it was warm
for a winters eve
unusually warm
but damp very damp
birthing a persistent
midnight mist that
crawled over everything

avenging
halogen angels
flitted down from
streetlight perches
skidding through
bare limb bars
of broken trees
roped in by sagging
telephone wires

skulking
seraphs
joined
ebullient
neon auroras
laughingly
brake dancing,
jittering away on the
pock marked rims
of hip hop streets

the fine drizzle
descending from the
black urban heavens
splayed holy water
over the bodies
of anything
that moved; and
layered mounds
of transparent beads
on all inert things
chiding those yolked
to weighty burdens
to seek relief of
a much needed
breaking point

our
slouching city
mired in a cycle
of a prolonged
historical rut
beavers away
to lift the lid
on tomorrows
tipping point
in a desperate
labor to stop
tripping over
itself...

a dinged up
Sentra’s
flashing spinners
twisted round
our dark corner
nearly clipping
our troop

inside the
yakking low-riders
scuttled along,
their hidden ***** eyes
cruising the stoops
and cyclone alleys
scoping opportunities
for the next
jolly hustle
to feed
a growing
angry fix

tonight
Mother Nature was
running a *****
to the wall third shift,
manufacturing a
stationary low
of gagging precip
churning volumes
of Vulcan smoke
conjuring
convective spirits
from all the
dim places

emanations lit
the balmy January air
rising from
stubborn gray patches
of despoiled snow
and rancid ponds
organic gutter water
composting
in distilled pools
awaiting leakage
through flotsam
clogged sewage grids

Paterson’s
litter police
could close the
city’s budget deficit
if all infractions
were properly cited
and paid in this
neighborhood

this queer elixir of
rising vapors from
evaporating snow
escaping the cracks
lining the bowels of
mordant streets
joining descending
screens of billowing mists
blurs boundaries of light,
diffusing temporal time

people and things
lose precise definition
reducing sentient beings
to moving silhouettes of gray
photographic negatives
framed in dribbling palettes
of pastel hues

our
5th Ward mission
planted in the
hub of a neighborhood
still holding on...

Old WASP’s
of St. Paul’s
long ago
winged away
from this
princely
Episcopate
principality

the abandoned
conical nest, its
chambers filled with
the mud of 50 dead rectors
precariously clings
to its shivering
boulevard corner

its endowment depleted
its earthly treasure rusting
grandiose Tiffany windows
remain the last legacy of an
opulent faith now
shamefully rattling away
in moth eaten frames

once icons of
adulatory reverence
the final sparkling asset
of a distressed religion
begs to be monetized
by flummoxed vestrymen
yearning to extend
a stewardship
over a dissipating
ESL flock

distress in the hood
parades down Broadway
in all directions

a few blocks east
a shuttered
Barnert Hospital
transfigured into an
urban enterprise zone
for health-care privateers
working overtime to
extract federal
corporate welfare
rent subsidies
dutifully fulfilling
fine print obligations of
Obamacare legislation

Old Mayor Barnert’s
namesake synagogue
once hard by
City Hall
is long gone
its absent footprint
now centered by
a thriving
White Castle

near Broadway’s end
on the outskirts
of Eastside Park
Art Deco Emanuel Temple
the last anchor
for the city’s Judaism
lies vacant
awaiting a renewed
purpose

fraught with irony
a thriving Islamic Center
stands juxtaposed
across the street
from the old
Hebrew Temple

we wonder what
will emerge
from the
hallowed chrysalis
of decommissioned
Emanuel?

rumors of a
Great Falls Art Center
trickle like a leaking faucet
failure to secure a mortgage
in the post credit
bubble pop economy
dams the possibly
of a new centers
coming to fruition

will
the city’s
changing
demography of
reverent Muslim’s
genuflecting
across the street
take time away
from prayer to
patronize a venue
offering decadent
bourgeois jazz and
risqué reviews
of retro Borscht Belt
vaudeville?

when Constantinople
became Istanbul they
converted the Christian
churches into mosques

when the Inquisitioners
drove the Moors from
Granada they converted
the Grand Mosque to
the Cathedral of the
Incarnation

what incarnations
will this city’s
twilight bring?

As Byzantine
begets
Constantinople
begets
Istanbul
the links
in the Silk Road
spanned west
to the new world
of mechanized looms
powered by
Great Falls
raceway water
and a distribution
and procurement
chain anchored
by the Morris Canal

Capitalist
modernity
begets
our Silk City
it also bespeaks
its demise

in the courtyard
of St. Paul’s
a muffled chorus
trawls the thick air

a posse of pimps
done wrangling
their stables
of $5 ******
sing reveries to
the evening haul

midnight lullabies
of corner crooners
lift a Capella hosannas
from the dark armpit
of an alley behind
the Autozone

“i said
you say
what can make
me feel this way
my girl”

juiced pimps
cashin in
livin large on
a skanks
50 cent haul

the trade in flesh
of distressed
human capital
remains a
growth industry

Music Selection:  
Temptations, My Girl

jbm
3/1/13
Oakland

~
took and tucked her in my pocket



a rare Monday holiday, and whomever, undoubtedly
an impractical man-someone, (always our fault),
decided to dampen the lawn and the entire countryside with a steady, not drizzle and not rain, something in between, and a dolloping, artisanal, organic, grey creme fraiche fog that
permits hinted glimpses of sea and land, home from away

a perfect day to finish that overdue library book,
and the deletion of unanswered email notices of your ever increasing criminal status,
both a delicioso rainy day, deep dish pizza pleasuring

or
go for a "walk and talk" in the rain with oneself,
properly attired, naturally, in a yellow slicker and silly hat,
(a perfect car target)
observing how the bay gets refilled, and the elm and the oak
drink themselves tipsy on an all-day-grey goose ******,
all the while looking for side-of-road weedy, wordy poems
that will look nice in a vase day or on a colorful plate from
Saint Paul de Vence


more a "walk and compose" insists the brain,
denying the legs and feet the full advanced three credits,
for providing nothing more than cerebral transportation,
poor brain, inferiority complexion, thinking the female does all the truly heavy duty thinking stuff and of her,
nobody ever thinks or kisses!

so I took and tucked her in my pocket,
(your brain's gender contrarian to one's lower physical gifts),
and poem-picking, away we went, to wet sand beaches
looking for shells, bones, forgot plastic buckets and shovels,
i.e. articles of inspiration incorporation composting composition

just me and she for the other 'her' chose to curl,
herself upon her spot under the always shedding blanket,
watching Richard or Henry or one of the Mary's plotting,
on what we agree must be a perfectly British style
spy's rainy day, or an Agatha ****** mystery
or a visit to the Towers

a little pause between showers, the seeding clouds,
catching a breath, allows the birds to exchange trees
in what appears to man as suicide by diving musical chairs,
while the seagulls oink, "perhaps a cucumber fish sandwich with a nice hot cuppa?"

alas, alas, only flowers that must perforce remain unpicked,
here and there a solitary dorming daisy uprising,
from cracked concrete protruding, but nary a poem of somber consequence found

so to home and hearth and some telly,
me and she, where upon arrival
took and untucked her from my pocket,
my empty poem pocketed persona somewhat mocked
by she who regales splendiferously on her couch throne

our composure discomposed and discombobulated and wet,
instead wrote this trip report and submitted it to the teach
as a homework assignment

5/29/17 8:00am precisely,
upon the where shelter isle

502 Bad Gateway
(a work in process)
~~~

poetry
is to be found easiest, lying fatal-fetal amidst
the sewage of the blessed daily profane~mundane,
enslaved within the tyranny of everyday indignities,
encrusted within the indignities of diurnal tyrannies,
in the catch basin of sew-aged treatment  pools,
living as a perpetual unpublished draft,
locked behind Five Hundred and Two
Bad Gateways,
Emma Lazarus-yearning
to be free…

502 is an even number, the internet sages confirm,
equitably distributed with no regard to
pronouns,
disrespectful of any age, all creepy~seedy known gods,
equally unconcerned by the laws of **** poetica,
succinctly informing you to f*k off  with the elegant
sparseness of technical brevity,
a la vie moderne boulder,
repeatedly *****-fussy pushing back on you,
as we push a poem uphill

<?>

The road to good poetic intentions is human-paved;
a utile fact,  so continue to insure-shod be thy feet,
when shedding writings of poesy, lest the hot asphalt of
low inspiration yet get the better of ye…or the gates
or the bad gateways,
502 in their number, lock you out,
and carry the day, have their way, and
fracture well honed words
into bits & pieces of letters, scraps of scrap,
“pebbles and ******* and broken matches and bits of glass”^

that all the king's servers and all the king's technicians couldn’t put together again coherently, your words but conscripts in a
vast wasteland of eternal drafts^^

      <?>

well you know this story, that one that has being asking
you to writ it/get rid of it/tell it finally,
a couple of times daily,
that poem, this be that one,
an amorality tale of rejections,
a precision guided
error message,
a HIMARS missive miserly
missilery projectile
rife with hidden %#&”postulations,
of the “what’s wrong with me”
garden variety

think of life as a series of serious, independently linked moments, cherish-able, composting  usurping cursing phrases
distinctly worthy
of re-sharing unto the befouled upper atmosphere,
directly communicating the texture of your experience^^^

Ah Goodbye
Hello Poetry,
rejection is thy middle fingered name!*

this befouled poem
was
begun: many years ago
completed: Jan 4, 2023 @2:11AM

Sienna dreams
lay heavy on my flesh

her sheepish tone
that's oh so beautiful

and her steady
steady hand

she's an autumn leaf
composting in the dirt

bringing life
through death

the steady cycle of seasons
will bring only more beauty

for she is sienna

my favorite color

Hypocritic
Machiavellian
With
Sadistic
Intent
Monolithic
Opposite
Of
The fundamental
Reality

Artesian of
Maelfeasions
Supernatural
Thermal vent
Belching subtle, delicate
Beautiful
Believable
Lies  .....
Composer of
Compromise
Rotten
Death filled seas
Of
Composting
Broken dreams
Feeder an ruler of
Flies .....
With malignant
Stagnate
Tributaries .
The fact
That
You
Are
Enemy
Of
My enemy
Does not surprise
Me...
Get behind me
Stay that way.
You have
Aught
With
My adversary
Does not make you friend
When he would be
Destroyed
You will
Turn on
Me...
I am
To someone an enemy
Yes.....
They are not my enemy .
They have lived on
Lies
And
This
I pity

There can only be
One solution

.....Truth.....

Find the standard
If in agreement
With it .
Then do not
Combat evil for evil
It will only convolute
Fact and fiction
Till you character
Will betray you
......
To the world
You resemble
The aggressor
Not the victim

...
Ballistics or statistics
Enemy or
Allies
Truth or
Lies
Composition
Or compromise
Divine
Or demise
Devise a way to divide
Yourself from what
Can take you
In later days
In ways you could never expect.
The future is opportunities
Or is it
A
malicious
Past you
Will see
..believe ..
Me