for the ice floe,
To be taken away while still alive,
Still hunched over and wheezing,
On a midnight sleigh ride,
Your son, pulling the proverbial Eskimo sled,
Down to some random Arctic shore,
Placing you gently on the ice floe.
Your son; your boy--
A true chip off the igloo, so to speak.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 10:22 AM UTC
I have lost my way,
please draw me an arrow
Five corners of slum
Deep in the boroughs
A decayed old soul
with smells of masters
Alcohol and poisons, mixed
Death comes much faster
Living in a box,
discarded like trash
Pushing farther below
Slum *** Crash
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 1:15 AM UTC
1105
Like Men and Women Shadows walk
Upon the Hills Today—
With here and there a mighty Bow
Or trailing Courtesy
To Neighbors doubtless of their own
Not quickened to perceive
Minuter landscape as Ourselves
And Boroughs where we live—
1.8k
From marble and granite to steel and glass,
we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class,
was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties
the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s,
the boroughs teeming with immigrants
from the round earth’s imagined corners,
Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we
Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will
be ok or not, the recombinations which make
prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong.
On the avenue God speaks by spewing
toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge,
the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge.
The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers
overwhelming for the human body and mind.
I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it.
Gandhi said What you do may not seem important
but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant?
Linda complained Why does God always have to be a man?
I replied He could be a she but She’s probably really
a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!
Oct 26, 2021
Oct 26, 2021 at 7:21 AM UTC
The elegant madwoman with a golden valor.
Louder than the falling trees
stumbling everywhere around her feet!
The spiritual mother, everyone's empress,
a concrete rose blooming over every obstacle
as if she were a one-woman, 21st century dynasty
with no malfunctions in its empire.
But, there's something writhing its way out
from the cellar reserved for her scathing history.
Past the cobwebs and futile pretensions of valiance
lies this warrior queen's greatest desire:
shrouded in shame, the need for love still haunts.
But it won't some accessory amid the ninth cloud!
Hard work and minimum wage flow much more smoothly.
She's known this since she discovered the world,
since she entered a home full of broken furniture
and reeking of alcoholic breath and stagnant, bitter tensions
that were released when father's fist met daughter's face,
and her bruise-soaked body became the symbol of her innocence.
That must be why she spends so much time
in the darkest Brooklyn alleys, selling her self-respect
to any man feeling particularly kind that night,
and letting any detrimental cycle resurface
for just one rush of vulnerability.
This contemporary queen dons a crown bejeweled with more grit
than the streets of three New York boroughs,
yet all she requires of the world that she holds in her hand
like a ruler deciding the fate of her people
is someone to transform adoration from myth to reality.
Will she ever find light from the alley?
Apr 29, 2010
Apr 29, 2010 at 10:45 AM UTC
past the boroughs
and the busy streets.
the suburban lifestyle
he screams of defeat.
past the sorrows,
and away from concrete
the drops of rain (like his eyes)
followed from the backseat.
in the foliage
at the farmer's street
an apple, blueberries, a cart!
he jumped to his feet.
in the solace
through the plants of wheat
the first rays of sun
he slowly felt complete.
from thrashing limbs
to resting knees,
for sanity's sake
all it took
was a change of scenes.
Apr 4, 2022
Apr 4, 2022 at 6:16 PM UTC
She walked away on a holiday,
Paris, Milan, Rome then up to St Tropez,
She then jetted off to the India’s for a long well-needed stay.
She never wrote a letter, sent an email or made a call
To say how time was passing,
Or even to tell us that sun had done her well.
She kept a postcard tucked in her bag,
That never touched our eyes,
She was away and a long time she would play.
Alone without her,
We felt abandoned,
Left high and dry,
Our beauty had flown to another paradise,
While we were stuck in hell.
I picked up the phone,
Pressed onto the familiar buttons,
And made that calling.
She answered,
Happy.
While I drowned in salty tears.
Across the boroughs,
You sank into your own,
Days and nights,
Missing beauty,
But the call you could not make.
I began to call more often,
Listen to her,
Just like my own heartbeat,
She said words of wisdom,
Sonnets that sang as beautiful
As the harp,
The tears flowed more than drowned,
And I knew she had to return.
So I cried out to her,
I cried out you;
She is returning;
She will bring Paradise;
She will come.
Will you.....
Mar 9, 2010
Mar 9, 2010 at 2:44 PM UTC
The lights
Are going
Out.
Slow but sure.
My life is a city
My body
Is a city
Traffic stops and starts
Pumping blurred light through my veins
Webs of
Streets
My bones
Are twinkling skyscrapers
My skyline
Jagged
But blazing neon.
I stand at the center
Of a city
Spread like a galaxy on the night-black earth
But
The lights
Are going
Out.
The day you turned away
The outskirts of my life
Began to dim
Blink
Blink
Blink
Somebody's throwing switches
In a lonely tower
Outside of town
And darkness eats the map
From the outside
In
First the spattering of streetlights on the edges
Goes dark
And then
The outskirts
Convenience stores and billboards
Bridges
Then the boroughs
One by one
Blink
Blink
Blink
It's coming for me
And I see it.
I stand at the center of a dying
Constellation
Of a city
Under siege
I stand and watch the lights go out
Far away
Closer
Closer
Closer
Street by street
Building by building
Day by day
The lights
Are going
Out
And I
Have never been scared
Of the dark
But this
This is new
This is blackness growing steady
Street by street
Between me
And you
Between me
And everyone I've ever met
And I
Am
Afraid
Of that
Dark,
Scared like a child
And
I'm not sure what to do
Because
The lights
Are going
Out.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 9:31 PM UTC
It’s the sound of peeling wallpaper,
Damp seeping in from the frost bitten windows.
Daytime traffic on Christmas eve,
And misted breath between pages of Pound,
Eliot and Rimbaud.
It’s the sound of mouldy drapes,
Clutched to the rail that clings to the rust.
The hiss and crackle of today,
And the wave of the colonial - of Guthrie,
Williams and Seeger.
It’s the sound of a Tangier typewriter,
Clacking to the chimes of a generation.
The scrawl of freedom
And the echoes of our fathers – of Kerouac,
Ginsberg and Burroughs.
It’s the sound of the swamp,
A hoodoo beat winding through the ruins.
From bayous to boroughs,
Following the march of Washington,
Franklin and Jefferson.
It’s the anthem of a teenage disease,
The force of the Devil’s crossroads.
The returning of a light, obscured
In the ruins of time.
It’s the song of the tambourine,
And the lasting footsteps of a song and dance man.
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC
On a date which is altogether known
In the billfolds of bankers
And the abutting hearts of lovers,
And thoroughly logged in the appropriate
Depositories under appropriate covers,
An event of some moment occurred.
The boroughs stood stock-still that day.
While bureaus of such things raced.
Reports came in the usual state-
Filed with numbers and subsetting letters
And screened through machines
To assure their congruence.
On the import of this the West has agreed
And suits of several cuts conferred-
Their message: “Not bereft of status
Past but graced by status wholly present,
Marked by Trojan Hector's tragic
Fall we come to budding Rome.”
****** the edifice mark'd the change:
Neighbors bowed in novel commune.
Seers took to foment rapture
And obfuscated pictures lent
Their turn to Hells hereafter.
Evoked again King Pyrrhus' loss.
The brazen poet took to this,
Formed a certain sense, a catch
Collecting parallels- change a liquid:
Afloat the wicked buoys of politic.
Ashore the masses- sheep- insipid.
Abroad the falling, downy snow
To rust the marble shrines of old.
But how keen the poet's blade?
Her wit dulls at the thick:
All the rest were just the same.
Homer and Hesiod, through to Hughes
Seek their crises to be the rare
One-off of guilt and bold reform.
But want for change- a timeless sore.
-c. c. Condry
Mar 12, 2011
Mar 12, 2011 at 8:31 PM UTC
pulverized by desolate winds;
brutalized by ungodly kings;
capsized by the violent waves;
neutralized by the scorpion’s sting.
terrorized by the thoughts of morrow;
legitimized by a trademark of sorrow;
authorized to live in vain;
generalized - like the streets,
and the boroughs.
synthesized by the alchemy of remorses;
romanticized… like the dark horses;
mesmerized by the notion of vengeance -
hypnotized by even darker curses.
digitized by the ways of future;
mystified by metrics, and conjectures;
specialized in the pursuit of reality -
'civilized' by the grand architecture.
Dec 23, 2024
Dec 23, 2024 at 1:16 AM UTC
Every person becomes young and the restless like everybody else does including me, myself and I.
Unlike the others, it'll still take some time for me to have a new girlfriend.
What about me? Am I beautiful like everybody else does?
Yes. Of course I do.
And I always stay handsome and beautiful every single day of the year.
When 2015 comes to an final end and becomes 2016, i will still be gone to New York City to explore beautiful neighborhoods and boroughs.
And then, i will still become young and the restless like beautiful women and men do.
The truth is that many people across Massachusetts wishes to become romantic and popular in a separate way to themselves.
And that's why I called, me, myself and I.
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 10:16 AM UTC
He said I tasted sweet but all I felt was bitter
For the ways I was betrayed and meant to wither
Away like his insides
Now out
Get out
I GET out
Of his and in her ways
Riding dragons, wearing crowns
Down below I see the trays
Of minuscule beings who feel like fiery ants but instead they are in the drowns
Feel my water, feel my wrath
Its sugary sweet cuz I took the hardest path
You doubted the warrior, you laughed at my fight
No one wants to penetrate this Wild Women's sight
It is centuries deep in bellowing boroughs
Failed perceptions of powerful slighted heroes
I am the truth
Hear thee echos
I am the way
Fear the stare
I am the light
Sit and sear
Taste my sugar, pinch its scrub
Use as your medicine like the cherub
At you own risk, hang on tight
This Goddess has won all her fights
And like She, victory tastes sweet
Now, smell the defeat
May 30, 2019
May 30, 2019 at 1:24 AM UTC
What man fears not mortality
who stands in line to die
To lose the breath we hold so dear
yet for ourselves we cry
The strength of a mighty army
echo's from the boroughs
Combining humanities heart
with love from where it flows
___________________________
The quiet heart of the lonely
begs us all take a chair
Come sit at the table of man
break bread with all found there
She fed the souls each evening
round fires of brotherhood
Bringing like and not together
as each one knew she would
_____________________________
Where my own is but a lamplight
Illuminating one
Hers the love of a Mothers Heart
burned brilliant as the sun
So precious was the time we shared
for whom would you then cry
So sweet the nectar love conceals
don't let life pass you by
Tate
For my Aunt Kathy who passed away a week ago
The original with pictures and music
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/aristate/532361/
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 2:22 AM UTC
New York is our city
Let's be each others coffee
I would cross boroughs for you
take a midnight subway ride out of the blue
Just to prove that my love is true.
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 9:34 AM UTC
Continuous struggle.
Stevie Ray
"Inheritor of past lives sorrows"
Jump over
my perants past,
huddles,
while I tend to
my own masks
and boroughs.
-What am I-
A tool used for processing?!
A body filled with reflection?!
A straight back that can
carry your recollections?!
An antenna that can project back?!
Your reception?!
I may be transparent
but I am not your imagery!
Empathetic,
I feel you
but don't abuse our synergy!
A two way mirror
so I am not your mimicry!
I am not a water well
for your acknowledgement!
Acknowledge yourself
for a change.
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018 at 6:31 AM UTC