"newark" poems
There’s a lot to be said for this place.
A near-perfect pitch for diversity,
Diversity: a neurolinguistic term;
A quaint way to say: miscegenation.
No, just kidding; I meant the melting ***
A fine blend of Anglo, Hispanic & Indian blood—
That’s Pueblo & Plains Indian blood--
Not that **** masala, chapati & dal Indian blood.
My apologies to "Who's the White Guy?" Bobby Jindal.
New Mexico: “The Land of Enchantment.”
Where 310 sunny days per annum,
Are like money in the bank, earning
Double-plus compound interest for those
Suffering with seasonal affective disorders.
A land of sunshine without the orange juice,
But substitute chili, red or green?
An equitable offset to be sure.
310 days of sunshine:
Even the white people are brown here.
Which does a lot for my self-esteem.
Back east—New York, Chicago & Philadelphia e.g.—
People that look like me, i.e.,
People with dark brown hair, eyes and skin,
Get stopped/ass-cheek spread/& frisked, routinely.
Stop & Frisk: NYPD’s spectator sport for decades.
Stop & Frisk: Mayor Bloomberg-defended
Crime-stopping Godsend,
Getting guns off the streets.
Getting homicides down.
Everything’s cool until some slick race baiter,
Starts yelling: RACIAL PROFILING.
Forget for a moment that people that look like me,
People like me with dark hair, eyes & skin,
Commit 78% of the crime in most cities.
“It’s not racially driven profiling,”
Said Newark’s police director recently
Referring to stops carried out by his officers.
“IT’S CRIME-DRIVEN PROFILING!”
But, again, political-correctness trumps common sense:
August 2013: Judge Rules NYPD
Stop-and-Frisk Unconstitutional.
Well I’ll be a monkey’s *** ******
I moved to New Mexico to blend in.
My complexion a shoe-in for
The Witness Protection Program or
Any other public or private,
Domestic or international rendition site.
But I digress.
New Mexico: no passport necessary, Babaloo!
New Mexico: be you white or black, Hispanic or Indian,
Or even Roswell extraterrestrial,
The cops here will beat the **** out of you.
Or shoot you dead, Kemosabe.
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 1:44 PM UTC
As I walk through the streets of Newark
on this christmas' eve
I see as the mayans did
a world plunged in calamity
For I see not lovebirds walking by
nor do I see the old men waving hi
where have all these good people gone?
does anyone else see anything wrong?
The stores, not decorated festively
but one wreath perched up high
as the TV screens buzz on
about ****** **** and genocide
Is this what has become of christmas eve?
if so I truly do not believe
that there is any value in the holiday
well at least not anymore...
and it all might as well have ended
more than 3 days ago
honestly- mayans- am I too late?
was your doomsday prediction delayed?
a prophesy that we have yet to see
about how we shall destroy ourselves
we all jumped to assume that the end
shall come from some horrid outside force
this allowed us all to just pretend
that humans don't hurt humans- of course.
While there are no children in the streets
and they fear of what may come
from the horrid acts they have seen on TV
they say to Saint Nicholas,
"You ask to know my christmas gift- and I have but one"
"please make sure those who are hurting will get some"
and just as you mayans
came to destroy yourself
is that what we
shall come to do once again?
...
or is there hope?
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 11:11 AM UTC
I never knew his real name as a child in Newark
But named him Uncle Funky the peanut man while he sold peanuts
from a makeshift stand, now on this June 2013 morning
My mind opens the door of youthful memory
I can see soiled pants and shirt,an old battered hat covering gray uncut hair and brown hands waiting for a dollar for his peanuts
Funk clung to his skin like fleas to a dog
And just one whiff released would stagger a young boxer in his prime
The times changed with the town sweeping Uncle Funky away with
yesterday and the past like old news
And I wonder and it isn't a very pleansant wonder
Whatever became of Uncle Funky the peanut man?
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
early morning
and the same sun rises over distant lands
and close-by skyscrapers
searing rusting infrastructure
with its harsh orange glow
spreading westward,
stretching over asphalt pathways
that connect, divide, structure, and destroy
alighting wearied faces of automobile drivers
careening through their morning commutes,
consuming caffeine like *******
while they deftly maneuver their 2,000 pounds of steel behind,
along, aside, and ahead of their neighbors
this,
is New Jersey,
where all roads lead to Newark
and there is nothing left but roads
approaching the colossus,
the cars cram and crawl into curb-side cases
narrowly avoiding calamitous collisions and condescending traffic cops
doors, fly open
and a mad flurry of arms and legs,
boxes and backpacks
come whirl-winding out onto the entryway
rushed goodbyes and abrupt adieus
color the palette of the doorway
dripping inside,
bleeding into the harshness of late businessmen
and screaming families.
Shoes Off.
Laptops Out.
and pray dearly that the TSA
doesn't shove their fingers inside of you
today.
arms up, legs spread
exposed to the imperceptible energy of American exceptionalism
the magnetic arm swings,
impregnating its subjects with the Joy of Fear
and the awe of empire
swings again,
and releases the hapless passenger from its total control
Through.
Checked.
Complete.
Pass Go, collect $200.
and into the international installation itself.
Enjoy your flight.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:36 PM UTC
every time
i speak my own
name i taste
the blood of
my mother's bit
lip (&) held tongue-- a self shed
to take rein
o' my father's flatiron
sur/name:
the blood, reigned (&)
i remain—
sanguine & ruddy
after all
(these broods).
Jul 8, 2023
Jul 8, 2023 at 1:12 PM UTC
White crane fishing trackside for
Vestiges of nourishment from
Newark muck and Secaucus slush:
Be aware;
Three-eyed tadpoles live in these waters,
Breeding alongside rotting corpses--
Mob jobs gone wrong and various
Plastic garbage.
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 6:28 PM UTC
How Much Gets Me On A Bus? to the City?
(I live 30 minutes away)
more than this ever will - POETRY
I’ve been writing ‘poems’ ever since I remember
ever since 11 –
reciting these phenomenal words of wisdom
to any and all who would listen
forcing family-members & friends
that’s the thing about poetry,
it makes you feel like it’s important,
makes you think the words you sling together
aren’t really yours
it comes to you, through you, needs to come out of you,
and when its over you’re just as amazed
as they should be.
but they’re not, I mean
they like poetry, admire it,
even enjoy it sometimes,
but they could honestly
give it up in a heartbeat,
live without it.
You know what I mean?
I’m like you
like all the people who come here
I'm part poetry as poetry is me
A Dodge Poetry Attendee many years –
my arm once around Gwendolyn Brooks,
cried in a church with Lucille Clifton
talked Newark to Baraka –
know the honorable Slammer, Patricia Smith!
I’ve sat many years with the Lords of Literature - my professors
who all seemed to know “whose got it”
the intellectuals of American prose who seem to be searching for a rookie,
the next best troubadour college-student that will grace their faculty-doors…
The poetry I read here is incredible
Some of the best stuff on the net,
poignant, painful , honest, raw, sensual, serious – provokingly real
words I read here startle me, stun me at times
so clear in meaning, well-crafted, chosen words
unusually strong
They’re the kind of words the got-it people have,
the poet people (probably all people have)
poetry is just another way of finding an infallible song –
(I still say we should go sing it on the bus!)
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 11:29 PM UTC
Eight-hundred miles underfoot and
Three-hundred and twenty-one dollars spent
On a Delta flight out of Newark
To spend two nights with a man I met
Once for one night, fifty-six hundred miles
And two continents away
Three months ago,
Returning only with
Two halves of one
Broken heart.
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 10:14 PM UTC
I taste your lips like the cotton candy
of a Newark sky, laced
with smog and dysentery. You lift
me up, roll me over and draw
me toward you. The gravitational pull--
'on my hair and tell me you love me'--
of your shoulders
and the intoxication of your
voice. Craning my neck
to hear--'you love me'--the grip
of your hands
on my throat.
The city is loud. Just
loud enough to gasp
through the static
of your car radio, pressing--'up against
me'--all the buttons.
Just change
the station. Where we rock
and undulate smoggy windows and
candied skies.
This last goodbye
tastes different from
my first time, clutching--
'my back and etching out lullabies'--
the shift stick. Put it in
neutral. We can just coast
from here and take it
easy--'she's so'--easy. Easy
falling into and letting fall and keeping--
'next to me forever'--from falling
over and over the bricks
of your building, shaking
the foundation, the exact
same way. You loved me
like a super dome and expanded
the words of your cityscape: a nice
addition, in need
of renovation. The cycle of
recycled buildings and veiled skies.
The monotonous gossip
of a Newark morning drawn out
past the night.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 2:51 PM UTC
She's so casual squishy,
that Velda Tautginas. Lithuanians
have the strangest names
but **** can they cook. Fine
figured woman too. That Marius
is sure a lucky man. I don't know
how he keeps the pounds off.
If someone was cooking me
kugel like that, I'd be fat as a
manatee. Gettin' close though.
Shoulda never moved to Florida.
It's so **** sticky, I can't bear
to leave the air conditioning. Still,
Id've never met the Tautginas
had I not moved to St. Pete's. Guess
I oughta get a treadmill or
one of them there Beachbody
workout videos. Hell Marius tells me
Velda's sister is recently widowed
and is moving here from Newark.
Bet she knows how to make,
kugel like that.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 6:30 PM UTC
It's never dark in newark, the ruddy sickly glow of money spent keeps us safe from night
We used to depend on her, her white light reflections was our protection from fear and wonder
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
I saw him led across my BLACK AN D WHITE television screen in the rundown city of NEWARK huge shades covered his eyes like black bandages head skyward voice a dynamite musicial roar of sound as RAY CHARLES screamed I GOT A WOMAN WAY OVER TOWN THAT"S GOOD TO ME THAN JAMES BROWN in a shoulder cape danced did a split dropped to his knees and roared PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE and PAPA GOT A BRAND NEW BAG the DRIFTERS took the stage with UNDER THE BOARD WALK JACKIE WILSON ex boxer punched out the tune LONELY TEARDROPSwhile doing another split and throwing his coat or hankerchief to waiting screaming fans DION AND THE BELMONTS told about RUNAROUND SUE SMOKEY ROBINSON AND THE MIRACLES with his high falsetto touched the rafters with TEARS OF A CLOWN the TEMPTATIONS told everybody that would listen that PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE and I WISH IT WOULD RAIN so that no one will see my teardrops when I go outside BROOK BENTON with his smooth baritone sang about A RAINY NIGHT IN GEOGIA and that ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME and THE JAGUARS were careful on tiptoe because THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT ELVIS PRESSLEY wanted to know ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT and sang about THE JAILHOUSE ROCK and JERRY LEE LEWIS known as the killer on the stage beat beat the piano like a bad child with elbows feet hands letting us know about there is A WHOLE LOT OF SHAKING GOING ON we ain't faking there's a whole lot of shaking going on
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 9:06 PM UTC
Last night, Lisa, Peter, Leeza and I were in her father’s 50th floor study watching New York City. It’s a corner room with glass walls from floor to ceiling. He likes to watch the city himself and has a small, 5 seat sectional couch facing the view.
The left wall window looks across Hell’s Kitchen to exactly where Sully Sullenberger crash landed flight 1549 in the Hudson river (it was 3:31 pm and no one was home). The right window overlooks Central Park and Upper Manhattan. Lincoln Center, almost dead center of the corner, looks like part of a toy train-set.
The view is a wheeling, ever changing and mesmerizing panorama. Well lit ships, barges and boats move glacially against the ink black Hudson. Jets in expressway-like holding patterns (Newark Liberty, and Teterboro airports left window - LaGuardia, right window) blink, like waving angels, helicopters buzz below like insects and the traffic, far, far below, forms a living chain of red and white lights which can erupt with nugatory hues of police blue at any moment.
While we watch, we’re playing a game of “Would you rather.” It’s a game of situational trade-offs, like “Would you rather listen to the same 10 songs forever or have to watch the same 5 movies forever? Of course, most people say the movies - because they last longer and there would be fewer repeats.
We take turns asking these critical questions - pausing, occasionally, to point out things below.
“Would you rather be in a crowded elevator with a bunch of noisy high school students or pinned in with a bunch of judgemental, middle aged men? The girls chose the students, even though high schoolers can be mean. Peter chose to be with the men.
“Would you rather find your true love or a suitcase with 5 million dollars?” We all chose love.
“Would you rather hike or camp?” Both were unpopular if they involved going to the bathroom outside - which creeps the girls out.
“Would you rather give up your computers or your pets (forever)?” THAT was a stressful one.
Nov 20, 2022
Nov 20, 2022 at 11:18 AM UTC
sleep hangs in the air over my head
until it bolts and breaks the steep drop
from the window down to the city below
where light swarms around the sprawl
brilliant enough to cut through the thick cover of night that settles over it at this time
argus eyes Newark as it refuses rest
turns up its nose at the inclination
struggles under the spread and smother of last phase
pearls its flare as a periapt
and loudens its whirs and sighs
from public transit and its smoking tires
as halogen headlights bleed well through highway treelines
so I'll stave off another tryst with sleep
whatever romance tossed to Jersey's smog-laden wind
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 2:09 AM UTC
My father painted his dairy barn yellow
Maybe because he found some bargain paint
Then came along the inspector fellow
With his clipboard, and he said that yellow ain’t
Legal, that dairy barn paint had to be white
My father had The Book, and from it he read
That a dairy barn’s color only had to be light
“Well, I’ll find something else,” the inspector said
He found a fly speck on an old cow bell -
May Texas milk inspectors just go to (Newark)
Jun 30, 2019
Jun 30, 2019 at 3:15 PM UTC
Lee and Drilona Perry got married at Newark register office late on Saturday afternoon.
They headed to the adjacent Newark Castle after to take photos but, in the meantime, register office staff went home and the gates were locked.
They were rescued along with their 50 guests after an hour and the council has now apologised.
'Wedding to remember'
Mr Perry, from Newark, Nottinghamshire, said he thought it was a joke at first.
"You plan a nice, beautiful wedding that you expect to be the most wonderful day of your life....only to find you get locked in," he said.
"As it started to get dark and the rain started to come down we thought let's wrap this up and get to the function, but the gates were locked."
He said they had been given no explanation as to how it had happened but "it will be a wedding to remember".
"We can laugh about it now. It could've been a lot worse," added Mr Perry.
Jeanette Hall, registration area manager at Nottinghamshire County Council, said they appreciated it "must have been frustrating for all involved".
She said: "Newark and Sherwood District Council lock these gates at around dusk and unfortunately we should have alerted the couple to the possibility that the gates may be locked when they went into the grounds."
She said they were trying to contact the couple to investigate what happened.
read more:www.marieaustralia.com/orange-formal-dresses
www.marieaustralia.com/pink-formal-dresses
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 12:43 AM UTC
Who here hasn’t been someone else’s careful prayers on fire? Please don’t write again.
Even I’ve said, “I won’t take I won’t take no for an answer for an answer,” right after I’ve said,
“Don’t ask. Beg.”
Turns out I’ve become the heavy luggage of cameras and spring a friend’s lost in a done decade.
But believe me even in this dark we hear the same bent music.
Do you remember when
we went nowhere alone. I often went without myself but not always. I still feel at home
there, the street where a girl told me she felt like a reason to rush into the night.
Like leaving, nothing there’s ever finished.
But asked to give a compendium on the tenderness of those days, the only there and then
I’d swear to, I’d call it What we talk about when we talk about
“What we talk about when we talk about love.”
(Elsewhere, but at least still glittering we thought.
At least we thought then, Ray. I too do what I can.)
Literature burned. Our eyes fire-dyed green. The stories all sky sized.
I left home and came back home.
I left for the fall for the country and slept next to Liana in flannel on the kerosene-heated porch.
I came home to Newark again and friends arrived gently, poor and impossibly gorgeous at the door.
The story goes the table can’t hold the chandelier’s stars such dust I’m telling you the story goes.
There’s no honest way to arrange the bouquet of lightning
those memories assemble in me this morning.
Just too many crushed thoughts to bury in eternity
I can’t do anything but genuflect in front of them—
What do you think this isn’t, impossible?
*I remember how she smelled like a commercial lavender farm. Minor stars. I always wanted
a fistful of that expensive haircut she refused to shake out.*
That other one was brave too early in the century. Remember him.
*On the ride out of town she sung about how it’s still yesterday on the moon.
How whatever’s gone’s still out there somewhere.*
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 1:37 PM UTC
A Cop Murdered an innocent man yesterday on Summit Ave.
no charges were filed
Hey fella did you hear?
what's that
Construction companies are creating housing
for 15,000 new residents in Hackensack, NJ
for who?
Chris Christie's mob buddies.
Chris Christie doesn't have any mob buddies. He doesn't
have any buddies at all. He just sits there on his fat ***
eating every ding **** in site.
Hey, the press said he lowered unemployment by seven per cent.
Don't believe the press. The reason unemployment is so low is that the
seven per cent who Were on unemployment are now considered no
longer employable. And were moved off the list to social security.
Resulting in the change.
Hey, aren't the cops there crim.
Shhh, they're trying to get people to move here.
Have they tested the water yet.
They don't have to. Water is something you purchase off the shelf.
Where?
HERE!
in hackensack
Not in Newark Bay where they haven't even looked yet.
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 10:14 AM UTC
Sometimes I think if I forget about the problem
It’ll just go away
and it does at least for awhile
Sometimes in spring in Texas when the sun is finally shining
and yet to seek vengeance
on unsuspecting passersby
Summer is hot and dry
I wish I was the mud
Sinking in the stench of Lake Tawakoni
A 6 yrs olds knee high
Sometimes I think if I forget about the problem
It’ll just go away
Winter is Newark, New Jersey
cold and misty and grey
Walking Hoboken Harbor
The great big rotten apple enveloped in a dreamy haze
I used to love when the autumn leaves began to fall
and these are absolutely the only things
my father and I
have in common at all
Aug 6, 2025
Aug 6, 2025 at 5:41 AM UTC
Roth was a great lover of music
Old-timely big band show times that evoked memories in living rooms across white America
Provoking melancholia for what was assumed lost.
He was a master of writing technicalities
Knew the stitchings in a pair of men's brown leather driving gloves
Like they were poetic metre
Knew the nervy velocity attended to the beating of a heart through a stethoscope .
He wrote more novels that can be read in most lifetimes
As he had five different versions of himself to think through.
He wrote half a novel in the voice of an actual ex- lover
He was not particularly good at writing women.
He was unsurprisingly/surprisingly good at writing about the realities of race.
He often cared little for reality
but could tautly pierce at the authenticity to be found
in "social realism."
He wrote standing up
Cried that novel was dead when really he was dying
He was both acutely aware and ignorant of this
He will be buried outside of Newark, presumably.
His career trajectory is unique in American letters in that it crystallized the vogue for American letters, ****** up the body, peaked and troughs with death, surveyed the end of American Innocence over four decades and closed at a summer camp.
His themes, in that order : Heartache, *** Motherlove, Therapy, Body Horror, Satire, Egomania, , father hunger, Death, the state of the nation, regret, race, life inside the academy,fascist media darlings, liberal terrorists destroying their family narratives,Death again, old *** absolute suicide in words, adolescence.
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 7:45 AM UTC
Charlie, I heard you cried alone...
Ripped apart, heart and soul
from the cold blood of war
which consumed your soul...
Charlie, I know you cried painful tears
that flowed from your heart
upon the lifeless bodies
of those you called brothers
and friends...
A return to a home lonely and dark
in the stark heartlessness of the Newark Ghettos
you struggled to grasp life again
which was quickly stripped away....
You once said to me in sincerity
"The sun doesn't shine on the battlefield
and the moon never smiles."
Your life quickly expired
no wealth....
No dreams come true....
No goodbyes to the ones you loved...
Last words never heard....
You are once again surrounded by the fearless warriors
beneath a lime green grass
an unmarked grave though you saved many!
Your final battles and heartaches never known
We've grown old
Your name forgotten by all; but I....
I do cry for you in my memories at unsuspecting moments,
I cherish your brave memory
sadly your dusted medals
lie in an unmarked box
hopefully to not be mistakenly discarded
in a dark corner amidst old memories....
May God's grace embrace and kiss your tired soul
within the heavenly sunshine
and a smiling moon
My Hero....
My Friend.....
Till my dying day consumes any memory of you
and the struggles of a forgotten soldier.
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 15, 2019 at 6:10 PM UTC
At Newark Airport, Christie* tried
A quicker way to get inside,
Expecting they would let him slide;
Alas, though, entrance was denied.
The V.I.P. line he’d once used,
When cockiness from him just oozed,
Was blocked by police, but Christie mused
That he was just a bit confused.
For when the “mighty” tumble from
The lofty place from which they’ve come,
To our derision they succumb;
And sympathy? Not one small crumb.
*the former governor of New Jersey
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 4:05 PM UTC