A See-Thru Floor in Manahattan

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The white man

Stands in front of the crowd

His voice it is weak-

He used to be loud.

He used to be nervous-

but now he is proud.

He wasn’t welcome before

But now he’s allowed

Because the times they are a changing.

If he can sing

The same song again

And we can ovate him

With a great big amen

I shouldn’t be bashful

To post an old poem

So here comes a memory

Here comes a thought

From the past

From the heart

From a moody morning

Before the job

Did start.

_________________________________

A See-Thru Floor in Manhattan

White clouds of steam wave from the tops of the buildings

Dark crowds of people stream from Grand Central below.

Without looking up they march to the light and the cross walk

through the maze of puddles and piles of snow.

The sine wave of cycles of boom and recession

have altered the buildings and painted their faces

and girdled their intentions

with marble and glass

and cast iron corners

protecting the brickwork

are scared and twisted

from a million containers of trash

pushed out their ass.

Things fall off of the tops of the buildings

tumble to the sidewalk and kill people below.

Playing the odds on the concrete roulette wheel

the future is getting where you’ve got to go.

The tourists look up while God looks down

He has set gargoyles and fairies

eggs and darts

arrows and railings

lions and stars

in the heads of young men

wearing seersucker suits

and tortoise shell glasses

with ‘T’ square and compass

and HB pencils

sketching thoughtless angles of perspective

narrow, lip-sync, tracing paper reflection

for the most part ingenuous imitation

occasional grand theft

thrown in--

Look up past the third story

of most of these buildings

that is where today ends

and history begins.

In a pasture muck deep

throw in garbage and stones

to dry up the creek

wall in the space where the trees did bend

and the deer trails wound

and the burghers discarded

the slaves’

flesh and bones.

Before the winter angels blow

and the garden is brown

a stone foundation must be laid down

and a corn crib fashioned from

the corpse of the trees.

Mortar and brick

limestone and marble

neon and glass

paint and mirror.

Cover the clapboard with mortar and brick

and the brick with limestone from Indiana

and the limestone with marble from Tennessee

and the marble

with glass and mirror and neon tube

from Italy and Japan

the hard edge of history

dressing itself

before the unblinking eyes

of the man on the street.

The Previous Owner

The previous owner,

Was a seedy punch-face man

Pudgy and pink

And I disliked him

He was belligerent and sly

Looking for a score

An advantage

I watched his pudgy little boy

Look over the edge of the cut and fill,

That held my house like a hand,

And ask me if he could come down.

I invited him to dinner once or twice

He looked up at my three sons

And wanted to join the family.

I disliked the fellow,

The previous owner,

But, if nothing else, he appreciated distance

And privacy.

He stayed back on his little plot of ground

And he left the thick hedgerow of trees

So that I wouldn’t see him

Nor he me.

We needed no fences

For neither of us looked

Nor wanted to see

Or to be seen.

Before the previous owner moved away

He came to our front door

With his wife and son

And invited himself in.

We spent the only half an hour,

Together in a room,

The only half hour in all those years.

He wished me well

While his son waved goodbye

I stood there baffled waving too.

When you moved in

You built a fence—an ugly fence—

Of pipe and wire and paint.

You took down enough of the trees

So that I had to see

Your chicken coop-like playhouse

Your broken power pole

Secured with yellow

Polypropylene rope

Tied to a tree

That belonged to me

Your perpetual

Driveway development

Moved ever closer towards

The property line

And when you realized that I could not help but see

You built an even uglier fence

And painted it

So that it would stand out

In my face

Leaning like the electric pole

On your piles and scars on the hillside,

Like a cleft palate

Or a harelip.

The previous owner

Might have known me

And me, he…

But you, my friend?

That could never be.