"tenements" poems
(one!)
the wisti-twisti barber
-pole is climbing
people high,up-in
tenements talk.in sawdust Voices
a:whispering drunkard passes
22.6k
Tepid damp and lukewarm night,
Build your camp by rivers bright;
Sable black and and somber grey,
Silt the river's arms away.
Island tenements rent for cheap,
Bakèd bricks in plinths lie deep;
Stores of merchants and their wives,
Sheltered from the thund'rous tides.
Glance on that maternal shrine,
Softly angled toward the Rhine;
See the men with flowing beards,
Seldom entertaining fears.
Moon illumes a stony pose,
Sun sustains a garden rose;
Temple pillars bathed in or,
Leave mute shadows on the floor.
Olifant horns begin to sound,
Tribesmen fall upon the town;
Riding with the northern gust,
Trampling the homes to dust.
Yet, as gateside rocks abound,
From the ashes, rises now,
Where that city met disgrace,
A mighty fortress in its place.
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 2:40 PM UTC
1338
What tenements of clover
Are fitting for the bee,
What edifices azure
For butterflies and me—
What residences nimble
Arise and evanesce
Without a rhythmic rumor
Or an assaulting guess.
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See the Rabbi. See him tormented by choice. See his people. See them wracked by hate. See the others. See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.
On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice. And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth. Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight. More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.
See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word. As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water. See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism. See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.
See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.
See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush. See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust. See it caught, too, and see it see. It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns. It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood. It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference. See it sit in silence.
See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others. And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still. It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale. They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention. So it remains.
See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided. They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals. It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation. See the Rabbi draw to a close. His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead. What is left but Death.
See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy. See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light. See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank. See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.
The daisy stands still.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM UTC
My grandparent's house
ten-kid-large and sinking
on the corners of remembrance
Remodeled now, to
...tenements
Honeycomb
...the remnants
Irish immigrant and Scottish orphan's child
She sang on the ferry
He fell in love
"The rest is the history of us...."
Wide
as the Connecticut River, grieving--
in their sunset....
________________
This-- chair
is his
I am afraid of it-- of his learning
of the shiny badge pinned to his coat
of his dying...
Golden leather of it
soothes
his memory--
of another continent
of the once warmth-- of a distant hearth
so darkened now--
where his head once rested
...his hands
and,
I fear--
his mind....
I will not sit in it
as if he will come back, to take his place
I am afraid of him--
with his chair--
all worshipful and empty
like a high place, abandoned
to the heart attack
not for grandchild play
Seat of Authority
still stamped
beside the standing cold--
brass ashtray
Pipe smoke imagines itself
against the ceiling in the words
of Yates and Milton
He read to them
and somehow--
Paradise is Lost....
_______________
This house is cold now-- even in the summer-- cold
Worn as only large families wear
The War
of waiting shadows
--four brothers who were spared
Anna Mae, in charge, too young,
worries in abrupt dark
of dinning room
Her face, haunted--
an archway-- ever empty
by the large and ghostly table
covered by its web of lace--
a bridal veil
of Catholic impossibility...
Anna Mae, held hostage by her thoughts
of darling, Sean...
Aunt Lil's “breakdown”
with cigarette and thorazine
quaking quiet in her corner
Aunt Nell,
as blind as ******** hell
ironing, darning
with threads that thatch
the wounded socks
Holds it all together, scolding--
Brought the welcomed jelly donuts
sneered as Yankees clobbered Boston
all-- while drinking yellow ale
Uncle Eddie-- laughing hoarsely
cracks nuts over a wooden bowl
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 10:52 PM UTC
So, what do you think about the dynasty of Babylon? Freshly cut potatoes which are deep fried can be displayed upon colorful plastic plates, which may trigger a spiritual sustenance of simplistic expectations which are immersed in Glaswegian nostalgia.
Therefore, I contemplate the goddess of the moon, as she is enthroned in Celtic tenements of astral plains.
Entrance-ways are characterised by the musky scent of the tomcat, whilst the purring sounds of diesel locomotives echo along the tracks of mischievous linearity.
So, although I acknowledge Osiris to be the Egyptian god of the dead, I am tentatively perplexed about Northern and Southern boundaries of grandparental occupation. Shake those sensual vessels of salt and vinegar. Do you know why? Because there’s nothing like it in the cosmos.
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
Put on the old LPs tonight, Alex,
from a time long before you were born.
Top of the queue was Petula Clark
belting out Don't Give Up,
defiant as an alley cat in a street fight.
Remembered how in her heyday,
she'd been forced to conceal
the fact that she was married ---
all performers being mysteriously
virginal in those days.
Thoughts segue several years
to my time in the service and
a female lieutenant who was my OIC.
Served a 20 year career,
but never knew a finer officer.
She realized leadership was saying
the things that made you want to follow.
Just after making captain,
due to pregnancy, she was forced
to terminate her service career.
Today, women routinely travel in space,
perform extreme surgeries,
design skyscrappers;
one just might become president.
And somewhere in the tenements of NYC
a young poet spins metaphor
straight from the streets and the cosmos,
constructing a world in lines
we'd all wish to enter.
Jul 6, 2012
Jul 6, 2012 at 2:22 AM UTC
I
The stars are double-weighted tonight.
bulging, beating, they sink
from their proper lurches.
One by one across the murky
evening they sputter out.
What natural light remains
seeps from that subtly gaudy
bauble of a moon.
II
Peeled eucalyptus, ice-plant, new-mown summer grass,
dandelion, sloping hill, carved stone bench,
the view, the reflected city-light off the bay water,
white-washed near-tenements.
I am firmly locked up, chained in a bone cage
of chemically manipulated cranial plates;
serotonin, synapses, dopamine, dendrite
create a web like seaweed constricting the sea;
this computer of a head calculates, oscillates,
and processes the sensory.
III
My body is a tattered jib sail
flowing in the light sprinkling rain:
the simmer of the gale:
a hollow cathedral abandoned
by the believers:
a vessel for my marrow:
an imaginary catalyst for profundity:
an incarceration: a hull of particles
arrested: some part of an experience.
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 1:46 PM UTC
Lost in the club on the way to the bathroom
American dreamless, existed in a vacuum
Every day, another way for us to consume
Raids on the senses, a general consensus
of the senseless, reprehensible amendments
The armaments by the tenements, diffused
Confused, never used, lonely in the fugue
And you
You who assume, presume, eschew the ruin
of the brewing times, rising tides, the lies
and of ties that bind - us to the times
and to meaningless rhymes
By illuminated rooms when the eye blinks
Think, blink, the pink rink - closed
By the hours that be, powers that see
Subversive naturalism
in a state of debate, compensate the reckless
Feckless and dick-less, compost of the senses
The sexes have wrecked us, ****** of the spectrum
By your septum reset them, mind wiped
Iconic lights gone
The new light's on
Right on
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 11:36 AM UTC
I was born for Nebraska
I was born for the Massif Central
I was born for the mountain top shrine
with nothing but the music of nature
to distract me
I was born for the weekly news
on some sleepy island in the Pacific
I was born for Covent Garden
The Pangea of Culture
New Orleans trumpets;
the flamenco player
twisting lime into his drink
I was born for the cotton fields
I was born for the salt marsh
for the tug-boat all out of fresh water
I was born for the Ganges
I was born in the shadow of the Hajj
I was born for the G-dless land
of Death Valley
the streets of Harlem
I was born into the spirit
of old Afghanistan
I was born on the false strings
of liberated women-
I was born on a stage of puppets
a backdrop of Glaswegian tenements
or of fjords unvisited
beside Scandinavian seas
I was born for Rugby Cement
I was born to be fixed in place
This wandering mind
These restless legs
I was born with a travelling soul
in a town where I can barely walk
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 8:52 PM UTC
little islands of sanity
sacred the tenements
sacred the janitors
sacred the night watchmen
little islands of sanity
-----
little places of refuge
tiny hearts still beating
children play for real
amid people
who **** for fun and glory
-------
i dance!
-------
little islands of humanity
sacred the simple
sacred the honest
sacred the poverty
sacred tenemets
amid our shame
and greed
-----
come!
dance!
------
little islands
tiny lovers
the world
Nov 24, 2010
Nov 24, 2010 at 10:24 AM UTC
The placenta of poetry.
At 25
still young and arrogant
but with some modesty creeping in
more fully fledged
in the void's vale
of dropping foundation blocks
into pools of quicksand
tenements are always prey
to vulnerabilities of one kind
or other
if someone sneeze
I am uncomfortably cold
one sleeve of my pullover
is rolled up above the elbow -
it is threadbare!
Jul 15, 2010
Jul 15, 2010 at 12:43 AM UTC
Imprisoned inside tall red brick built tenements
curtained in by cheap store bought accoutrements
and locking up the world outside within with a needle and a pin and sewing life away.
where we stitch up every day as if only cross stitching could show or say how angry that we are
and far above some half existent but quite persistent feelings that the life we live is what we get for being better than the dogs that line the streets with pockets bulging emptiness
is more or less the happiness that we were told of, when we read books in those classrooms dripping coldness from the cold lights,prefabricated by the councils to educate the poor and in this we have believed for fifty years or more.
But technograbbers took the high road
ripped the legs from under desks by which we sat
and then they spat on former teaching
teachers in the pay of local educational authorities
had no authority to intervene
and preaching texts that they had learnt by heart 'cause all the textbooks burnt far brighter in the fires in tenements
where former pupils with dilated eyes felt the cold much keener,much cleaner than the dogs upon the streets
and behind the curtained windows I weep for a yesterday when as a young child I could play outside and not wonder what the future held.
Held spellbound by the monkey man who turned the handle on his barrel ***** and put a flat cap on the ground which magically
naturally filled with pennies from the folks who had such things.
Sadness and the lack of more or less brings me nothing but the bulging emptiness
and the breaking of another spine
another book a former time
and locking in the world outside
I bide my time
and watch
the black and white
the day within the night
I'll be alright
just me and shotgun joe beside the bed
and nothing else to spoil nothing
that we never had but there are badmen in the badlands
roaming tenemental bands that would cut your throats
if you looked twice or even once at them
Like the dog down in the street I never raise my eyes to meet
anyone or any other
why bother
it's just the way it is.
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 12:38 AM UTC
Another building jumps
into the terrain, its lights charge
the hollering in the barbershop.
I remember how you hated
those who defended the sanctity
of this place, now you stand there
alongside the protesting.
‘The renewal is eating-up
the neighborhood,’ you say,
‘this is our home,’ but this is no home
for rising. Even when they level
the derelict charm of tenements,
there will always remain those who yell
at the progress of things. You stand firm,
believing in the value of this place
and this life, and you will teach
our child to value the comforts
of squalor. You see me behind a counter
to feed our son, but I won’t see him,
bitter, or worse, in love with this
hole. I’m leaving, but you will always stay–
Fear is your life.
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 10:25 PM UTC
Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true
This is the wild:
To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy
and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper
where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.
To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ***** pendulum
and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble
measuring the toll of time by destruction
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold
to them I say:
turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:35 PM UTC
1221
Some we see no more, Tenements of Wonder
Occupy to us though perhaps to them
Simpler are the Days than the Supposition
Leave us to presume
That oblique Belief which we call Conjecture
Grapples with a Theme stubborn as Sublime
Able as the Dust to equip its feature
Adequate as Drums
To enlist the Tomb.
1.5k
The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
Out of the tenements, cold as stone,
Dark figures start for work;
I watch them sadly shuffle on,
'Tis dawn, dawn in New York.
But I would be on the island of the sea,
In the heart of the island of the sea,
Where the ***** are crowing, crowing, crowing,
And the hens are cackling in the rose-apple tree,
Where the old draft-horse is neighing, neighing, neighing,
Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing, lowing,
And dear old Ned is braying, braying, braying,
And the shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling, calling
From her little trampled corner of the long wide lea
That stretches to the waters of the hill-stream falling
Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!
There, oh, there! on the island of the sea,
There would I be at dawn.
The tired cars go grumbling by,
The crazy, lazy cars,
And the same milk carts go rumbling by
Under the dying stars.
A lonely newsboy hurries by,
Humming a recent ditty;
Red streaks strike through the gray of the sky,
The dawn comes to the city.
But I would be on the island of the sea,
In the heart of the island of the sea,
Where the ***** are crowing, crowing, crowing,
And the hens are cackling in the rose-apple tree,
Where the old draft-horse is neighing, neighing, neighing
Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing, lowing,
And dear old Ned is braying, braying, braying,
And the shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling, calling,
From her little trampled corner of the long wide lea
That stretches to the waters of the hill-stream falling
Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!
There, oh, there! on the island of the sea,
There I would be at dawn.
1.5k
*long lost years
our master, Shakespeare
traveled to London for four days
no shillings or good garments in his bag
he stayed in lodge inns
penny a night
he had to gave up with a sigh
the smell of midden-heaped lanes
from the slum tenements
he had to bare for nights
he held both jobs
holding patron's horses
or prompter's attendant
and as destined to be a playwright,
his plays express aspects of life that transcend time
he wrote to be remarkable
and to put food on the table
illuminating human experience
a genius mind...
a playwright, poet and actor
that we will always admire.*
Jul 3, 2015
Jul 3, 2015 at 12:49 AM UTC
"Buy a Star!
Own a Star!"
The sales are brisk,
For cross-eyed lovers,
Cross-hearted, lost,
Beneath the spinning constellations
Burning immortal exhalations,
Desiring forever oxytoxic bliss,
Burning ******* and hearts
Yearn longevity of stars....
PT Barnum saw his opportunity:
Sold cotton candy,
Hawked elephants,
Gawked dwarves,
Hid the razors from
Fierce bearded ladies,
Even sold the elephants' dung,
Provender to exotic gardens....
Barnum's packing up
The Pachyderms,
So Hawkers have us
Gazing on the stars....
"Step right up! See the stars!"
Purchase your fire in the sky!
Your lover's name,
Fixed in the firmament
A million years!
At least the cotton candy
And the elephant dung
Served some earthy, earthly good,
Paid dentists' children's college,
Fertilized the family food.
So now go claim a distant star,
A million, billion miles away,
Its light must make its journey
A thousand years or more
To greet your eyes, and yet,
Your lover's sighs predict
A hundred dollars' better spent
Than on a good Chablis,
Cementing mortal love in
Distant stars so permanent,
Visited through telescopic glass
Atop our rented tenements.
Mar 14, 2015
Mar 14, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
I didn't take a photograph of the statue of Robert Burns.
His sightless eyes were looking out over Dunedin,
the most Scottish town in the southern hemisphere,
and there was a seagull, not a pigeon, standing on his head.
I would have called it "Robbie Burns and Friend."
And I didn't take a picture of the bus shelter
painted all over with jungle foliage and a tiger
peeping out over the simulated signature of Henri Rousseau.
The title would have been "This Bus Shelter is a Forgery."
Neither did I photograph another painted wall,
one round a cemetery full of ornate and sombre tombs,
with a large and skilfully executed advertisement -
Renta Sanitarios Mobiles (Hire Mobile Toilets).
It would have been called "Is there no Respect for the Dead?"
I didn't take the photo of a Fijian policeman.
A pity, for he had such a practical uniform,
very smart and cool,
in a tasteful shade of policeman-blue,
based on the traditional sulu
with a striking zigzag hem.
The title would have been "A Policeman in a Skirt?!"
I couldn't take a photograph of sunset over Popocatépetl
– although the sun was setting in a red and golden haze,
and the most romantically named mountain is just
what you imagine a perfect volcano should be,
even to the wisp of steam at the peak
– because the sun was actually setting over Ixtaccíhuatl
and "Sunset over Ixtaccíhuatl" doesn't have quite the right ring
The shape of the mountain is not very picturesque either.
Yes, I would have called that one "Sunset over Popocatépetl"
– if I could have taken it.
My camera wouldn't focus on the crescent moon
hanging over the Egyptian skyline,
horns pointing up, so close to the Equator,
and the evening star (Venus or some more ancient goddess)
just above and almost between the points.
If that one had worked it would have been called "Islamic Moon."
I couldn't possibly have taken a photograph
that would do any justice to the young piano student
in a Hungarian castle
hammering out Liszt as if the hounds of hell were after her,
but if I could, I would have had to call it "Apassionata."
And I didn't even have time to get my camera out
to take a picture of the wild humming bird
darting green and unconcerned
among dilapidated tenements in the heart of Mexico City.
But that living jewel shines bright in my memory,
even without a photo.
I don't know what I would have called that one,
and I'm sure it doesn't matter.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 9:48 AM UTC
I wanna witness...
The energetic synergy within the city limits
Pulsing with adrenaline as yesmen do business
With mysterious gentlemen in worn and weathered tenements
Indifferent of the minutemen surrounding the premises.
A genesis and exodus of textbook corruption
Eruptions of Congressmen abruptly interrupting
The voice of the denizens; citizens distrusting
The integrity of every legislation made in history
And the mystery surrounding all those slimy politicians
Discussing their envisionments and policies like madmen
Disgusting in their ways, protecting church and state,
In the government we pray: Amen.
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 10:45 PM UTC
tired autonomies, days keep on flailin', seizin'; darlin', I'd
be bolder if only I'd tried. makin' plans to abandon 'em,
the dark reach and tenements of those towers of regret for
all of my inactivity or self-targeted hostility, and those dreams
meant everything to me until awakening into morning hours
or afternoon, more likely, with the dull grip of uncertainty
shudderin' all the windowpanes back and forth lightly, oh
so **** delicately, and I think about you as soon as I've
drawn up ambition to make any kind of move, the pieces of
the vast puzzle I've called your mind for the better part of
the calendar dates I've drawn up into fifteen gauge shells of
the ghosts of my past, those that follow my footprints in evenings,
the pools of aluminium meltings and lemon extractions
to constrict the summer hours, convictions that bleach out
all other chances of hope.
so relinquish your grip on my red and unfolding heart I've
been beating the syllables of your name with, and abusing
the page width of headspace, serving only to alienate the
froth on the shoreline of daring chances: I'd have given
my all at the sight of romance, but I sit here with no
glimpse of intention from you; the crestfalls I subject myself
to, not for the sake of lack of want, but full lack of what
I'd do if I called and asked where you wanted to go at
three a.m. or five p.m., or any other canonical time of
the day; I'd spend any of 'em with you, and I'd
ask, but I'm somewhat sure you're not that into whatever I
could mean, or whatever my words do seem to transcribe themselves
upon contact with your mind, so keep on existing and I
will do the same.
[or, anyway, at least I'll try]
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 5:27 AM UTC
a caricature of compensation
he's a decent gent but spent his rent
on bug repellant and a British accent
they circumvent the scent of malcontent
present tense, presenting the tents
to the residents of the tenements
post trauma
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC
Of long an aspiration, secret, that rosaries
don't quench, unexpressed, wells of old,
that anguish burning the deserts, seeking
in austerities and exegeses, an assurance
in tablets and tabernacles, and mourning
the star shooting empty in the sky at night:
a love protects vast, even when what Is
is not this that we worship, and descends
grace, ordinary so to seem obscure, that
wisdom from far must fathom its depths.
Refuse we to believe so, that say who our
father is divine, that so are we too divine.
That which we seek enduring past our
graves, holding dear in our fists clenched,
through torments and tempests and
tenements and temperaments, can
smile at us too as a babe in a manger,
that the King we expect who, to deliver
us from affliction, can a simpleton be,
a Tekton among us: that the Levi and
the Cohen, are risen too amongst us:
and to love, no birth high nor needed is
the learning in law, but to feel as show
those sisters with the heart, who anoint
him in myrrh and in tears, his feet wash.
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 5:35 PM UTC
In a gym in Philadelphia, boys with street hungry eyes flick jabs at your moving brown frame in a circled ring of chance. Sweat hangs in the air like the sad truth of poverty, if they get pass you the smell of success is guaranteed. For the scared don't get rich. You made good, born the ******* of misfortune. Dreaming of riding past the old neighborhood in a custom Cadillac and meeting beautiful long haired women with even white teeth. Maybe in your dreams, you saw boxing gloved foes falling by the score. But defeat and loss chased you down dead-end alleyways of lonely tears, and the walls of your mind seemed about to collapse. As you ran under a sky of broken dreams and tossed away chances with closed eyes afraid you were dying from large blows to the soul and body. A collection of years of being poverty struck how many times have I seen you hanging over the ropes, eyes closed completely, wiped out like a voice lost in the rumbling of a subway train speeding past tenements in Philadelphia.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC