"tenement" poems
My mother taught me purple
Although she never wore it.
Wash-grey was her circle,
The tenement her orbit.
My mother taught me golden
And held me up to see it,
Above the broken moldings,
Beyond the filthy street.
My mother reached for beauty
And for its lack she died,
Who knew so much of duty
She could not teach me pride.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 10:32 PM UTC
April doesnt hurt here
Like it does in New England
The ground
Vast and brown
Surrounds dry towns
Located in the dust
Of the coming locust
Live for survival, not for 'kicks'
Be a bangtail describer,
like of shrouded traveler
in Textile tenement & the birds fighting in yr ears-like Burroughs exact to describe & gettin $
The Angry Hunger
(hunger is anger)
who fears the
hungry feareth
the angry)
And so I came home
To Golden far away
Twas on the horizon
Every blessed day
As we rolled And we rolled
From Donner tragic Pass
Thru April in Nevada And out Salt City Way Into the dry Nebraskas And sad Wyomings Where young girls And pretty lover boys
With Mickey Mantle eyes
Wander under moons
Sawing in lost cradle
And Judge O Fasterc
Passes whiggling by To ask of young love: ,,Was it the same wind Of April Plains eve that ruffled the dress
Of my lost love
Louanna
In the Western
Far off night
Lost as the whistle
Of the passing Train
Everywhere West
Roams moaning
The deep basso
- Vom! Vom!
- Was it the same love
Notified my bones As mortify yrs now
Children of the soft
Wyoming April night?
Couldna been!
But was! But was!'
And on the prairie
The wildflower blows
In the night For bees & birds And sleeping hidden Animals of life.
The Chicago
Spitters in the spotty street
Cheap beans, loop, Girls made eyes at me And I had 35 Cents in my jeans -
Then Toledo
Springtime starry
Lover night Of hot rod boys And cool girls A wandering
A wandering
In search of April pain A plash of rain
Will not dispel This fumigatin hell Of lover lane This park of roses Blue as bees
In former airy poses
In aerial O Way hoses
No tamarand And figancine Can the musterand Be less kind
Sol -
Sol -
Bring forth yr Ah Sunflower - Ah me Montana
Phosphorescent Rose
And bridge in
fairly land
I'd understand it all -
11.1k
There is nothing here
Not the façade of a façade
Can’t you see our idea fading?
We thought we were Hobbes’ Leviathan
The modern alchemists of state
We’re nothing more than rodents!
Scurrilous, maladapted membranes
Spewing from democracy forth
Ought they to encapsulate us?
They must needs encapsulate the naïve!
Whiling away at the trough as though livestock
I’m to be ground on the wheel regardless;
Nay, stretched on the rack of modernity!
By the comforts of progress and superficiality
Sought after as if vital
By the people, “We the people!”
Rallying cry for throngs, imprisoning themselves
With society, a subtle hocus pocus
The trite, aged argument
Of those who’d force you build your very tenement
Paying rent to breathe,
Countless yet believe
Tripartite consumer, greed and slavery
Surrounding you and me
Separating ignorance from squalor
In a ghetto of the mind
You're right, we're alright
Jul 28, 2010
Jul 28, 2010 at 9:11 PM UTC
"The Sound Of Silence"
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
"Fools," said I, "You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 11:29 PM UTC
What was it exactly about this rasta.
He seemed so to be out of time an oddity then.
He stroked the gong that resonates still
Nothing can dim his light
His message still reverberates
With all who hear his call.
A natural mystic sinking tap roots from far out.
Kaya budz meets Buffalo soldier and they journey to Transendentia.
Dread lion with Dread locks . Earth shoes and soccer socks.
Ras Nesta walking through di concrete jungle.
Nevah know what sweet rest is in disya concrete jungle.
When you think it's peace and safety.A sudden destruction
Collective security, for surety.
From the Tenement yard to a Pimpers paradise .
Lining up to run in the rat race.
Live if you wanna live .
Glazed over Duppy conqueror. Seeing past all limitations
Rastaman vibration. Positive.
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 12:47 PM UTC
1425
The inundation of the Spring
Enlarges every soul—
It sweeps the tenement away
But leaves the Water whole—
In which the soul at first estranged—
Seeks faintly for its shore
But acclimated—pines no more
For that Peninsula—
3.1k
Monroe Ave c. 2018, in my own dream land. K. Daniel's Revelation, cannot reverse what's starting to happen. Darker, more forlorn. No more bar and restaurant patrons, the streets are just a scattered herd of pestilence. No cars, the somnambules own the streets in silence. Honey dripping hipsters, years gone. ***** clothes, hair past their pearls. Asking for boy, asking for O.P.s, asking for girl, asking for crack, asking for methamphetamines. The only noise.
We lost the reclamation of the city our parents left. Escaping dead end cul-de-sacs of basement poverty, we no longer had to drive. Stacked with our friends in tenement commune. We delivered the body we consume in service, catering to a more privileged few. Only responsible for one when long work was done, I ensured my red blood's full of fun. We drank and inebriated with design when allowed more free time. But, darling, I think this town was already gentrified. We changed no thing.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 11:03 PM UTC
i.
i know that the ear is connected to the nose and the nose is connected to the throat and the throat is connected to the mouth
which is probably why, when we kiss, i hear symphonies
and when i hear "i love you" travel from your lips to my ear
i taste bliss on the tip of my tongue
ii.
i read somewhere that smell is most strongly attached to memory
this means that i will keep your t shirt forever, and maybe your shampoo, too
apparently photographs are not enough
iii.
someone told me that it is not the eyes, but the brain that sees
eyes are just transmitters
but what i see in front of me must be love because it does not register with my mind at all
but my heart translates it beautifully for me
it knows exactly why its own beat becomes erratic when you enter my thoughts
it knows exactly what's going on in this tenement of flesh i call my body
iv.
they say that the last of the five senses is not touch, but equilibrium
which is probably why, when i don't feel your hands in mine
when there is air and not skin
my whole world is off-kilter
i know what it means to fall in love
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.
Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.
There is no magic from your presence here,
** moon, sad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Whose silver seems antique and so severe
Against the glow of one electric globe.
Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces
Of happy flowers that bloom a thousand hues,
Waiting on tiptoe in the wilding spaces,
To drink your wine mixed with sweet drafts of dews.
2.2k
My friend published a book
of collected Scots Proverbs.
200 pages and more, filled
with countless ways of saying
"Don't show off."
And that precious wisdom,
generations in the making
percolated through smokey thatch
in dismal dripping glens,
Tattooed into tenement bricks
with the soot of dead industry,
added to the diet
with the excess salt and saturated fat,
Paving the roads
on which all ambition travels south,
And fizzing through the lager
on its way to the head
Now hangs around the kids
like the stink around an ashtray
and stifles any pride
they might invest in themselves.
They will pass it on
with their genes
and their endless disappointments,
despising anyone who rises
above the station
at which they are
eternally delayed.
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 4:15 PM UTC
The winter has set in early; monsoon a memory now,
the trees are all dusty by the all-day din.
This morning, the taxis ply early, eager to get the office-goers in.
Tea fumes in the mist.
The lady in the bungalow alights from her car
with her child, early from school.
Vegetables still asleep on the pushcart.
An eighties number mingles with the wind.
A van loaded with kerosene cans parks at the gates:
there is a tenement at the basement.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 12:19 AM UTC
When I was younger, I saw life
As white houses in neat rows
I loved the chrome, the steel, the metal dreams
The feel of sand and dirt and seams
There was only the meadow, the machine, and me
Now everydays an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
I’m trying my best to be just like them-
A sad sirens song with red lipstick on
A ******* kicker, with a heroine heart
They say I’m dangerous because I don’t know what I want
They say I f@cked my way to the top.
Well we all mourn atop skyscrapers
As they clamor for judgment day
But I’m not afraid of dying
When the words of prophets are written on the subway walls
And the good crawl down to tenement halls
They sing for fame, liquor, love, scream give it to me
Because I thought I was sitting pretty on the throne of metal steel and chrome
Fools, I say, you do not know
That all I want now is to be left alone
So I sit up at night talking to the moon
Becoming so lost its like I never existed in the first place
Listening to the fabulous clockwork of heart and lungs
Listening to all heart’s dints and machinations
Made of metal and tears and chrome
I was lovely once, marred forever by a pair of (heart shaped glasses)
The foulmouthed flower of bohemia
Moonshine, take me to the stars tonight
While I’m not afraid to live fast and die young
Among the whispering , the champagne and stars
Angry yet, half in love
With death in the cooling twilight
Singing an arsonists lullabye with the workers in songs
For I stumbled into trouble, got my makeup on
A red lipstick sirens sad song
Of metal, steel, and chrome
Its real hard to be free when you are bought and sold
And only money makes you smile
They tell me I did it but we blew it
They say I’m too young to worry ‘bout burning out
So come on, let me bite the bullet now
I’m stuck in the landscape, the loveclub
I'll save you a seat next to me down below
This heights messing with my head
The ground calling to me
Like something out a dream
I’m scared to jump but terrified to stay
And this way I’ll never, feel no pain.
my boy builds coffins, don't ya know
of metal, steel, tears, and chrome
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 10:56 PM UTC
the woman with ancient eyes cradles her rosy-cheeked daughter,
wide-eyed and bursting with the innocence of the youth--
she is a tenement child, raised gracefully in the shadowed slums of her father's mistakes,
wears a tattered dress, spinning alone in a whirlwind of dust mites and silenced laughter.
and when she hears tales of the children with taffeta dresses and China dolls, she
smiles--
out of love, replacing envy with euphoric contentment, because
she has her mama's eyes, the voices
of the fatherless children
singing along to her same song,
shouting cries of hope against the crumbling walls
of a broken world she is beginning to heal.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 9:55 PM UTC
Naked, destitute, confused;
My soul bares itself-
Empty to life's troubling ruse.
Mongrels snarl and scream
As I am chased away from-
Tattered dreams.
Misfortunes cast out
Like fishing line to a sea;
Empty woes hollow and prim
Opine shallow heresies.
Poverty and paradise bellow-
Deep through the glistening
Shaft of temporal demise.
Time is a tempest of sorcery
Fueled and filed by wild mages
Scrawling these white pages
Like a shaman on tenement walls:
"Forgive my kiss and forget my lips,
Death's call has me after all."
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 4:11 PM UTC
I’m sick.
I have a fever and flu-like symptoms.
I am alone, and have been for hours,
lying on my bed
with a lavender candle pulsating
to the sound of classical music,
dancing on the darkness of my
ceiling.
I am not aroused
but, playfully,
I slide my palm
over the underside
of my hairy
behind
and begin
to gently stimulate
each hair
with near-static
force.
I occasionally push
my fingertips
into the crevice—
my crevice—
my end.
How good this feels
to be sick
and allow oneself to
feel
the emptiness too
dark
and bold
and powerful
to be contained within us.
The comforting,
soft touch
we can give ourselves
is like a loved one
holding our hand;
it almost tickles, and this sensation
although distinct
reminds me
of the pretend animals
my grandma would parade
across my back.
Beyond our view
the guillotine,
existence,
slowly begins to descend
as we lie,
holding hands with ourself
on top of the covers,
sweat pants around the ankles,
grabbing our own ***
as the steady rain
trickles from the roof
of tenement housing
and beats
on the aluminum gutter
for hours
until it’s over.
The night has fallen
like a punishment
for finding no one
and it occludes my sight;
I shiver, and cannot **********
Existence is too dark
to allow dancing candlelight
or baroque masters
to tickle its space.
It is filled with falling heads
and clutching grasps.
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 12:48 AM UTC
the black and white photographs you took
five years past still hang framed in my room,
just above my turntable. Deja Entendu
spills from the stereo as the needle finds its groove.
a shelf filled with all the records
we used to listen to for hours
lines the wall and succulents
adorn the windowsill, waiting patiently
for the rare rays of sun, golden
and flossy as your hair,
which somehow manage
to peek between the tenement rooftops
every now and then.
we still live in the same town. sometimes,
people bring you up. they ask me how you are,
how long it's been since i've heard from you.
i neglect to tell them that, aside from absentee
notifications popping up on my phone
at intermittent variations, we've only spoken once,
in a crowded, little coffee shop
in the city we both love to hate.
you pretended you didn't see me, but i felt your eyes
notice me at the bar as i sat typing another story,
bobbing my head, listening to Daughter.
if i hadn't approached you, i imagine
you would've acted like i was invisible.
the conversation was terse, abbreviated.
i find it strange how once
we were the best of friends
and now we can sit twenty feet apart
and act like we never knew each other at all.
i can't really recall why
our friendship collapsed in the first place.
have i suppressed it? or was it just the casual
slip, like Pangea, elapsed time
fracturing our continent.
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 4:25 PM UTC
filleted dreams, drip drip dripping into endless streams,
a falcon, a fisherman, a lonely seaboat with a blue stripe on white,
never ceasing, never dying, constant revelation, constant redemption,
dark nights, the tap tap tapping of raindrops on ceilings,
one leg cold and one leg warm, always reaching, never grasping,
a wine-drunken beam, a pill of golden light,
a breath, a whimper of sleep,
a drumming, a drumming, a drumming
of ever-closer watchmen on the rooftops of tenement houses,
weeping and watching and oh so silently
sewing closed their mouths with threads.
something in the darkness, something in the watchmen,
something in the drips of the tap and of the rain
and of the filleted dreams of endless streams,
cry technicolor, cry chromatic,
weep visions of paradise like water from Eden,
no, yes, my cautious child,
darling mother, sleeping father,
drunk drunk drunk on stolen nectar,
rot, rot, rot into the sour deep,
buried under rubble,
smothered, squeezed, dissected,
infinite life, finite spirit,
cry, cry, cry,
cry stolen and pale into the screams of your indigo dreams.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 10:06 AM UTC
Potluck of paramour
Rivulets of auric
Lozenge Paragon's of tarot
As in this all
A freedom from mine own tenement!!!
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 6:06 PM UTC
Woke up half past ten,
I wanted to stay in bed again
The coffee *** was too hot,
Didn't even get to drink a drop
Slavin' hard eight days a week,
Just to barely make ends meat
Then I get my check on Friday,
Taxes took half my pay away
Overslept,
I'm so tired
If I'm late,
I'll get fired
Why bother
Why the pain
Just to go home
And do it again
But what can you do,
That's life in the Brooklyn Zoo
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 2:38 PM UTC
I will tell you not of our
Secret mangrove tenement,
Tunneled through the space
behind both of our eyes.
A place meant for whimsy
and bioluminescent fauna,
fawning faux sun light
out into obsidian night.
Nor will I tell of our
soul’s soft meridian,
served on the half shell
to both kind and prying
eyes, distant though
unarguably tied— ribbons
spun, fastened, dyed
For what end should I tell?
When your very presence is
Heaven.
And your very absence
Hell.
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 1:01 PM UTC
Enter down concrete steps
To the basement flat
Iron railings
Black door
Red painted hall
Condensation on the floor.
Two up, two down
The basement flat
Scrunched together
Back to back
Three sisters, mum and dad
Then the brothers quickly had.
Grandad's face always stern
Impeccably dressed
In shirt and vest
Roast dinners
were the best
Plates on a dresser rest.
Out the back a concrete patch
To play a cricket bat
Across from that
These tenement stacks
Elm trees give a screen
To this suffocating scene.
Street life was the choice
It gave freedom a voice
The boys gathered out late
Playing football with their mates
Fathers called from indoors
Time to stop that ****** noise.
A mile or so stood the hoards
Of Wormwood Scrubs' prison floors
Then there was the track
White City and greyhound backs
Chelsea loved by all the boys
Arsenal just upped their score.
The skyline filled with birds
The trains go rattling by
And yet from this place
My father took himself a pace
Up the street and far away
On a bright and sunny day.
Mary x
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 10:16 AM UTC
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
"Fools," said I, "You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 2:26 AM UTC
Diagonal insertion of myself into this room we call the present moment
its never gonna go to collections baby, obviously checked it in for a week
we found static in the interruption caused by your radio towers and traps
and what you say, is not true- i see whose driving the hearse, shotgun
appeal to the old me. satisfy my hungering for those other things please
and tho i told you not to bother to call her, you did and just to say you did
don't blame you because you are a good time, perforated into tiny fragments
its not legal but this pedestal fits me like a glove, too much for the initiation
but our doubts, are all left in yesterday. how i follow you home after ever show
come help me hack off the vines and roots after every night of this spilling myself
skips on the record, please don't forget me, i won't forget you, how could i
youre just a missed cherry ash falling on my leg, burning me holes through
saying what you want to say, sorry that i don't reply, see me in the morning
shuddering on my favorite words, while screaming death to the secretion !
first we go spinning out then go smashing painted stained glass !
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 8:23 AM UTC
Kids with guns
playing hostage outside
my kitchen window
trapping their sister in the chicken coop
behind the tenement house
Kids with funds
riding scholarships to Harvard
saying someday I’ll be the one
who pushes that little red button
Kids with needles
saying at the end of all this
I will wine and dine the devil
to persist my own mess
they go off so silently
we all turn to memory
and fade to the black flickering
insides of eyelids and run out film reels
the bottom of oceans and the bedrock of glaciers
the whole earth will hum for half a second
before the next bang hits
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 12:50 PM UTC
**you stand in line
for liquid bread
with your thin dime
newspaper matress
you lick your lips
a cardboard box
will.be your crypt
sad
forsaken
so forlorn
your façade is *****
tattered
worn
the gold was stolen
from your vaults
passersby see only faults
the picket fence
around your heath
is as broken
as your teeth
the many choices
you have made
have sunk you to
an early grave
you're self-abusive
destruction bent
*your temple is a
TENEMENT***
SoulSurvivor
(C) 6/17/2016
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 6:44 PM UTC