I hail a cab.  I’ve got to leave this part
of town, the Upper West,
dripping with fatty money.

At 97th I step in
and exhale, revived
by the sweating air in taxi cabs.

Through the window
I see
the imposing orange
of a tall
sewer ventilator,
steaming and
ignored—

At Columbus Circle,
a corner hot-
dog stand
is slow-
ly wheeled to
its moment-
ary place—

Broadway, with
one closed bank.
Empty, in back
the dusted black,
and iron beams?
Things lean
diagonal
against the walls,
a warning—

Faster, faster,
further south and somewhere
in the Village.
The rows,
rows and rows
of brownstone stoops:
quietly lined
along the street
patient, waiting,
delightfully clean—

The cab rolls to a stop.  I pay and step out to the street.
Near Greenwich Street, the crosswalk
supports some types trying so hard
not to be doing all that much
and wearing hip clothes.

I’ll stop mid-street, look up real high,
and take in the sunlight
that’s slamming against the pavement.

Amid the *****, wrinkled scales
of cracked and weary bark
a scraggly old line leads down
bereft of any aim,
leads past the mottled brown and gray
where mold becomes a skin,
and winds a canyon’s ****** crag
which tapers towards its end.

Illuminated buds display
the flowers half in bloom,
just sparse enough to show the scar
like shrapnel-wound ingrained.

This spring, the tree bursts white and pink
like many springs before;
the patient scar still growing wider,
softening its edge—
a green-white-pink-brown checkerboard
obscures the many lost
small buds, with dead deep-green tinged shells,
who wobble on their stems
and fall, some landing in the ****
to linger and decay.

Unperturbed traffic marches down
the pleasant four-lane road
as ever, crushing scattered blooms
like victory parades—
the tree remains a safe, clean gap
away, a ten foot spread
on either side between the street
and tree…between the new
facades just built to look ornate
and scar-bedecked old tree.

Yet in the full of summer’s heat
the tree is vibrant green;
the flowers long-since fallen
and in the scar become dirt.

Amid the white notebooks dotting my desk
hides a half-drawn sketch
laying down some image of an ideal poem.

It sits incomplete, but the plans I made
surface to my vision—
a sturdy poem of stubborn build,

words, pliant, sad, and simple
deft-attached, vine-like wrapped
around bamboo scaffolds astride black steel framing.

Dangling from two pinched fingers,
the sketch has yet to display
its mid-sized trees (for scale)

and the few more floors envisioned.
It could house with ease
a teeming, drunken mass

of patients with a fear of heights
and post-traumatic stress.
The burn of my popped lighter

curves over the paper plane where the grassy lot’s drawn,
where my hired architect would stand
and plan the façade, no windows.

His blueprints would radiate the math
of symmetric perfection
found symbolic of its New-Age form.

Designers would be flown in
from around the world,
contractors would be called.

And the sheer simplicity of it all
would test their expertise
challenged at last by the spire and final stanza

which, if drawn, would only now
be caught up by the flame
casually ribboned across the page.

At the store, $39.95 is a fair canary price.
Make sure to buy a cage of taut, safe wire
with space enough for flying.

At the home, your canary requires natural light cycles—
if you must, place over its nighttime cage a mantel:
solid black, opaque to block your lights’ glow.

Provide it food and water, everything it needs to survive
in a cage: a toy or two (bells are best)
should be enough to entertain your new canary.

But you must always remember
that should you stare, hoping for empathy, at
your pet canary, its black eye may fall

on the wall behind you, which is more interesting to look at.
Many times you may want to pet it or
remind it of your care with a caring scratch or tickle—

refrain, think of its crisp, clean feathers,
butter-yellow and what
would become of them for your ruffle.

And when your idiot friend shakes it in its cage
jabbing a rude finger inside
remind yourself that it is disgusting to laugh with him.

Busriding to
the city limits,
I think of
Levertov’s Half-Way House,

lying just beyond
the city limits.
The bus ride is
uneventful—

I rest my head against
the window and count
the cross-hatched streets.
Lulled by the rhythmic

bump and shake
of the bus, I fall asleep.
In my dreamstate
self-consciousness overwhelms

me, and I am forced
to look in on my bus
from the street alongside,
and notice that I am alone
and will soon get off to walk.

uttering that tenor growl
that only we salamanders know,
I will stir from my salamander bed,
slide from its clinging preservative oil
into the eerie orange of tonight’s hellish glow.

Then we will meet at the shore
of the black stagnant puddle our home,
like a monstrous bootprint
stamped in the mud of our forest.

We’ll slink towards the woods,
slowly gyrating our limbs over leaves twigs sticks
roots and stones five times our size;
a struggle to heave ourselves before
the looming, glowing trees.

At last the heat of the ash trees,
the entire forest swirls in flames,
crackling at our feet,
engorged by the unbothered blaze.
We’ll wait a pensive moment, then take
our first few steps into the burn.

A softening of the skin, like putting up the wall.
In the late afternoon, he had her against the wall.

This is not the first time someone has lost their mind here—
Ten men or more have faded into thought, found staring at the wall.

We have loved each other longer than this forest used to grow—
What will happen?  You will change when we are forced to cross the wall.

I cannot see, but I can smell the hyacinths on the other side.
Cord-like vines snake through the cracks in the wall.

You wear all the semblances of love in your black bathrobe;
Go ahead, put on your best perfume, like some flowery wall.

At the edge of the woods, chimneys lurk behind tall leaves.
Somewhere ahead, wrapped around the bases of trees, waits a wall.