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

Created June 1st, 2011

I am not gay.
I am not straight.
I am not curved,
or warped or woofed
I am bent, cylindrical,
a burnt human.

but not weak, nah!

tempered stronger than
furnaced scarred,
hard-stained steel,
a fire shaped child of El.

The sum of,
the product of,
the multiple divisions of:

my hard-on
experiential, existential
hand to hand
combat learning,
life's red copper burnishing,
and my very own
genetic, tantric
commanded tablets,
my natural earnings,

and I guess I am just like
{you, man}

obedient factotum to the
twists and turns of the
curve ***** and spitters
life pitches at my head,
that end up as
body blows.

multiple contusions outside
worn with pride inside,
I award myself a
medal of honor,
and elect myself,
Most Valuable Person,
an All Star of David,
for having survived
one more battle scarred
game day,

and I guess I am just like
{you, man}

when I awake,
in the raceway courses
of my veins,
the speedways to my
heart and brain,
runs the bitter herbs taste
of fear of how
I shall yet again,
earn this day,
my body's keep and shelter,
earn some table scraps of
peace of mind,
that I may lay
myself down to sleep
if ever so briefly,

and I guess I am just like
{you, man}

When I prowl the mid of night,
the fever of combat fear,
my skin sears,
and there is no narcotic
that anesthetizes
even surficial  
the anxiety,
the ailment of
melancholia
that hallmarks my soul,
the overflow of which
spills over the ****
of my vocabulary

So every new day
is a new year,
and I start the diet
of my soul
yet again

and I guess I am just like
{you, man}

Once I was a soldier
who wore the
black and white stripes
of the uniform that stretches
to the four corners
of the world.

I used to sway to the R&B;
of someone else's tunes,
prostrate fell to my knees
speaking someone
else's words,
touched my forehead
to the ground.

but the melancholia that
sterling hallmarks my soul
never disappeared and
renewal was a gift
denied and refuted,
by the lack of clarity
to which I was not
part and parcel

and l guess I am just like
{you, man}

Took a new oath,
swore allegiance
to the alliance of
I don't give a ****
and acceptance of
the infection of
flawed humanity
inside of me
lies buried in the
permafrost of my mind,

So every new day
is a new year,
and I start the diet
of my soul,
yet again

The first new words
daily uttered,
chanted with vehemence
of an out loud prayer
to no one but we two,
me and you, man,
unashamedly clear and enunciated
not mumbled,
not muttered,
seven parts blessing,
three parts curse,
are these words.

l guess,
I am just like
{you, man}

Found and founded a brotherhood of me and
{you, man},
one mantra,
you and I are just alike,
now we have a new
holy romantic empire,
we are human
{you, man}
slaves to
nothing,
no one
but each other.

~~~
the light is very early morning poor,
my still eyes crusty from overnight dreams,
but I can make out the individual
geese, browsing, pecking, having an early
breakfast at our AAA 5 star-rated motel by the bay,
on their way to Florida & Mexico,
traveling their own highway,
The Atlantic Flyway,^
stopping over for a few quiet nights and noisy days at
our isle's grassy plain
(ok, our lawn),
a way station where the room rates are low,
free wifi for their GPS systems,
the eats decent, reasonable tolerable too is,
the local variety of  human company,
considered by goose cognoscenti,
as harmless

habitual digresser, I return to
the early morn scene where all quiet,
then the shrieking and the manic running sounds,
like the firehouse alarm but more akin to
rambunctious jazz  music and the hip hop of
"so you think you can dance,"
for the red fox
in this light,
but a grey outline,
amidst the geese,
inattentively grazing just by the bulkhead,
a mere handful of feet
from the water, always an
escape tunnel handy

I know it is a fox
by its
airborne shape distinctive,
four legs and bushy tail clearly outlined
in the blue black grey atmosphere,
flying about a foot above ground,
in the mix of chubby runners at the starting line,
performing emergency takeoff procedures

a dramatic race for life and death,
something few of us ever witnessed,
or worse, experience, but nonetheless,
a daily occurrence mostly far
from our daily humdrum reality shows

this, more tale, than poem,
has its twisty turn,
a poetic trick de rigeur,
starting here...

a human fellow
I happen to know somewhat well,
grasps the concept immediate

his highway personal has brought him here,
to this exact raceway spot, and moment,
over a course of sixty years plus,
unbeknownst this was on his calendar appointments schedule
from the moment of his birth

he, voyageur, ******, witness, non-participant, but
just another airborne passenger, looking to plot, route
his last legs onto the red flag,
race-over signal, globally

the geese by far the wiser,
better planners,
than short sighted, foolish men,
who don't measure well the encroaching, narrowing distance
to their own mortality's terminus finale,
geese smartly keep handy escape hatches,
an alternative route

who will be my fox?

illness sudden swift,
a heart beat skipped,
the silence of cessation,
the unimaginable telephone call of accident,
a terrible swift sword heaven-appearing,
a surprising but ordinary
number early up,
a shocking shortening of actuarial tables,
after all, every fool knows,
poets are
humanity's statistical outliers

so here I am contemplative,
cussing up cursive scripting story endings,
varied new and unexpected,
poetic concepts each one more deserving,
wondering are their any geese,
like me,
who prefer the sudden death of teeth
over the slow molting of checking off
the tedium of passage rings of years of annualized aging,
until one morphs
into the last runner in his own 10k race,
tho at the finishing touch end his is the pace
of a passenger aboard his red flyer wagon,
about to overturn

who when, he,
crosses beneath the finishing banner,
hours after all the rested have
made their way to the
Presumed Safety of Wherever,
he crosses to silent applause of onlookers
all gone away
~~~
as for my lawned, learned friends,
the fox proved to be...
not as good a planner as the geese
~~~
this poem is a favor returned to new friends, poets here,
Jimmy Yetts,
who asks similar questions, and,
mark cleavenger,
a life guarding professional,
who tries to save us from ourselves
and succeeds
~~~