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Sylvia Weld Apr 2013
on a rainy day your body spread over a picnic table
like an egg yolk, and you swallowed the word profound
again and again.
someone from your past
has gone beneath the ocean, leafless
and you can hear the wailing from here to the saginaw
people begin to breathe blood: they’re choking up, soughing
“be easy buddy” and
“he wanted a black eye for prom so i punched him in the face”
flowers arrived at the door, a ghost, an ear of corn
while everything yearned tall: frames, shadows,
in st. louis you circle a bit of claret earth
spotting your sister’s face in the mirror, leaving linseed and shreds
i could never ask how you are.
the wail is a train whistle, i hear it pauses
for no softness of flesh, these midwestern daughters
she loved all living things.
imagine carefully painting a boat
a pencil in your teeth,
cutting through earth, the nantucket sound
you’re going to take your boat beyond
this firmament, you know, we’re all
waiting through this salty crush
sinking below a winter current
this is all yours now:
mainsail, rudder, hard-a-lee
you darling masters of the sea.

for PW and LE. goodnight.
Downtown is toned by streetlights on Saginaw St.,
tracing her cobbled backbone—

on the corner a pool of light is a lullaby,
but clearer to see brick by brick,
layers of calloused palms,
callous shadows cross-hatching;
blue-collar, white-collar, police-collared,
all with matching steel jewelry—

We place the blame of an abandoned city
like hands wrapped around each other’s throats,

I hold my breath.

Buildings straighten themselves to look up,
our *****-mouthed, thieving, empty-pocket,
sole-less shoe, unapologetic town looks up,
both feet on pavement residued with used to be,
timeless like a good pair of jeans,
we all look up.

We whisper the secrets of a town unmoved
when hitting rock bottom.

We whisper to one-another an unwavering gaze,
a fight, a consolation, and stroll with heavy feet
under the sky of flickering city stars
with corporate automotive names,

We whisper all or nothing
     To dark windows in tall buildings,
     close our eyes for sleep;
     the sun comes up tomorrow.
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2016
Flight #177 / Seat #7C - where I'm bound/I have been released

the final part of the trilogy,
re broken lives,
some finalized,
some revitalized,
some, their score,
incomplete

~~~


on the road again,
crossing the continent,
from sea to shining sea,
from one set of Eastern grandkids,
off to see the wizardry
of the West Coast variety

six hours six minutes,
flying high time, weather's fine,
a voices inform us, that will be
our mutual time of peaceful co-existence,
on this particular traversée journey

I've done harder time,
30 years ++ with no parole,
except for poetic verse,
them words,
I learned to parlez-vous parlay

never been afeared of flying high,
even amidst the wickedest black pitch,
tar and feathered thick, which is all the
ovaltine shaped window of the
exterior world, cares to reveal
at thirty thousand feet

the oxygen level in the cabin,
as it usually does,
says hey!
feeling heady boy,
so get good, so get ready,
write us a poem, a new shiny toy,
another of your airborne verbal medley

I've got little upon
to expound,
currently limbo'd
tween fresh, death-revived,
past memories of imprisonment and release,
by the jailers of L'Ancien Régime
and
the soon to feel,
happy anticipation of
Frisco fresh young lives re-greeting us,
long distance visitors with joyous screams,
loud, clear and that may cut
the muddied gloom internal,
like a pair of welcoming,
gleeful, liberating scissors

my windowed widowed refraction,
directs my carpaccio-thin guise
to pierce onwards a well trod state of
deeper reflection

noting that we will soon be flying over
water poisoned Flint,
in the state of Michigan,
just missing by an inching,
Paul Simon's sung request,
his "all come to Saginaw" dare

yet, I don't know where I am,
though the course trajectory
pilot-officially programmed and set,
ticketed firect  through to
San Francisco

nonetheless, my internal organs all feel lost,
misplaced and turned down around,
passing directly over cities heard of
and yet never seen or footed,
can I still claim to have been there?

same question differently couched,
providing this passenger's headache,
I was there, of this world,
for the almost forty years plus,
though I wasn't really present,
merely accounted for,
finally learning that "freedom"
is just another word

and though the Angel of Death,
scheduled, made a pre-flight pick up,
he left part of me behind
and on board,
to pick up after,
steward some of his and my
messes

the eyes, the brain, the whole noggin,
search for secret signs,
potent portents, turn indicators,
that this gloomy doom,  cloud thicket,
this too shall pass,
this last shared repast of shards,
this,
my so long now song
an au revoir to
"sad eyed lady of the lowlands"

noting that I am outbound and seated,
on a bunch of lucky sevens, flight and seat,
could be my luck is youthful changing?

where I'm bound
I can't tell,
I'll let you know when I get there
when I know, how I'll know,
I don't know, maybe some
extrusion of new words will speak,
at landing time, a different voice,
where and when I'm bound,
that will cry out


"now unbound,
at last,
at last,
I have been released"
**

~~~
2/11~12/2016
started while over the Great Lakes, Michigan, and Wisconsin;
completed over Tahoe, Carson City, & Sacramento
"With your childhood flames on your midnight rug,
And your Spanish manners and your mother's drugs,
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs,
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,

Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?


Oh, how could they ever mistake you?

They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms,

How could they ever, ever persuade you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day
just had to go,
And your gentleness now, which you just can't help but show,
Who among them do you think would employ you?

Now you stand with your thief, you're on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold,
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul,

Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you?

Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?


Read more: Bob Dylan - Sad - Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Dave Hardin Sep 2016
Crime Scene
(Flint, Michigan)

Yellow cordon tape hums
low in a stiff breeze off
Saginaw Bay
a norther that scatters
empty evidence markers
up and down Miller Road
eddies on Dupont Street
uncapped and droning.
Tennyson, Bishop and Frost
lost for words
this morning working
my way through a pallet of water
dead poets urgent
as blue sky box kites
specks above a crime scene
easing the truck past
houses of the common
abandoned down Whitman
transcendence, surely
for those forbearing souls
over on Emerson.
Laura Sep 2018
Our jacaranda tree waves
with eastern movements,
and fast September shifts.

Teaching my temples
to hold on for moments -
months of abrupt melancholies
and state-less depressions.

Pouring worser shades on
brighter faster mornings.
I find my pieces in what I’ve known

All along -
an unhinged gate
to a fortress of starving pansies
overgrown and unloved.
Laura Mar 2018
I will always remember the curve of streambank drive. The way the definitive black Pontiac would make any neighbour incapable of getting home. Always sitting there blocking the entrance of my street. Swerving into oncoming traffic was a chore, but something about it made you feel alive.
Charlotte and Hannah Tarr's house was 37 and a half steps from Saginaw. Their driveway was winding and inviting to my gaze. I was never far. I remember when I ran away from home at 4am on an unusual Sunday morning impulse. I spent a whole hour throwing on my warmest red fleece sweater and packing a backpack full of Dunkaroo's and fuzzy childish socks. I went out the back creeky tin door from my basement, and made my way.
Charlotte was asleep, and her blinds were drawn. I spent another hour tapping light enough on the glass to wake her and not her dad Bruce. She never woke up.
I ended up walking through the crisp morning to Woodeden park. It was only 5minutes from me, but I knew it could be a dangerous venture. As I walked slowly and quietly down the street, I had passing strangers on runs question why a small little girl might be up at 5am:
"Is there anything I can do for you sweetie? Are you lost?"
"I'm okay thanks", and I ran. Just like that my attempt to prove a point to my parents was over. I ran all the way back home.
My mom asked how I got up so early and I told her I was outside testing the weather.
"It's cold Laura. I could have told you that."
"Sorry."
"Go get ready for church. DigaDiga is going to be over any minute."
DigaDiga is my grandpa. He smells like Nutella and has a button nose. He's not quick like he used to be with my 20 year old brothers, but he chases me around and yells DigaDiga until I lose a shoe. He's the only person I like.
"Is everything okay Laura?"
"I'm okay thanks."
Dennis Willis Aug 2019
I am cretaceous
in the best way
in the morning

In the afternoon
I remember
Saginaw

I know
what you saw
not my pa

Sunrise in our eyes
reflected off
***** and hope

— The End —