

from the banks of brook avenue

annotated edition

complete text of _from the banks of brook avenue_

with author's commentary about the origin

and development of the poems

w r rodriguez

zeugpress/smashwords

copyright information

table of contents

Copyright and Acknowledgments

_From the Banks of Brook Avenue_ is dedicated to Mike Peterson, in gratitude for his technical advice and support of my publication projects over the decades _._

Acknowledgments:

Poems from this book previously appeared in the following magazines and anthologies: _And Justice For All; The Bronx County Historical Society Journal; Connections: New York City Bridges in Poetry; Dusty Dog; The Glacier Stopped Here: an anthology of poems by Dane County writers; Live Lines: Is There a Place for Poetry in Your World; North Coast Review; POETS_ on the line _; The Prose Poem: An International Journal; The Spirit That Moves Us; Tokens: Contemporary Poetry of the Subway; Welcome to Your Life: Writings for the Heart of Young America; You Are Here: New York City Streets in Poetry;_ and _Z Miscellaneous._ The short poem, "genghis khan," by w r rodriguez, previously appeared in _Wormwood Review._ It serves as the basis for "yankee kitchen."

Cover Photo: _Glass Clouds_ by Rob Rodriguez

from the banks of brook avenue © 2015 w r rodriguez

from the banks of brook avenue annotated edition © 2017 w r rodriguez

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781370635153

Zeugpress: Smashwords Edition

table of contents

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright Page

Contents

Preface

Introduction

I

forbidden places

a moon full and cold

just another new york city subway near death experience

yankee kitchen

the beach beneath the bridge

after seeing night of the living dead

on the coping

liberation: the brook avenue parking meter quartet

justice

she is leaving but

what could have more impact than a bus

plaza of the undented turtle

avenue b, 14th street, looking south

the push and break and chase of it

II

the third avenue el

standing upon the fordham road bridge

halloween

ne cede malis: poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

washington comes to visit

grandfather: a photograph

bootblacks on the loose

al

p.s. 43

cypress avenue

skully

the tire man

a small but perfect world

the fountain of youth

III

welcome to the mainland

america's favorite pastime

yankee fan

the gambling leaguers

lost again on old subways

randall's island

triborough bridge: suspension

triborough bridge: stasis

triborough bridge: genesis

triborough bridge: kinesis

astoria park

the banks of brook avenue

Bibliography: Previous Publications

Appendix

Appendix Section I

Appendix: forbidden places

Appendix: a moon full and cold

Appendix: just another new york city subway near death experience

Appendix: yankee kitchen

Appendix: the beach beneath the bridge

Appendix: after seeing night of the living dead

Appendix: on the coping

Appendix: liberation

Appendix: justice

Appendix: she is leaving but

Appendix: what could have more impact than a bus

Appendix: plaza of the undented turtle

Appendix: avenue b, 14th street, looking south

Appendix: the push and break and chase of it

Appendix Section II

Appendix: the third avenue el

Appendix: standing upon the fordham road bridge

Appendix: halloween

Appendix: ne cede malis: poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

Appendix: washington comes to visit

Appendix: grandfather: a photograph

Appendix: bootblacks on the loose

Appendix: al

Appendix: p.s. 43

Appendix: cypress avenue

Appendix: skully

Appendix: the tire man

Appendix: a small but perfect world

Appendix: the fountain of youth

Appendix Section II

Appendix: welcome to the mainland

Appendix: america's favorite pastime

Appendix: yankee fan

Appendix: the gambling leaguers

Appendix: lost again on old subways

Appendix: randall's island

Appendix: triborough bridge: suspension

Appendix: triborough bridge: stasis

Appendix: triborough bridge: genesis

Appendix: triborough bridge: kinesis

Appendix: astoria park

Appendix: the banks of brook avenue
Preface

This is a poet's "behind the scenes" view of his work.

By revealing the people, places, events, and images from which the poems originated, I hope to give the reader insight into the creative process of transforming ideas, experiences, and imaginings into art.

So I will share the reality behind the poems.

A poem, after all, becomes its own reality.

table of contents
Introduction

I originally planned to write a book which discussed how the poems in _The Bronx Trilogy_ originated. Most of the poems in _The Trilogy_ were based on real people, places, or events. I planned a companion book, tentatively titled: _A Bronx Poet's Notebook: Behind the Scenes of The Bronx Trilogy_.

Such a book could be a challenge to the reader. It would be long, and it would require flipping from it to the original books of _The Trilogy._

So I decided instead to make an Annotated Edition of _from the banks of brook avenue_ which offered the poems and text in one volume.

Many readers prefer to read a book of poetry without any background comments or other intrusion by the author. Copies of the original _from the banks of brook avenue_ are available. The book was written to be enjoyed as is. It is comprehensible to readers of poetry, and needs no explanation.

This _Annotated Edition_ is for those, like myself, who are interested in the creative process. How does a poem begin? What images, thoughts, feelings are in the writer's mind at its conception. And how does the poem evolve from idea to final form?

I organized this _Annotated Edition_ in a way that I hope will be easy to manage.

I kept the original format and entire text of _from the banks of brook avenue._ After each poem, there is commentary on its origin. After the commentary, there is a link to the Appendix.

The Appendix offers discussion of how the poem evolved. Sometimes, rough notes and previous drafts are included.

Since textual discussion is relegated to the Appendix, it does not intrude on the flow of the poems and the commentary. But it is there for those who wish to view the revisions.

How is a poem conceived? How does it evolve?

That is what this book is about!

table of contents
from the banks brook avenue

annotated edition

table of contents

I

...a wholly new ordering

of ordinary

affairs.

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forbidden places

in all the forbidden places

like round the corner

and too far up the block

and up and down the you'll fall from it fire escape

and across the bad boy bad girl rooftops

of fertile pigeons and antenna thieves

through the sinister shadows of subway stations

and beware of dogs junkies

and the drunken super

basements

through the unexplored side streets of childhood

my mind wanders

that musk of the living

and dying tenement compels me

the gloom of alley and airshaft

the glow of sunlight on brick

i must navigate asphalt rivers

i must trek the broken glass

graffitied mainland to reach

the cement heart of the interior

and i will not return

i am the great explorer forever lost

in the concrete wilderness

i will discover america

flowering in the rubble

****************

Commentary:

My father parked his car in a garage about nine blocks from our house. Almost adjacent to the garage was an abandoned tenement. The street was not wide, so we got a good view as we walked past. It had not been boarded up, and through the space where there had once been a window, I could see the ruins of the front room, in shadow, with broken walls, and the vague appearance of another room behind it. A damp smell emanated into the narrow street. Possibly the building had been made uninhabitable by a fire. I would never cross the threshold and explore the shadows beyond the broken door.

And there were other places I would not go. In the good old days people might sleep on tenement rooftops on hot summer nights or keep belongings in the basement storage room. But our mothers knew that the good old days were gone. They kept a careful watch on us. Our mothers let us play in the street, but we had to play where they could see us from the front window. And we usually stayed within our boundaries. But the forbidden beckons, and the imagination wanders.

Appendix: forbidden places

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a moon full and cold

there was a moon full and cold

and i was a child in the big wide

unwanderable world

kept safe by my parents and warm

while the radiator with its ancient scales

of cracked paint hissed like a tame dragon

through the green forests

and brown fields of footworn linoleum

plastic soldiers advanced from their beachhead

to conquer the living room or to die in glorious battle

cowboys and indians skirmished at fort apache

alien spacecraft landed and robots ran amok

gallant knights with british accents

rode forth from castle walls to great adventure

fighting firebreathing worms and other strange creatures

so the countryside would be safe for travelers

and a child might sleep in bed and fear no harm

there was no gore just valor and victory and i

was general or prince or hero

anything is possible in the moonlight

this is the moon that shone over stalingrad

when death oozed through the rubble

this is the moon that glowed over the balcony

when romeo swore his love and juliet was enchanted

a leafless lifeless moon amid the tarpaper sky

which rose above the rooftops which shrouded our souls

shining white beyond empty streets and unlit windows

beyond unseen sleepers and reason and dream

a moon bright and distant

as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate

i pressed my nose to the windowpane and saw the moon

looming over lovers and battlefields

i wanted to sit forever in its light

to drink in the heavens to drown in wonder

ecstatic and enraptured

sated and thirsting for more

the fearless loveless bloodless moon

beyond the who and what and where of the sun's despair

its stark chill beckoned unanswerable

****************

Commentary:

Summer offered the opportunity to play outside with cousins and friends. Fall brought school, homework, early sunsets, and long, cold evenings spent indoors.

I was an only child, without siblings to amuse and annoy me. I did have many toys for entertainment. The mottled green and brown linoleum of the living room made an excellent landscape for all sorts of battles.

One cold November night I peered out the window and saw the moon, so white against the black sky. The streets were quiet and empty. Perhaps that was the first time I ever really saw the moon. Or felt the moon, if one could call it that.

And the radiator was near the window. And beyond was my bedroom. And my toy chest. And my toys. And the bed where I thought and imagined and dreamed.

Appendix: a moon full and cold

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just another new york city subway near death experience

116th street and lexington avenue

three of us in the subway car

like some underground golgotha

when mister death walks in

not looking too kindly

we are not feeling immortal today

he is six feet tall he is five feet wide

he can sit anywhere he wants

but he stands right over me

cold eyes solemn mouth

in one hand a thick belt

dangles like a scythe

(the other holds the commuter strap

for proper balance because giants

do not like to tumble before their prey)

as the train rocks along

like the history of western civilization

which is irrelevant at this moment

of imminent doom

his eyes do not blink

his mouth does not smile

(i have lost my sense of humor

and all other sensation)

that immense hand

that mysterious belt

dangling in my peripheral vision

like a glimpse of heaven beyond pain

i cannot speak

i cannot run

the enormous gray clad arm

moves and the belt

taps my knee

taps my knee three times

his eyes do not move

i do not move

nor think nor feel

i have transcended

humanity in a subway tunnel beneath spanish harlem

and he walks off

to the next passenger

and taps his knee

three times then on to the next

three times and there are only three passengers

so he lumbers into the next car

searching for knees

and i feel like sir gawain released by the green knight

introspective and glad to be alive

i am young and i have learned

that experience is not unique

that the inevitable is

sometimes avoidable though i don't know how

and that for a mere fifteen cent token i can wander

forever searching for the man who taps knees

but when a voice says shoot boy it was just another

new york city subway near death experience

i remember that i was going to play basketball and maybe

talk to some girls afterwards though i am

a lousy shot and terribly

socially awkward

****************

Commentary:

I can still see him standing over me. Maybe he was not five feet wide, but he was pretty big. He looked down at me, and I up at him. He tapped my knee, three times. And did the same to the other two passengers. And left. Just who was that mystery man? What was his fascination with knees? The number three? I will never know. I prefer not to meet him again.

Appendix: just another new york city subway near death experience

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yankee kitchen

there are paintings of quaint towns by the sea

and clippers slicing windswept waters

wood trim and white bricks

a touch of new england in new york

with a whiff of chowder on the menu

harbored next to a massive gray church

where angels watch over the world

and the monstrance shines over the globe

and the winged herald on the corner wields a trumpet

louder than all the taxicabs on lexington avenue

if only we could hear it

but we sail the winds and waves of adolescence

and drift back to this modest diner

with its patina of grease and nicotine

to listen to ourselves and feast

upon just being friends

in that delicious time

before the future pulls us apart

and we become like the pedestrians beyond the window

scurrying to love to money to fashionable

restaurants or dive bars

honking like traffic at anything in the way

some of us will make the angels cry

some will just wander off

into life but for now

we have nothing to do but sit

together and sip our sodas until the ice

turns to water while ralph

the aged waiter with the patience of a saint

lean and drawn like the farmer in american gothic

and a loving smile pretends not to see

jerry use his straw to shoot spitballs at the good

citizens of nantucket so purposefully

portrayed in oil amid the rustic wooden frame

while in the infernal heat of the kitchen

the anonymous infamous fry cook grills

hamburgers cheeseburgers and anything we can afford

we do not know his name but we call him

genghis khan because legend has it he once

charged from the grill waving a butcher knife

at a customer who complained

so we laugh and to the last

lick of grease eat clean the bone

white plates of our hungry

youth

****************

Commentary:

The poem began as a very short piece (nine lines) called "genghis khan," based on the rumor that an angry, knife-wielding cook threw out a customer who did not like the food. But Yankee Kitchen was much more than that. The restaurant was next to St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church at 76th and Lexington. I was in a Boy Scout troop at St. Jean's, and friends with kids who went to school there. We played basketball in the gym and punchball in the courtyard.

Too young to hang out in the local bars, we refreshed ourselves with burgers and sodas. Yankee Kitchen was our place, in a time when we were still young and relatively innocent. So I built the poem on top of the genghis khan image that would form the ending. This seemed strangely appropriate: for five years I worked for Saint Anne's Shrine in an office building adjacent to the rectory. Eventually, the church closed the building and sold the property. The facade of the office building was kept, and a high rise erected above it.

Appendix: yankee kitchen

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the beach beneath the bridge

a strip of sand and stone

between overgrown grass and gray water

white suburban homes mottle the leaves

of a distant shore

thirteen years old our footprints

are pools in the mud

we walk away

from parents and baseballs

there are mussels and driftwood

a horizon and a sky

ashes of bonfires burnt out

like the passion of night's lovers

the beach is awash with a love we barely understand

the smell of lowtide mud and brine

there is no going back not yet

the uncertain future ebbs and flows

now beneath the bronx sun we run and laugh

and stumble in the cold dark waves

****************

Commentary

When I was about twelve, my parents took me and a friend to Ferry Point Park, which is under the Whitestone Bridge. We played for a while, then wandered the narrow beach where we found many white circles which were the remnants of condoms. At the time, I did not know what they were. Eventually I realized that at night the park was a spot for lovers to meet. I think the poem was originally the opening of "ferry point park," but I decided to make it a separate piece. And, for the sake of propriety, I took out the mention of condoms.

Appendix: the beach beneath the bridge

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after seeing _night of the living dead_

stiffarmed we limp across the commons

they're coming to get you barbara

we yell from dormitory bushes

on this hallowed ground

where edgar allan poe

once haunted the jesuits

but no one is scared so we

stagger into the pub to bend

our elbows till dawn

pretending to be

cinema heroes and poets

and in the platonic light of day

when we are only ourselves

they up and run

premeds

junior accountants

student politicians

literally up and run

they conform so well

we not at all

they will flourish and prosper

we will write and paint and teach

and grow old paying bills

starving for the days

and nights when we

roamed the gothic campus

young alive hungry

liberal arts

rebels

****************

Commentary

Yes it really happened. I went to Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus, where Edgar Allen Poe used to walk and hang out with the Jesuits. A few buddies and I went to see a showing of the black and white original _Night of the Living Dead._ During one of the "scary" scenes of the movie, I reached around and pinched the neck of one of my friends. He jumped three feet straight up in the air. I did not put that in the poem. Afterwards, we wandered around for a few minutes reenacting some of the movie scenes. I guess we were the weirdoes and not held in great esteem by the more conventional types. But, hey forgive me, I was an English major.

Appendix: after seeing night of the living dead

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on the coping

atop the parapet

of a five story walk-up

on the outer edge

of coping

he stands

fifty feet in the air

upon the smooth

downward slope of tile

his kite soars

a soul

in search of heaven

and he smiles

childhood stops

children gaze

with upturned

wondering eyes

there must be angels

in the clouds

a miracle flutters

overhead

the eternity

of a summer afternoon

the immortality of youth

the timeless awe

those black sneakers

on the brink

of doom

and suddenly

a jump

a blind

backwards leap

onto the tarpaper roof

the kite

sports in the wind

and he descends

creaky stairs

to the rest of his life

to be found years later

jaundiced

needle scarred

dead in the stench

of an unlit doorway

****************

Commentary

Coping is a tile atop the parapet or short wall that lines the roofs of many tenements. The coping, which peaks in the middle, slants one way towards the roof, and the other way towards the beyond. This teen ager was standing on the outer edge and flying a kite. We were kids. We watched. At the time I probably thought something like: "Wow. If I could get up on the roof I probably could get my kite that high up in the sky." When I worked on the final revisions of the poem, I almost shuddered at the horror of the scene.

Appendix: on the coping

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liberation: the brook avenue parking meter quartet

I

the war droned

air america

deathdrugs

slumlord decadence

nightsticks and headblood

nor freedom from ourselves

eternities of tenements

work

sweat

survival

rentstrike

riot

petition

so many nouns and verbs

yet the poor are always among us

II

the resignation

of sun on concrete

the protest wind

of winter apartments

life is the struggle to live

brook avenue is indifferent

to saint and thief

time and space are money

taxation inevitable

and the city will take its tithe

we labor we sleep we dream

we awaken to parking meters

parking meters on brook avenue

where the sewerburied stream flows

invisible as hope

III

where orchards once grew

now stark

silver moneytrees

eat the fruit of our labor

we pay to park and we pay

for the means to make us pay

coinboxes are stolen

and we pay for replacements

by day we spend

by night we are robbed

dime by thin roosevelt dime

from weary hands

our wealth trickles

through treacherous currents

to the ocean of greed

IV

midnight's entrepreneur

is an invisible

lumberjack

hacking a trail of steel stumps

through urban wilderness

a cycle of thievery

and fruitless reforestation

meters reappear

to disappear again

and again and again

and again until

the city withdraws

from this war of attrition

no more parking meters

no more parking meter thief

the avenue is free

as a babbling brook

o liberation

****************

Commentary

I grew up in a time when "going green" was not a concern, so parking meters and streetlights were the closest things we had to trees. And I was fascinated to learn that Brook Avenue was named for the stream that was eventually subsumed by an underground sewer. When the city put up parking meters on Brook Avenue, someone sawed off the money boxes. A guerilla war, an urban parallel of the Vietnam conflict, but fortunately not as deadly.

Appendix: liberation

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justice

a youth grabbed an old woman's purse fat with tissues and aspirin and such sundries as old women carry in sagging purses a desperate youth nice enough not to beat her head bloody into the sidewalk as muggers of the feeble often do for the fun of it i suppose and he ran up the hill but one of the perennial watchers watched it all from her window the purseless old woman in slow pursuit yelling such curses as it takes old women a lifetime to learn but it was too dangerous too futile the silent watcher knew to call the police who might come and rough up someone they did not like just for the fun of it i suppose or who would talk polite and feel mad inside and roll their eyes because there was really nothing they could do and there were murders and assaults to handle so this silent angry watcher carelessly but carefully dropped flower pots from her fourth floor windowsill garden one crashing before one behind and the third hitting him on the head a geranium i suppose and closed her window while the huffing grateful old woman looked up at the heavens to thank the lord and when she finally calmed down she walked off with her purse laughing and leaving the youth to awaken in the blue arms of the law and do you know two smiling cops walked up all those stairs to warn the watcher that if she weren't more careful with her plants she would get a ticket for littering i suppose

****************

Commentary

I heard about how a woman got mugged and another woman tossed a flower pot from her window and hit the mugger on the head. When one grows up in a world where being a victim of crime is a constant fear, a poem like this is therapy

appendix: justice

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she is leaving but

she is leaving but

pauses a moment

before the great

overhead thud

our upstairs neighbors

like to play so they wrestle

the burly father

the burly son

and the takedown

takes down the ceiling

my amazed aunt had turned to talk

stopped at the french doors

on the threshold of doom

by mundane words

a second before bricks

and whiskey bottles

left by turn of the century

italian plasterers

and genuine plaster

crash in a dusty thud

she laughs to see

a leg poking through

she laughs to be standing

in our living room

an oasis with green sofa and chair

art deco end tables and console television

she laughs just to be alive

in a rent controlled apartment

in the south bronx

where no one escapes death

and she laughs

****************

Commentary

My aunt could have been killed by the falling debris. She had almost entered the dining room, but stopped at the French doors to talk a bit more. Just a second before the dining room ceiling collapsed. Plaster chunks are heavy, and there were a few bricks and bottles left in the ceiling by whoever made it. I did not see the leg poking through, but I think my parents did. Sadly, my aunt died of cancer a few years later.

appendix: she is leaving but

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what could have more impact than a bus

what could have more impact than a bus

boasted the bus on a bus long fluorescent sign

advertising advertising space along the roof

of this new bus and its new bus brethren

who bore the plastic banners of big corporations

making big bucks from this richest

and poorest of cities

but galloping buses are not pedestrians

to be tamed with words and money and this rare

soon to be extinct

_what could have more impact than a bus_ bus

with a bellyful of passengers and its fluorescent plastic strip

sped past the bright shops and dark taverns

along third avenue where once

the great sad eyed el roared

and rattled tenement windows

and this rare soon to be extinct

_what could have more impact than a bus_ bus

right outside the seventy-sixth street flophouse

where nightly floppers staggered home

amid swinging staggering singles

in the very crosswalk where daily the ancient monsignor

damn near ran out of breath while we wondered

how long he had left how many months or minutes

until he could no longer hobble to safety

before the light turned and he would be caught

in the stampede of uptown traffic and be killed

while we watched like the crowd at calvary

and did nothing to save him

we would carry the guilt to our graves

we would suffer gruesome memories

we would sweat through grisly nightmares

but he died quietly in his sleep

and the angels carried him away

and we were just streetcorner losers

with time to kill

then one day this rare soon to be extinct

_what could have more impact than a bus_ bus

caught in mid escape a white pigeon

white as a baptismal gown white as a stained

glass window dove on a sunny sunday morning

a rare aberration of the prolific pigeons

those fellow gray loiterers

whose droppings whitewashed the steeples

of the church that spiked its windowsills

and swept up wedding rice before the flock could partake

a rare white winged apparition

caught like any of us might have been

by this rare soon to be extinct

_what could have more impact than a bus_ bus

and it fell wide eyed

its feathers drifting slowly

spiraling white and red onto the asphalt

ground down by car after car until

even the blood disappeared

and the flying spirit disintegrated into the busy world

outside the dive bar beneath the flophouse

that will die and be reborn

in a paradise of condominiums and upscale cafes

with no room for the congregation

the aged priest may have been trying to save

with no room for elevated trains

or bored teenage boys

there was prophecy and revelation and the promise

of eternity and we knew

we too might grow old someday

if we were that lucky

****************

Commentary

Now, in Madison, Wisconsin, the transit company, to make money, wraps the entire exterior of a bus in advertisement. There was a time in New York when buses had a lighted-strip running across the roof on which an ad could be placed. The advertisement "What could have more impact than a bus" was a way of encouraging businesses to post a message. My buddies and I sometimes hung out at the corner of 76th and Third, and an old priest would slowly cross Third Avenue on his way for a night cap. And once I did see a bus smash a pigeon on Third Avenue. A sad sight.

Appendix: what could have more impact than a bus

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plaza of the undented turtle

sirens

red lights

angry cops

the gold car speeds

down avenue

c and swerves

onto the sidewalk

through the plaza

scattering

the twelfth street midnight

beer drinkers and slams

head-on into the shell

of the beloved

cement turtle

while the skyline sparkles

postcard pretty

outside our window

ten stories above

as we watch this drama

just another city night

just another summer street

just another urban legend

seeking anonymity

reality entertains

when it happens to others and

the door flies open

the foot race begins

run driver run

from police

run police run

into the night

flow river flow

to the mysterious sea

who knows

how it ends

is there justice

on dark streets

red lights gather and vanish

gather and vanish

all life long

blood bleeds

bullets kill

the turtle

does not cry

the pontiac

has chosen to remain silent

then the impounding officer

starts the engine

it purrs it revs and it's off

to automobile prison

there is no reporter

asking the cop at the wheel

about inanimate

reincarnation

it really does

have a phoenix

painted on the hood

there is irony

to fulfill

tragedy

lust

love and laughter

babies will surface from the womb

to crawl to walk to climb

searching

for the ecstasy of heaven

now the undented turtle sleeps

beneath the electric hum

of the power plant which may

or may not explode

with a hiss and a fireball

and a boom like the big bang

as if the universe were created anew

on the lower east side

and we are lucky just to breathe

amid the smoke and the screams

and we are lucky to survive

the chaos of night

and the turtle waits for the warm sun

for the silly day for the children

to play like creatures

on the back

of the great

creator

god

****************

Commentary

My future in-laws lived in a high rise at Tenth Street and Avenue C. On the tenth floor, just across the plaza from the Con Edison power plant. One night, about a month before I was to get married, I was looking out the window. I heard a loud PFFFT. Then I saw a huge fireball which seemed to be a block wide and which rose high into the sky. Then I heard a boom. The lights went out and people ran screaming through the plaza. As Roseanne Roseannadanna said: "I thought I was going to die." But my future mother-in-law said "That happens from time to time," and did not seem worried. I guess she was right. Over twenty years later, when I was in The Bronx visiting my mom, I heard that the Con Ed exploded. So I called my mother-in-law. It had, and this time, since it was post 9/11, they were trying to evacuate her building, but she and her old dog could not make it down the stairs. A few years later, during Hurricane Sandy, the Con Ed plant blew up again, and we watched the video on the internet. So there was truth in Momma's words. Though she has passed on, the Con Ed plant is still there. And another time, before I got married, I was looking out Momma's window. The police were chasing a car, a Pontiac Firebird, which drove through the plaza and smashed into the cement turtle. It was night, and no children were playing on the turtle. The driver got out and ran off. I do not know why the cops were chasing him, or if they caught him, but the car started right up for the officer. And the turtle was unscathed. Absolutely undented.

Appendix: plaza of the undented turtle

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avenue b, 14th street, looking south

there is a place when

there is a moment where

crossing the street

all the streetlights stretching south

and all the traffic lights

align in rows

that would converge but for

some distant building

and i think i must be

exactly in the middle

of the street but i know

the world is too crooked

for that

****************

Commentary

When I was dating my future wife, we often walked from the Union Square subway station to Avenue C. I happened to notice this visual effect while crossing the street. If you are some night, give it a try. But watch our for the cars!

Appendix: avenue b, fourteenth street, looking south

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the push and break and chase of it

three men push a broken car down the street.

a dog chases them.

three dogs push a broken man down the street.

a car chases them.

three cars push a broken dog down the street.

a man chases them.

three men, three cars, three dogs

push each other down the street,

chase each other,

break each other.

no, no, we must not upset the order,

said the car who was really three cars who had chased the dogs.

a little innovation is in order every now and then,

said the man who was really three men who had chased the cars.

do we not constitute a microcosm of the universal flux

from order to disorder to the establishment of a new order

to be set to chaos?

said the dog who was really three dogs who had chased the men

and who now chased cars

following a wholly new ordering

of ordinary

affairs.

****************

Commentary

I was working at my Uncle's shoe shine parlor and saw a couple of guys pushing a car down Brook Avenue. A stray dog started to chase them. An image I could never forget. The style of the poem is influenced by Russell Edson.

Appendix: the push and break and chase of it

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II

...our spirits drink immortal rage and compassion from the fluorescent green ooze of the waterbug writhing fountain of youth

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the third avenue el

I. 1886

a bridge and shining rails span the river

the long arm of the el stretches north

from harlem through the mainland

the seeds of the bronx are sown

tenements will blossom on fertile ground

there will be streets and streetcars and immigrants

will brave the broad ocean for their chance

in the land of the free

the colossus rises above new york harbor

glorious timeless stoic

her mighty limb bears a beacon of hope

a wary welcome to the new world

where geronimo is imprisoned

where chinese laborers are expelled from seattle

where former slaves are massacred in a mississippi courthouse

no one is indicted for their murder

in this great republic where the lord

and manifest destiny work in mysterious ways

a torch a tablet a stern look

staring toward the tempestuous atlantic

the copper matron will guide

exiles to the promised land

sure footed she is stepping

in the direction of south ferry station

II. 1920

from the battery park aquarium

to the botanical gardens and beyond

all for a buffalo nickel

a stadium will be built and there will be baseball

in the bronx and babe ruth and the yankees

will come and the crowds will cheer

in the golden age when the poor

inherit the earth one apartment at a time

the multitudes have arrived a new world is rising

farms become tenements

immigrants become americans

who will rest who will eat who will work

who will raise families and ride that great train

to a modest job and home to a modest kitchen

commuters flicker past trackside windows

curtains flutter and the glass shakes

garlic and cabbage and old country recipes

simmer on the flames of freedom

green stanchions green stations

lady liberty has turned green above the gray water

the sidewalks are gray the tenements are brown

or white or gray or red and the street gets little sunlight

children play and laugh in the shadows

the el sparks and thunders and storms across the sky

III. 1955

the sons and daughters of immigrants

survived poverty and prohibition

the depression and two world wars

now their children are given dog tags

and schools teach to duck and cover

when atomic bombs explode

but the economy is booming

the city thrives and factories flourish

televisions toys cars

disneyland gunsmoke the mickey mouse club

mcdonald's opens in illinois and eisenhower

sends aid and advisors to vietnam

this humble train this noble artery of democracy

the bronx harlem yorkville

lenox hill murray hill

little italy and chinatown

in this land where liberty proudly enlightens the world

rosa parks is arrested and the boycott begins

the third avenue el is mortal it lives it moves

it dies a long slow death

the aquarium has been closed and the fish deported

ellis island is abandoned to rot in the harbor

on the final manhattan run people doff their hats

and toast the last echoes of its passing glory

IV. 1973

the once great el is merely

a minor shuttle an appendix

lost in the intestines of the bronx

the dodgers and giants have migrated west

the yankees wane and rust

mottles the rivets of industry

america the beautiful wrestles with itself

broken glass lost dreams

riots and assassinations

planned obsolescence and withdrawal with honor

the weary el clatters like a faithful milk wagon

while tenements crumble and die

the world trade center rises above the skyline

the last passenger run is made in the dark

and the train disappears in the night

the streets will be quiet and sidewalks

freed from shadow but the world

will not seem so wonderful

towers will rise where towers have fallen

the bronx will rise from the ruin

ellis island will reopen and the children

of the children of immigrants will come

to behold that great green lady

her colossal foot trampling forever the broken chain of slavery

her torch pointing to heaven

where stars are innumerable stations

and the great train rumbles toward paradise

****************

Commentary

My mother had fond memories of riding the Third Avenue El from the Bronx to the Aquarium in Battery Park. I remember a rickety ride through a decaying Bronx. And seeing a transit policeman lock the Bedford Park Station as the last section of the El was being closed. It was late at night, and my girl friend and I had left the back entrance of Fordham University and were walking along Southern Boulevard. The midnight silence was broken the clank of metal. But the poem is not based on personal memories; it is the product of many hours of research. I found it fascinating that the rails crossed the Harlem River to The Bronx in the same year that the Statue of Liberty opened. And that the World Trade Center opened in the El's final year. The Third Avenue El opened The Bronx to development, so it seemed fitting to tell the story of the El in terms of American and Bronx history.

Appendix: the third avenue el

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standing upon the fordham road bridge

on a walk from nothing to do to nowhere to go

i stop here beneath heaven and above the harlem

river which curves from spuyten duyvil to hell gate

past the train yard and bus barn and power plant

through bluffs of tenement and project

in a valley veiled in concrete and night

all those little people with their big lives

all those big people with their little lives

asleep now or wandering the streets

searching for a cool breeze in the humid gloom

or cheap or expensive thrills which bring

forgetfulness of whatever pain there is to life

and i have found the river

darker and deeper it seems than space itself

though the sky is a gray haze of city light

which obscures the stars as we are obscured

and i stand above unheard currents

where tall masted ships no longer sail

i watch striations of light on the midnight water

which casts no human reflection

and tells no tales of what it carries away

the silent inscrutable current is a thirst

to be salted by unfathomable oceans

and in the depth of this drowning darkness

the faint vision of dawn

bringing a new day to this weary world

***************

Commentary

This poem is really about the University Heights Bridge, which I had always called the Fordham Road Bridge, because it enters The Bronx at West Fordham Road. It is the experience of being in the city, surrounded by the city, and yet of being somewhere else, in the sky, above the water. And at night the city lights reflect on the currents, and the river keeps flowing in a dark and haunting way.

Appendix: standing on the fordham road bridge

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halloween

detroit burns and the bronx is mugged

with socks full of stones the wicked beat

money from mortal flesh

pirates and devils

torment candy from the naive

riots and thievery and war always war

there are no loving arms

strong enough to fend off the world

blood and grief and bloated bodies

children starve and the innocent die but tonight

the slaughtered will rise from sprawling graves

tonight urchins will drift across mine fields

their ghostly songs whine like artillery

and in mockery eggs splatter

like bombs from unseen rooftops

o do wear a mask of a monster or mutant

it is less hideous than to look

helpless into the face of humanity

there were saints and gods among us

and we killed them

blessed are the dead who have been purged

of cruelty and greed

they know what we have lost

forlorn paradise heaven uncreated

they know and they will come

the intentionally killed the merely neglected

they who should fear but who love nevertheless

they will come who have been liberated

from the perpetual procreation of pain and stolen joy

they will come and they will dance

look look their bliss wafts through the tangible

we smile and we pray that the children will be safe

let us feed the darling monsters coin and corn

we who are so generous and who will send yet more

souls suffering to their graves for our great blessing

***************

Commentary

It is difficult to look at the dark side of humanity, at the pain and suffering caused by war, genocide, and violence. The early version of the poem recalls arson in Detroit, stores on Fordham Road closing early to avoid being robbed by people wearing masks, and the Rwandan Genocide. Some cultures believe that at this time, spirits could enter the world of the living or that souls could emerge from their graves. I play with the idea that souls of the dead will reappear, and that we will treat the trick or treaters while continuing our violence.

Appendix: halloween

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_ne cede malis:_ poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

yield not to evil

meet misfortune boldly

wings spread

head cocked

beak in profile

one stern

alert eye

stares forth

the bald eagle is perched

atop the hemisphere

the stylized cupule

of an acorn

a triangular shield

where the sky is broken

by the straight beams

of a circular sun

whose indifferent eyes

surface over calm water

peace and liberty shining

on the ripples of commerce

and at the base

a small triangle

dark

almost insignificant

it is the land

of new hope and old tradition

behold it is the bronx

here unseen millions create their lives

and await their fate

in the scroll

the ominous motto

ne cede malis

yield not to evil

all is surrounded

by a festooned circle

a suggestion of universal harmony

the sun has eyebrows

it is all so placid

the sky is cloudless

the waters still

the land a mere shoreline

a speck in eternity

and the eagle

watches his back

a wary carnivore

in a troublesome world

****************

Commentary

This poem has a unique subject: the Seal of The Borough of the Bronx. Where else could it get published, but in a book of poetry about The Bronx? I was most pleased that it did find a home in the 2008 Bronx County Historical Society Journal. But for the Historical Society, I might never have come across the Seal nor learned about its symbolism. The image that inspired the poem appeared in BCHSJ in the 1990s. It was black and white, with no color to distract from its starkness. Peace. liberty, commerce, and hope are represented by the sun and the eagle. To me, the sun looked so indifferent, and motto, yield not to evil, seemed so fascinating. I could not resist writing about it.

Appendix: ne cede malis: poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

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washington comes to visit

he arrives at grandma's house

just off cypress avenue

but nana does not serve him a bowl of her soup

and poppop does not offer him a hand-rolled cigar

and dad does not take his picture

because they are not home

it is 1781 and even their home is not there

but the british are

and washington is scouting enemy positions

so the redcoats welcome him

with cannon fire

from harlem and randall's island and nearby ships

but the general

continues his visit and goes

to the shoe shine parlor on brook avenue

uncle al does not give him a free shine

mom and aunt jean are not standing in the doorway

aunt helen is not watching from her window

and grandfather does not run out

into 138th street as he does

to welcome roosevelt's motorcade

he shines the cops' shoes

so they let him shake

the hand of the beloved f.d.r.

but washington is not yet president

and the shoe shine parlor and 138th street

and cypress avenue and brook avenue are not there

though the millbrook is and so is the mill

and muskets fire and cannons roar

it is noisy as the fourth of july

and washington plans to attack manhattan

and bring peace and quiet to the neighborhood

but he marches to yorktown instead

and the rest is history

****************

Commentary

Professor Lloyd Ultan's account of The Grand Reconnaissance (which appeared in the Spring 2002 _Bronx County Historical Journal_ ) mentions Washington approaching on the Cypress Hill, and a cannonball landing near the Millbrook, a stream which is now beneath Brook Avenue. It is hard to imagine a Bronx landscape without tenements. In 1781, the British had a line-of-sight that allowed them to fire artillery from Harlem into The Bronx. According to Ultan, Washington arrived at a hill on 140th Street and Cypress Avenue as the firing began. My father's family lived at 141st Street, just off Cypress Avenue, and my mother's family had a shoe shine parlor on Brook Avenue. There is a historical photograph, which was published in _Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of The Bronx,_ and in _The Beautiful Bronx 1920-1950._ It depicts Roosevelt's motorcade on 138th Street on October 28, 1940. In the lower right, my mother and her sister can be seen standing in the doorway of 514. Above them another aunt is looking out her front window. On July 11, 1936, the Triborough Bridge opened. Roosevelt's motorcade drove through 138th Street. According to my mother, her father ran out and shook the President's hand. The police let him do it. They knew him because he had shined their shoes. It may have been the best tip he ever received.

Appendix: washington comes to visit

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grandfather: a photograph

standing outside

the shoe shine parlor

a short man

in a long apron

brushes in hand

elbows bent

a gray face

an impatient smile

as if to say

hurry

take the picture

there is work to do

my customers are waiting

****************

Commentary

In the shoe shine parlor the one with the least seniority worked in the middle spot. I got a good view of the photographs in the long rectangular frame just above the bench. One photograph depicted my grandfather, aunt, and several uncles and customers. I used it on the cover of _the shoe shine parlor poems et al._ As I look at it again, he was not wearing an apron, nor were his elbows bent. But that is the image of him that I had in my head when I wrote the poem. In a way, this poem is a photograph of sorts.

Appendix: grandfather: a photograph

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bootblacks on the loose

we are bootblacks on the loose

and we might be found

in jersey or north of the county line

on summer tuesdays we swim

at palisades amusement park

the world's largest salt water pool

we cling to the board beneath the waterfall

and lose ourselves in the briny roar

saturday night it's pepper steak

at a chinese restaurant in yonkers

or a burger at ho jo's

where uncle al tries to convince

the waitress that i am an unusually short thirty-one year old

looking for a date

thought i am thirteen and still wrestling with puberty

sunday afternoon it might be

the bowling alley by yankee stadium

or the billiard parlor on brook avenue

cousin billy is gifted with great strength

and an abundance of enthusiasm

he subdues the pins with brute force

he breaks the rack with a thunderbolt

scaring the balls into pockets

and he pounds the leather into a shine

while sandy finesses his strikes and sweet talks

the bank shots and coaxes the shoes

to perfection

i suck at everything but have fun anyway

i am learning to sweat my way through a shine

not the strongest

not the suavest

but i get the job done

i cannot outswim

uncle al though billy

can beat him at bowling

and sandy can beat him at pool

but al's arms are like tree trunks

he has been a bootblack

longer than the three of us have been alive

and no pair of shoes

can make him sweat

he loves to take us places

when we are not working

and to play gin rummy when it rains

and to lie in the sun

on the boardwalk at palisades

and smoke a cigar after lunch

while we wait

so we won't get cramps

the proper amount of time

between eating and swimming

is exactly how long it takes

for al to finish his cigar

so we watch the manhattan skyline

and boats on the hudson river

and women in bikinis

and we wish

the day would never end

****************

Commentary

I came up with the title years before I had most of the content. From the line "we are bootblacks on the loose," I was able to recall the memories that re-create an awkward, innocent, and fun time of my life.

Appendix: bootblacks on the loose

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al

his father was a bootblack

and he is a bootblack

shining shoes with graceful movements

a faint smile beneath his moustache

while big band music plays on the ancient radio

and when the brushes dance

over the leather he leans

slightly like a man

gently holding the waist of a woman

in a prohibition era ballroom

****************

Commentary

An artist at work. He worked fast, but never seemed to hurry. He worked hard, but never seemed to sweat, but I am sure he did. Sometimes on a summer afternoon he would stand outside and stretch out his arms so that the breeze would blow threw the sleeves of his tee shirt. When you shine shoes in hot weather you are going to sweat. But cool people do not seem to show it.

Appendix: al

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p.s. 43

jonas bronck elementary school

he settled in paradise

on the east bank of the harlem river

divinely guided to a virgin forest

of unlimited opportunity

that needed only an industrious hand

to make it the most beautiful

region in the world he claimed

but we grew up on streets without trees

and we gathered in the auditorium to watch

space flights on a black and white television

the stage had a mural

of the purchase of the bronx

guys in tight black suits and long white stockings

and some sachem outside a longhouse

the suits were not spandex

and the longhouse was not made

of barclay-barclite fiberglass panels

and just beyond the panorama

maybe some old lenape was saying

there goes the neighborhood

they are letting the whites in

they do not even speak the language

is that real money or are these guys just

a couple of broke tulip farmers with counterfeit wampum

when a launch was delayed we watched reruns

of  my little margie

then it was back to the space race

because america must beat russia to the moon

so the commies would not invade the bronx

and we stockpiled tanks and troops in europe

and we saved the world for democracy

though we could not save the neighborhood

from drugs and crime

and in our kindergarten classroom

midnight vandals threw the teacher's coffee into the aquarium

the goldfish was floating belly up in the morning

no one talked us through our sadness and fear

it was a tough school

if you barfed in the cafeteria you had to clean it up yourself

which led to more barfing

you cleaned and barfed till you barfed no more

and there was nothing more to clean

then you went to class or went home

my mother had her own memories

of this educational institution

where teachers put clothes hangers

inside kids' shirts to encourage good posture

and criticized mom because her parents spoke italian

and not good english

so when they sent letters home in spanish

which neither she nor i could read

she shared her disgruntlement at the main office

but the next letter came again in spanish

and she returned again and again

she was quite good at expressing disgruntlement

in perfect bronx english

most of us were not bilingual but we were quick learners

in kindergarten we were not taught the alphabet

but the first grade teacher assumed we knew it

we learned this is the way life would always be

full of irony and incongruity and strange paintings

and of love and disgruntlement and rebellion

in third grade i became enamored

with a leopard skin coat

there was a redhead inside it

i don't remember her name

but what a coat

when they painted the doors pink

and put a DO NOT TOUCH sign on the wall

how could i resist

shoving my hat into the wet paint

they would not arrest me for it

they would not send me to the principal

the redhead would not be impressed

even my mother would not yell

at something so absurd

it was like the rich taking money from the poor

it was like going to the moon while the world was dying

it was like sending troops to vietnam

it was like arsonists burning tenements

even when the slumlords did not pay them

it was like writing poetry

instead of working on wall street

it was like jonas settling the bronx

and thinking he could improve paradise

it was because there was a sign

saying not to

it was because the tenements

were crumbling and the trees had vanished

and john wayne had killed all the indians

except for a few token sidekicks

it was because

it was there

and i had a hat

and the paint was wet

and i was a stupid kid

with a pink hat

receiving a great education

in america

****************

Commentary

The early draft was a rant of memories. For years it remained on my "to do" list. As I started organizing it, I wound up doing a fair amount of research. The Barclay-Barclite sign loomed over the Major Deagen, but what was manufactured in that large building? Some sort of fiberglass panels, I think. One of my aunts claimed that she went to school with Dutch Schultz, but I could not verify that in his bio, so I removed the reference from the poem. I checked to see when My Little Margie was originally broadcast; we must have seen the reruns. The mural in the auditorium is still in my memory. I could not find a picture of it. I contacted the school and was told that there is no mural in the auditorium. I could not find it through my research. It is so sad that a part of Bronx history has vanished. I remember the mural as vividly as I remember the leopard skin coat. And the dead goldfish. And my mother's anger at the letters in Spanish. And leaving school with pink paint on my hat, which my uncle Al, the bootblack, removed with the benzene he used to clean brown shoes. I paraphrased Jonas Bronck's comments about the virgin forest needing an industrious hand to make The Bronx the most beautiful region in the world, and I could not resist inventing the comment by the old lenape. The Dutch really did counterfeit wampum. And at one point tulips were worth more than gold. According to what I read, the crash of the tulip market prompted the Dutch to expand their New Amsterdam colony.

Appendix: p.s.43

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cypress avenue

the avenue is named for the trees

that once grew in the morris arboretum

before the age of development and ruin

they are gone but their spirits linger

on this quiet avenue in the noisy bronx

a half mile of peace and simple wonder

or is it just childhood illusion

the thrill of saint mary's park

the lure of the randall's island walkway

the corner candy store

that sells joyva halvah and joyva joys

chocolate covered raspberry jelly bars

so tart and sweet even hamlet

would find succulence in the dull world

at grandmother's apartment her cooking

brightens the railroad flat

the aroma seeps out the window

and the street seems to sparkle

there is a green beauty salon

a turquoise shoe shine parlor

p.s. 65 with its light brown bricks

sparrows chirp in the schoolyard

and when the basketball courts are deserted

in the solitude of a sunday afternoon

even a clumsy kid

can pretend to be an all-star

the millbrook housing projects

are young and pink

christmas lights blink in various windows

i watch the flashing colors

to the point of insanity

while daddy warms up his 54 plymouth

in an outdoor parking lot by a scraggly locust tree sapling

as the car radio plays

wonderland by night

and i wonder

about the abandoned public school

p.s. 29 is bone white in the harsh sun

a spectral glow in the dark

the children say it is haunted

and i am a child

and in a long narrow store

lost in the red and yellow flames

of arson perhaps

father buys me the black knight of nurnberg

it is the missing piece

of my collection of aurora plastic models

the red knight of vienna

the blue knight of milan

the silver knight of augsberg

there is a gold knight of nice

i do not know it exists but it would be nice to have

i would lust for it as i did for the black knight

but my temporal desires have been temporarily satisfied

i am happy for a while

and safe for a while

in bed at night surrounded

by stuffed animals that protect me from bad dreams

while the knights keep watch from my shelves

there are tears and joy

there are more things to fear in heaven and earth

than i can dream of

as i glue together the armor

that protects me from the world

****************

Commentary

According to my research, the street was named after the cypress trees in the Morris family arboretum. Cypress Avenue runs from the Triborough Bridge to Saint Mary's Park. My father parked his car at a garage on Cypress and 137th Street, and I remember sitting in his car one night while he warmed it up. The radio was playing, and some of the windows of the Millbrook Projects were lined with Christmas lights. My grandmother lived just off Cypress Avenue on 141st Street. On the corner was a candy store, and across from that, P.S. 65 which had a large schoolyard. Despite being lined with tenements, Cypress Avenue lingers in my memory as echoing with a sort of pastoral peace. Maybe the spirit of the trees emanates from the concrete.

Appendix: cypress avenue

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skully

we squat we crawl we kneel

we lie on the sidewalk to shoot

bottle caps from square to square

in a game that demands

intimate contact with the street

and we play it with a summer frenzy

on a worn slab of cement outside 514

smooth almost as hallway marble

the only one like it on the block

in the neighborhood in the known world

unmarred by cracks and even

the residue of long discarded chewing gum

has become one with the surface

a man-made stone made perfect by time

and we study the board with the intensity

of pool hall hustlers and we flick

the middle finger off the thumb

make the shot and go again

hit an opponent and advance

we grow calluses on fingers and palms

we wear holes in dungarees years before

it becomes fashionable

our knees blacken but we do not care about arthritis

and we do not care how stiff the iron-on patches feel

before we wear holes in them too

our mothers mend and sew

our fathers say

who do you think i am rockefeller

when we ask for a dime to buy soda

so we do not ask for new pants

they were children of the great depression

they are hard working men and if there is change

in their pockets we will get that orange nehi

and we will save the cap and fill it

with melted crayons and we will line up

and shoot away the summer afternoon

angling from square to square

one to four on each corner

five through twelve midway on each side

thirteen in the center

again and again we crisscross deadman's zone

and must avoid disaster

like our fathers went from poverty to war to the thankless jobs

they are grateful to have

like the big boys flirt

with drugs police crime paternity

they hope to get out of adolescence alive

and survive their unknown futures

there is a wall around berlin

the russians are building missile bases in cuba

and vietnam looms beyond the sunset of many childhoods

the line between victory and defeat is chalk thin

we must make that crucial shot

into the thirteenth box

dead center in deadman's zone

and live to tell about it

****************

Commentary

In the days before the internet, I drew a diagram of the board in my notebook as best as I could recall. But how to describe the game to someone who did not grow up in a city? Thanks to the internet, a quick search reveals the playing area and delineates rules that I would have never remembered. I have not played skully in many years, and am now too old to crawl around on cement sidewalks.

The bottlecaps we used were the old fashioned ones that required a "church key," a bottle opener, to pry off, not the newfangled twist off caps. The delicatessens and supermarkets sold soda and beer in glass bottles, so there were plenty of bottlecaps around to use as game pieces or to nail onto the milkbox scooters we made. I was playing skully, navigating box three, when I first learned that cats were resilient creatures. I heard a brief, but ever-loudening "rrrooow." A cat that had fallen out of an upper story-window landed about a foot away from me. It got up and walked off. I considered putting this in the poem, but chose not to. Someday I may write a poem about the doppler effect. Our favorite skully slab was just outside of 514 where my aunt lived. Her son, my cousin, was at sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so I left out the cat and chose the war theme, juxtaposing had the deadman's zone of our childhood game with the real dangers of adulthood.

Appendix: skully

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the tire man

nixon is rising and the yankees are falling

and i am walking to my political science class

i walk up the hill and down the hill

and a long way along fordham road

in my adolescent oblivion

and i stop

when a tire rolls across the sidewalk

i do not drive but i am a good pedestrian

i yield to rolling tires

even those not attached to cars

another tire follows it

and another

i see a tire lying on the ground

and the man in the back of a truck

drops a tire straight down so it hits

in just the right spot and rolls

across the sidewalk and up the ramp

to be caught and loaded onto the dock

they do not teach this in college so i watch

i cannot explain the vectors involved nor the probability

of repeatedly dropping a tire onto the exact spot

to give it sufficient momentum and an accurate path

i left the engineering program to become an english major

so the poetic beauty of it is enough for me

there are a few sliders and curves but the tires

always get to where they are going

and when the show is over i go to class

where tests are being returned and the professor says

i gave you 35 points for putting your name on the paper

because it is good to know your name

so how can one of you get a 42

i do not know who got the bad score

and i do not know the name

of the tire man

just another nondescript earning an honest living

he will never run for president

he will never pitch for the yankees

but there are no spitballs

and he throws a perfect game

****************

Commentary

There really was a tire man, and I really did stop to watch, and the words of the professor are a pretty accurate quote. The tire man had a simple job done with great skill. Like a bootblack, perhaps. It was beautiful to watch. And Wordsworth was long dead, so I had to write the poem.

Appendix: the tire man

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a small but perfect world

at thanksgiving we give thanks

for all we take for granted

the turkey the lasagna

the ceiling over our head

our apartment in the south bronx

the bedrooms are small

the dining room is not

we gather and feast

and the table is cleared

soon construction begins

the plywood is covered in a green grass mat

the tracks are laid out and screwed down and wired up

the engines and cars are placed on the rails for a test run

then the landscape is made complete

a city hall a bank a hospital

suburban townhouses

a farmhouse a barn and pens for the livestock

cows and pigs and chickens and trees

little people sitting on benches

at the station or on lounge chairs

at the little motel or in a suburban backyard

or walking to the bank or the mailbox

or waving lanterns beside switch towers

there are platforms for the unloading

of milk cans and logs

a radar tower and a light tower

a water tank and crossing signals

these are the toys my parents never had

during the depression

and now dad works in the financial district

where the buildings are tall and the streets are narrow

crowded by day and deserted by night

and before the world trade center

there are clearing houses and discount shops

and the bargains come home

the landscape is filled in

and expanded to the tall buffet

connected to the lowlands by mountains

which mom makes by painting grocery bags

and crumpling them and shaping them

a beautiful illusion in the heart of reality

a small but perfect world

where the streets are clean

where nobody gets mugged on the way to the store

where no one sets buildings on fire

where no one dies of an overdose in a back alley doorway

it is like living in the land of _leave it to beaver_

a small but perfect world

where there is much to be thankful for

christmas comes and the new year is celebrated

then each illusion is put back into its box

and the dining room table

is again just the dining room table

and school reopens and the cold of january sets in

and we are

still thankful

****************

Commentary

With each passing year of my childhood the neighborhood continued on the road to despair. But within our apartment we celebrated the joys of life, of family, of Christmas, of the New Year. Of course I was just a kid and did not understand the broad context of all of this, but my parents did: the Depression was over, the war years had ended, they were alive, the pantry was full, the rent was paid, and there was money to raise a family and buy a car and a television and other goodies. Lionel was in its heyday. In the dining room of our apartment in the South Bronx, we created an imaginary world where downtown streets were clean, where the suburban houses seemed comfortable, and where the farm was thriving with livestock and trees. The trains rain on time, except for the occasional derailment. It was fun. For me, a great childhood memory. For my parents, perhaps, a childhood they never had when they were young.

Appendix: a small but perfect world

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the fountain of youth

the sewer backed up and the street filled with glowing green water which all began when a neighborhood juvenile delinquent who was not very neighborly and who robbed from friend and foe alike like he just did not care lifted the manhole cover to show us the sights so we gathered to watch in awe brown walls of waterbugs writhing like times square on new year's eve and a few leapt up into daylight and into our nightmares for these were the winged tanks of the cockroach army whose armor mere sneakers could not destroy and we jumped back squealing and laughing then but not later and this neighborhood juvenile delinquent who was not very neighborly and who robbed from friend and foe alike like he just did not care liked to impress us so he threw seven milk crates perfectly suitable for sitting down the shaft but no one would sit in the street that hot summer night to talk and to watch the kids play punchball in the dark and there would be no open air games of dominoes or poker because the sewer backed up so much that the city sent a crew to repair it while we stood in the doorways to watch the strange sight of something actually getting fixed but things get worse before they get better the old timers always say and the maintenance crew flooded the sewer with dye which went down and came up and the waterbugs went down and the milk crates came up and the street filled with glowing green water which the maintenance men left like they just did not care so for a week no one played outside and the neighborhood juvenile delinquent hung out somewhere else and the shoppers and the commuters walked next to the buildings to avoid the chartreuse stench which took so long to recede that it became the evergreen symbol of what the city thought of us like it just did not care and of how we could not play on our own street which we would never forget though someday we might get lucky and hit the number or write a hit tune and move someplace where glowing green water would never happen somewhere like fifth avenue or sutton place where our bodies grow old and fat while our spirits drink immortal rage and compassion from the fluorescent green ooze of the waterbug writhing fountain of youth

****************

Commentary

The kid opened the cover and the cylindrical wall of the manhole was covered with waterbugs. Or at least what we called waterbugs. They were big, about an inch and a half long, so I am guessing that they were actually the American cockroach, which, incidentally, was not originally from America. Though our tenements had plenty of German and Oriental cockroaches, we seldom encountered the American variety indoors. But when we did they were hard to kill. A sneaker stomp did not always work. A thick-soled Oxford was much more effective. So it was darkly exciting to view the writhing terror close up. Why he threw the milk boxes into the sewer I do not know. Was this a premeditated plot to clog up the works, or just a spontaneous goofy thing to do? Whatever it was, it did provide some momentary entertainment. But like many cheap thrills, the consequences were not fun. He could run wild and hang out on some other street, but our mothers did not let us around the corner, so we were stuck on our flooded, smelly block. To call him a juvenile delinquent is a polite euphemism. He broke into my uncle's shoe shine parlor. He tried to break into my cousin's apartment by swinging down from a rope to kick in the bathroom window. As an English major, I think we may be touching on the theme of betrayal here. But the ultimate betrayal was the city's failure to give its poor the same respect that it did its wealthy. A naive concept, but the poem is called "the fountain of youth." I worked in a church office on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The church was built over an underground stream. It had waterbugs. And rats. But no glowing green water would be allowed to stagnate on the clean streets of Manhattan's Silk Stocking District.

Appendix: the fountain of youth

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III

...on the banks of brook avenue

where childhood is idyllic

and the world could not be more beautiful

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welcome to the mainland

stagger from the atlantic's swell

seek land legs on ellis island

floundering through bureaucracy

and ferried to narrow streets awash

with humanity on the golden shores

of lower manhattan

the brooklyn bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

but that alluring long island

stretches east and disintegrates

it points back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

now you migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor

yearning masses huddled and tossed

by the rattle and rock of the train

metal wheel upon metal rail

grinding and sparking

through the wonders of the city

beyond hell gate to paradise

where the tenements are young

where freedom is a peninsula

with heat and indoor plumbing

the brakes squeal the doors

to the new world open

welcome to the mainland welcome

to the bronx where all seems possible

here subways whoosh

underground and roar through the sky

there are rooms for rent

there is always room for one more

friend relative countryman

for one more lost soul

for one more exile

and the horizon fills with brick and glass

behind every silver window lies a dream

which may or may not be fulfilled

and in the cold snuggling of dark winter

or the wriggling of humid summer nights

babies are conceived and they are born

in america

this is not the land of your birth

though the native tongue remains

and the food tastes familiar

at dinner time that old world aroma

wafts through the hallway

the clatter of pots and pans

reverberates in the air shaft

where clotheslines sag with laundry

readied for the great

assimilation of work and school

backyard and alley echo

with multilingual profanity

prayers rise to the heavens

there are churches and synagogues

street corner preachers

rooms where idealists

contemplate utopia and the right

to believe or not to believe

there are times of prosperity

times of common despair

and always the children play

in sandlot and side street

park and playground

they sing and cry and taunt and cheer

there are saloons and speakeasies

and saloons once again

ice cream parlors and candy stores

vaudeville and movies

all manner of entertainment

under the sun and under the moon

war will come and peace will come

again and again and there will be

parades and memorials and protests

you will grow old and remember

those days of struggle and joy

those friends relatives neighbors

lost in a changing world

where streets disappear and housing projects

spring forth like towers of babel

belgian blocks and trolley tracks

drown in rivers of asphalt

and moses parts the land

his great road cleaves its heart

there is exodus

poverty turmoil and tragedy

tenements burn and fall

there is rubble and more rubble

anger and desperation

ash and dust and broken bricks

and a spirit that suffers but does not die

and a hope that emerges

like weeds from the ruin

the survivors will fight

and new americans will come

the void will fill

with townhouses and pocket parks

there will be new music

new art and new words

and the aroma of exotic foods

will waft through the streets

fragrant and pungent

hopeful

and free

****************

Commentary

The Bronx is the only one of New York City's five boroughs that is not an island. The Third Avenue El, and later the rest of the subway system, gave immigrants the chance to escape overcrowded Manhattan. The newly built housing probably offered more comfort and more amenities than the tenements of lower Manhattan. I got a sense, from my parents, and from research, that The Bronx at one time was a poor man's paradise, or a workingman's paradise: the streets were clean, and people left their doors unlocked for the milkman or the ice man. For the better-off, there was the Grand Concourse. During my twenty years in The Bronx, I got to see its decline. After I left, things seemed to get worse. I see, from research, that there has been a resurrection. The rubble that I remember, the devastation that Mel Rosenthal photographed in his book "In the South Bronx of America," seems to be no more. The Bronx has been rebuilt.

Though my personal experience has been one of loss, I try to give a sense of rebirth. Nevertheless, the feeling that has lingered in my gut for many decades is a naive one of tragic injustice: how could the devastation be allowed to happen to begin with? In America? Perhaps in the grand drama of the Twentieth Century, with its world wars, regional wars, genocides, gulags, and cultural revolutions, the devastation of The Bronx was a minor side-show. But it was the slice of reality that I knew, and I know that it should not have happened, not in an age when we have the technology and resources to provide for humanity--if we chose to do so.

I try in this poem to give a historical synopsis of the rise and fall and rebirth of the borough and to end on a positive note. Robert Moses remains an enigmatic figure. His Cross Bronx Expressway and social engineering, which often took the form of housing projects, destroyed many a Bronx neighborhood, and engendered ruination, but his parks and beaches brought delight, and the Triborough Bridge is a modern wonder.

One last thought: this poem is very related to "the third avenue el," and one of my tasks in editing the book was to make sure that the poems did not overlap.

Appendix: welcome to the mainland

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america's favorite pastime

and so it came to pass that the shortest kid in ninth grade was tired of the tallest kid in ninth grade not tired of the vertical difference but just tired of being pushed around so one bright sunny bronx morning the short kid came with a baseball bat and chased the tall kid around the schoolyard until the teachers took the bat and sent us all to class in this melting pot school where we did not quite fit the recipe so the bureaucracy batted us around and threw us curveballs like having us retake the reading test because our scores were too high and declaring 85 the passing grade and decimating our academically advanced class of those with hispanic surnames or dark skin but maybe this was still better than last year in that other school where gangs beat up anyone who was not violent like that quiet little spanish girl who ran crying and screaming down the hallway after the principal came into the classroom and announced the names of kids who were being kicked out of the program and being sent back to eighth grade in their respective ghetto schools but what did the principal care she was just a little girl from some other neighborhood and this is america this is social darwinism this is junior high school where only the strong survive like that short kid with the baseball bat that they took away but they could not stop him and after school he took out a baseball from his pocket and chased the tall kid all the way to the train station and is it not america's favorite pastime to watch big guys beating on little guys and little guys beating on big guys while spectators laugh and cheer glad they are not getting beat up and just hoping to survive

****************

Commentary

The short kid chasing the tall kid, before school with a baseball bat, and after school with a baseball: that really happened. As a kid who was bullied by classmates, I thought it was so cool. And I still do. The account of the uncaring principal is also true. I thought it stunk. And I still do. Our academically-advanced class spent grades seven and eight, which we completed in one year--hey, we were academically advanced--in a junior high school in a really bad neighborhood. It was a new school, and it was not quite finished when it opened, so it was a while until we had full days of class. There was a fair amount of vandalism and violence. (I wrote about this in a poem called "logic," which is in _concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx_.) In ninth grade, our class was moved to a junior high school in a nicer neighborhood, but it seemed obvious that we were not welcome. The term "bureaucratic malice" comes to mind.

Appendix: america's favorite pastime

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yankee fan

my cap is navy blue and boldly embroidered

with white interlocking letters

i bought it in my old neighborhood in the bronx

five bucks at a store on creston avenue

a converted newsstand that sells

handbags trinkets statues umbrellas

everything but candy and newspapers

yes the kids and i have inherited

my mother's love for a good bargain

and her loyalty to the home team

but the yankees are always on the road when we visit

so we cruise dollar stores and discount joints

and watch the game on television

and watch grandma watching the game

rooting for hits and home runs

putting whammies on opposing pitchers

screaming with the intensity

of a green bay packers fan when the bears are losing

and i wear my new york yankees baseball cap

all over madison wisconsin

where everyone is so politically correct

and motivated by humanitarianism or legislation

taught from childhood not to hurt anyone's feelings

and these friendly and sensitive midwesterners

are compelled to say hello to passersby

even those wearing new york yankee caps

but like some landlocked progeny

of the ancient mariner they must catch my eye

and tell me with compulsive conviction

that they hate the yankees

and i must smile and listen

to these hardworking middle americans

as they denounce good old american capitalism

at least as it applies to winning teams

but i am too polite to tell them

i mostly wear the cap to keep the sun out of my eyes

though i do have some recall

of kubek boyer and richardson

and an aging mantle hitting a home run

three balls two strikes two outs

in the bottom of the ninth  holy cow

and mel stottlemyre's inside-the-park grand slam

but i was too young to understand the game

and when i was old enough to appreciate baseball

the yanks were so bad they had rocky colavito pitch

and the best catch i saw at the stadium

was made by a fat i mean overweight

i mean corporally-gifted woman

she had a straw hat three feet in diameter

and when the foul ball bounced off a box seat rail

she held up her hat and it went right in

she might have been from the midwest

or the grand concourse and who knows

where she bought that oversized beach hat

and that magnificent muumuu

the fans applauded the beauty of it

finally something to cheer about

and the right field grandstand

gave her a standing ovation

we wanted to offer her a contract

she was built like the bambino

and we needed a new superstar

instead we got a decade of despair

but how can i explain this to those who are compelled

to tell me that they hate the yankees

while i am compelled to listen

i who was raised in the era

before lawyers and psychologists and sensitivity training

raised in an environment so insensitive

it invented the bronx cheer

i who do not hate the cubs or the brewers

though i will not watch the braves

after all those america's team commercials

because this is america and no american

should be told who to root for

and that smiley faced cleveland indians' logo

is too offensive even for my politically incorrect taste

but i do not explain this

it would take too long and these friendly

fellow americans might ask

about my brooklyn accent

even though i am from the bronx

just like the yankees so i let them talk

and when their strange power of speech

is done and they are once again

congenial madisonians

i simply reply

the more you hate us the more we love it

the more you boo us the more fun it is to win

****************

Commentary

The centerpiece of this poem is the great catch made by that lady with a straw hat that had to be at least two feet in diameter. I think it was in the short right field box seats. She did get an ovation. Rocky Colavito was an outfielder who spent the end of his career with the Yankees; I really did get see him take the field as a relief pitcher. My father sometimes got free tickets to the games, and I remember, quite vividly, sitting behind home plate when an aging Mickey Mantle, with bad knees and broad shoulders, hit the game winning home run on a 3-2-2 count in the bottom of the ninth. My mother was an avid Yankee fan. She almost saw Babe Ruth play, but she was late getting home from school, so her father took her sister to the game instead. She almost got Joe DiMaggio's autograph; she was next in line, but the police officer turned her away. During one of her years in high school, her classes ended at noon on Fridays. She, and a few friends, and one of her teachers, went to the ballpark. They alternated between the Polo Grounds, if the Giants were in town, and Yankee Stadium if the Yankees were in. She said that her teacher knew Lou Gehrig, and they sat behind the Yankee dugout. I do not aspire to have my mother's avid passion for the Yankees, but I remember as a youngster buying a sixteen ounce bottle of Coca Cola and sitting in front of our black and white television to watch an afternoon of baseball. I saw Stottlemeyer's inside the park grand slam home run, a great accomplishment for a pitcher. I drifted away from sports when I was in college, but was glad at the Yankees rebirth in the 1970s. My wife and I had a great time rooting for the Brewers in the early 1980s, but their World Series run was followed by decades of mediocrity, and the highlight of their games became Bob Euchre's narrative. When I went back to The Bronx to visit Mom, she listened to or watched the Yankee games, and I became a fan again. And I still am, but not to the extent that she was. When she moved in with us, we sometimes listened to the games together, and I cherish the memories, especially our excitement when the Yankees swept Boston in a five game series. In Madison, I mostly really did wear the baseball cap to shade my eyes while driving. But as nice as the Madisonians are--and I really do enjoy having lived here for over four decades--some did feel compelled to tell me that they hated the Yankees. Most of them forgave me when I told them that I grew up in The Bronx, about a mile and a half from the Stadium.

Appendix: yankee fan

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the gambling leaguers

cheer of crowd crack of bat slap of leather

what beauty in the grace of the great

in the arc of arm of ball of leaping body

the skillful passion of these sandlot ballers

these gambling leaguers these seasonal warriors

waging serious sport in parks and playgrounds

on diamonds of clay or asphalt

against a background of bridge and school

of factory and tenement

a colorful panorama of the ordinary

no one asks for autographs

just victory over the tedium of work and bills

and the urban summer's ceaseless heat

this childhood game fought with adult intensity

for stakes of fifty or a hundred per position or more

side bets among spectators and the excitement begins

the fans live and die in suspense

the winners are rich the losers poor

celebration and frustration and the promise

of the next game the next season

so they play till the money runs out

till legs no longer run till arms no longer throw

with the speed and strength of youth and they fade

into the bleachers to wait

to play again perhaps

where summer is eternal

and the umpires

omniscient

****************

Commentary

When I was a young teen, my friend's uncle took us to play baseball, or softball, on Randall's Island. When we got to the fence around the parking lot, he put both of his hands on it, lifted his body, turned his body ninety degrees, and was over the fence. He was over forty years old. I was amazed. I was told he was an athlete who played ball in games where betting occurred. I never attended one of those games, but I tried in this poem to imagine what it would have been like to do so.

Appendix: the gambling leaguers

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lost again on old subways

i am lost again on old subways

at third avenue station the lights go out

the lunatic laughs

the lunatic who does not appear

until the lights go out

and i cannot see him

and i cannot see what he is laughing at

he laughs and he laughs

death is solemn

but suffering is hysterical

when it happens to others

the three fates the three stooges

torturing each other while the children laugh

until the lights go out and they are stuck

in their own nightmares

and he laughs at my fear

and i laugh at him laughing at my fear

because i am afraid not to

keep the lunatic happy

i have paid my fare and i must journey

there is nowhere to go but where the darkness takes me

and i must get my money's worth

the doors will not open

i cannot depart at the home station

and i slip past my sleeping parents

under the bronx and over the bronx

all the unseen passengers on this runaway train

are laughing and laughing

because we are afraid to stop

we are lost in the bronx

where guns will not save us

and the churches are closed for the night

and the candles lit for the souls of the dead

have burned out and the priests

have locked the rectories

and we are laughing too hard to pray

and we are laughing so hard we almost enjoy it

we have transformed we are the laughing commuters

of the IRT which never looked so good

though we cannot see it as it trembles on

through the night which does not stop

through strange territories where strangers lurk

in the shadows waiting for a few laughs

****************

Commentary

This poem is based on two events: the first is being on the Pelham Bay train when the lights on it went out at the Third Avenue station. The second is being on the train in a dream when I could not get off of it. I am old now and I do not remember if the laughter occurred in the reality or in the dream.

Appendix: lost again on old subways

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randall's island

I

here the sky is blue and the water dark

and the bronx an invisible memory

here clouds roll off the continent

goodbye goodbye go rain upon the old world

should it still exist

here the new city greets ancient tides

at the corner of harlem and hell gate

and distinctions obscure

where is the end where is the beginning

how many have drowned like names in the wind

chaotic currents chaotic streets

the orderly megalithic shoreline

of a fishdead metropolis

a horizontal stonehenge on which to celebrate

existence and the rats seem to dance

i cast my bait into the emptiness

launch my kite to the sun

no fish to catch no one to meet

this is a forgotten island

obscure as childhood

II

the confluence of memory and dream

this prehistoric erosion from the mainland

a muddle of time and amazing eternity

there are moments when dandelions roar

in sunlight like british muskets

when summer grass shimmers

as if the present were luminous

while churning and dark the currents

muffle all sound and the unheard

skyline rises to the unspeaking heavens

the delinquent cursed at toil and at play

the institutionalized soul

screamed with rage and frustration

in the infants' hospital the foundling cried

and succumbed to quiet death

the house of refuge the idiot asylum the orphanage

razed and forgotten

and the triborough bridge rises

above park and playground and stadium

amid the wayward whispers of these outcast lands

III

green ticket booths and silver railings

the bleachers are empty and in the plaza

the bronze discus thrower stands naked and alone

trimmed hedges low walls red brick

i balance between fantasy and failure

beneath the pillars of the viaduct

i learn my clumsy insignificance

this is a sacred place and we bury

songless parakeets in shoe boxes after they die

and launch plastic rockets to the virgin moon

between fact and delusion the line has vanished

the little hell gate has drowned in the garbage landfill

the bridge to the psychiatric hospital

stands irrelevant over a river of grass

and rabbits run mad across evening fields

what insane dreams wander the wasteland

darkness drizzles and night

awakens the restless tenements

wisps of arson smog the horizon and i must return

i must and it seems

even i am not here

****************

Commentary

According to my ruler and my map, Randall's Island is 1.5 inches from the apartment where I grew up, about a half mile as the pigeon flies. The direct route would require walking south to the end of Brook Avenue at 132 Street, crossing the rail yards, and crossing a creek called the Bronx Kill. Sometimes, on a weekday, my mother walked me to Cypress Avenue and over the Bronx span of the Triborough Bridge which had stairs that accessed the island. She took me to the playground which was supervised by a gray haired Black matron attired in what appeared to be a white nurse's dress. Her name was Willie, and Mom said she liked me because my name was William. Willie certainly liked talking to Mom. She might turn on the water in the wading pool even though there was no one else in the playground. She might take out basketballs or horseshoes for us to play with. I do not remember there being many other children in the playground.

Sometimes my aunt and cousins came along. On the weekends, or maybe on a summer evening, Dad drove us there. He parked in the shade beneath the viaduct of the Triborough Bridge. It was a good spot to wash and wax the car. Sometimes I helped, and sometimes I played around the pillars. They were massive, tall, formidable supports for the deck on which cars buses and trucks passed unceasingly and unseen overhead. Standing beneath them makes one feel small, insignificant, perhaps. To the east there was a large oval parking lot. It usually was empty, as we did not usually go to Randall's Island when there was a sporting event or a concert at the stadium. Occasionally a marching band practiced there: a good choice, as the parking area seemed to be as large as a football field. To the east was the Hell Gate Railroad bridge. Another massive structure. Another engineering masterpiece. Sometimes we counted the cars of the very long freight trains as they slowly but steadily passed.

Randall's Island enthralled me. There were broad open lawns. There were trees. There was a willow on the northwest side that I actually got to climb. The island was lined with large flat stones. We stood on them and watched the Harlem River flow into the East River while Manhattan loomed quietly in the background.

Randall's Island was separated from Ward's Island by the Little Hell Gate. Randall's Island was a park. Ward's Island housed the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute and a center for the criminally insane. When I was young, Ward's Island was separated from Randall's Island and could be accessed by a bridge which had a security guard post. What mysteries lay beyond the seldom-travelled bridge?

Now, the islands have been connected by landfill.

The juxtaposition of the Harlem River meeting with the turbid currents of the Little Hell Gate, and a bit more south with the Hell Gate, and of the imagined horrors of Ward's Island, with the bucolic trees and fields and innocent playground of Randall's Island, made this a place as fascinating to me as the Xanadu described in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

I have not been there in fifty years. It remains in my memory as a place of peace and wonder.

Appendix: randall's island

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triborough bridge: suspension

the

sky

road rises

quickly above green

shores and gray waters

from astoria to wards island from anchorage to massive anchorage

graceful cables curve

sturdy

blue

arches

crowned

with art deco lanterns

atop steel towers that aspire to heaven above the turbulent hell gate

bearing the stress of humanity

festooning the night

with man

made

stars

****************

Commentary

The original poem, "triborough bridge," was published in 1996. It was a single poem. When I worked on _from the banks of brook avenue,_ I decided not only to revise it, but to expand it. The expansion seemed to be best executed as a series of four poems. This is the first. Because it is a concrete poem that attempts to recapture the shape of the bridge, it seemed appropriate to use the word "suspension" in the title.

Appendix: triborough bridge: suspension

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triborough bridge: stasis

where is everybody going

the best part of this bridge is the middle

between here and there

between above and below

between all the points

on the invisible compass

of our existence

between scylla and charybdis

to the east the solemn frown

of the railroad bridge over the bucolic hell gate

to the west the land of opportunity and misfortune

the magnificent skyline

a forest of penthouse and project

where the homeless home in the shadows

humanity is beautiful from a distance

the landfills bloom with green growth

frivolous waves drown the effluence

of the money mad world

to the north the sewage treatment plant

that will never make us clean

and the manhattan psychiatric hospital

and the center for the criminally insane

and the abandoned asylum

where inmates laughed at pedestrians

as they walked across the sky

in the longago days of carefree strolls

before random violence

before muggings in broad daylight

the happy people of wards island

picnic beneath trees

to the south children splash

in the clear blue water of astoria pool

imagining that they are sharks

or whales or submarines

imagining that summer will never end

reality is such an imposition

like the grim stone of the war memorial

just beyond their youthful laughter

and above restless clouds drive by

on their ceaseless commute

below there is bedlam and mayhem and the tides

swirl over suicides and shipwrecks

but here in the middle there is peace

there is stasis

there is the music

of wind murmuring through cables

why must every polluted river be crossed

here words are invisible

and the past is no more

the future is but the loss of the present

leap to the sky

not to fly

jump to the water

never to swim again

walk ashore

to live and die in the eternal city

where the meek await to inherit

what is left of the earth

o the hovering the hovering

****************

Commentary

This is the poem that is most like the original. But it has been revised, as I will show in the Appendix. The poem originated in a childhood event. When I was a boy, I was at Nana's house. My cousin lived with her. He was going to the park to exercise, and he wanted to take me. Okay. And we left. When my mother found out that he was going to walk to the end of Cypress Avenue and walk over the Triborough Bridge to Astoria Park in Queens, she ran after us for several blocks. So I did not go to Astoria Park with my cousin, and I never walked over the bridge, which had a pedestrian walk on both its east and west sides. Of course, my mother had, and she told me of walking over the west walkway, which had a great view of the Manhattan skyline. Once, when she was walking, she heard the screams of the patients in the psychiatric facilities. Perhaps it was best that she intervened, as I somehow acquired a fear of heights. Perhaps I would not have acquired a fear of heights had she not intervened. But things are what they are. We drove over the Triborough innumerable times, going to Astoria Pool or to LaGuardia Airport, so the imagery is vivid in my mind. I used it to create the final version of this poem, imagining what it would be like to stand on the middle of the bridge, with the Hell Gate railroad bridge to the east, and Manhattan to the west, and Ward's Island to the north, and Astoria Pool to the south. Given all of that detail, the subtitle, "stasis," seemed appropriate.

Appendix: triborough bridge: stasis

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triborough bridge: genesis

in the beginning there was the land and the water

the water separated the mainland from the islands

and moses said may there be a great bridge

to join the islands to the islands and the islands to the mainland

it was good and moses said

may there be roads and highways that lead to the great bridge

that joins the islands to the islands and the islands to the mainland

it was good and moses said

may there be parks and playgrounds

for the people in the cars that drive

on the roads and highways that lead to the great bridge

that joins the islands to the islands and the islands to mainland

it was good and moses said

may there be money to build the great bridge

and the roads and highways and parks and playgrounds

and behold there was money

the nation went to work and it was good

the steel industry lit its furnaces and factories reopened

loggers logged and sawmills sawed

railroads hauled lumber across the continent

laborers constructed wooden frames and poured cement

barges ferried girders over the water and towers rose

cables were wound and anchored

the deck suspended and the roadway paved

the great bridge joined the islands to the islands

and the islands to the mainland

there were parks and parkways and the president

came for the opening ceremony

and the people came and rushed to be first

to pay the toll and cross the great bridge

and more people came to pay the toll

more people and more money

money that could be used to build more bridges

and it was all good

but moses did not rest

****************

Commentary

The construction of the Triborough Bridge during the Great Depression was a project of massive proportions, and I tried to recapture some of its grand scope. Robert Moses was the impetus behind the bridge, and all that went with it: access roads, parkways, Astoria Pool, and Randall's Island's conversion into a park. In 1932, the initial effort to build the bridge came to a halt. Moses took over, and the bridge opened in 1936. Moses is associated with innumerable projects in the New York metropolitan area. One of them, which is not mentioned in this poem, is the Cross Bronx Expressway, a project which split The Bronx in two, an event which some critics attribute to the decline of the borough. In another poem, "welcome to the mainland," I mention this: _and moses parts the land / his great road cleaves its heart / there is exodus poverty turmoil and tragedy . . ._

Once I had this Biblical analogy in my mind, it was a short leap to echoing Genesis. Hence, the poem's title. And the last line.

Appendix: triborough bridge: genesis

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triborough bridge: kinesis

an automobile vortex

where three bridges meet

twelve directions of traffic

twenty-two lanes that do not intersect

cars can go from here to there to another there

this is america and there are tolls

to pay and toll booths to collect the money

and police to collect those who do not pay the toll

but we kids are oblivious to the wonders of engineering

and we have no money to give to trolls

we run and scream and fight monsters

in the cement towers of the bronx span

we want to ascend the spooky staircase

and explore the walkway to manhattan

but mommy herds us to the playground on randall's island

where she can sit in the shade and talk to the matron

while the cars whirl overhead

and harry sits on his hill

a small patch of grass bordered by an access ramp

beneath the grand junction

where the harlem span meets the viaduct

harry in his undershirt

drinking his quart of beer hidden in a brown paper bag

basking in the sun and alone in the quiet

he does not build bridges

he does not have a car

he works hard and dies in poverty

they give his ashes to the winds

and he intersects

with everywhere in the great universe

as cars speed by

and the commuters take no notice

****************

Commentary

Harry, not his real name, was not burly in stature, but he had a physically demanding job which included loading trucks. He had a reputation for being a hard worker. When time or weather permitted, he sunned himself on a small hill on Randall's Island; the small hill, delineated by an access road, was beneath the intersection of the Manhattan lift bridge, the Bronx truss bridge, and the viaduct to the Queens suspension bridge. It was adjacent to the Randall's Island police station, so it was a safe place to relax. On the other side of the viaduct was the opulent Administration Building from which Robert Moses ran the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. Like Moses, Harry did not drive a car. Unlike Moses, Harry did not build bridges. He was just an ordinary guy.

Appendix: triborough bridge: kinesis

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astoria park

the memorial is a tombstone

gray as war

gray as the hell gate's insane tides

gray as the triborough's symmetry

gray as the psychiatric hospital's lobotomized windows

gray as the railroad's commerce

gray as the skyline of the glorious city

gray as the storm we watched

father and son from the concrete bleachers

the crowd ran from the pool

raindrops splashed on the chlorine

we sat in the gray rain

we sat together

the dead are not buried here

they are gone as are the dolphins

which led the dutchman up this strait

intoxication and shipwreck

visions of the devil dancing on his stones

new amsterdam is gone

the indians are gone

this east river is toxic

it flows north and south

it never was a river

daddy tells stories of sunken treasure ships

we will never be rich

we will never be but what we are

father and son

forever in the gray rain

with our pot bellies and our pale skin

and our tender feet and our anxieties

our lifetimes of work and responsibility

maybe the car window is open

maybe the apartment is burning down

maybe the boss does not like us

and we will be sucked into homeless poverty

like locker keys into hungry drains beneath waveless waters

our possessions lost in bureaucracy

in america where the rivers are poison

and there are no free swims

this pool was built for the huddled masses

doff those work clothes and be free

bathing suit naked

beneath the lightning before the wind

in a distant memory of childhood

the iron bars keep us safe

we will not walk into the wine dark tides

of the hell gate and never return

we simply do not leave

at night underwater lights shine

like the new jerusalem

the gray sky darkens with stars

the spirit rises over radiant water

we simply will not leave

****************

Commentary

My father worked long hours at a high stress job. One of my most precious memories is of the day he took me to Astoria Pool. Just Dad and me. Mom stayed home. Having some time alone with Dad made this a very special day for me. And it rained. We sat on the cement bleachers and watched the rain. We did not stay past dark, and of course we eventually did leave, but the exaggeration seemed to work in the poem, and there is a part of me that is still there, with Dad. The pool had several kiosks which emitted light beams in various directions, so at night the pool had a surreal appearance. Astoria Pool is on the north shore of Queens, just across the Hell Gate from Wards' Island which is home to a psychiatric center. Above the pool is a concession area which offers a good view of the Hell Gate railroad bridge, of North Shore Drive, and of the monument which honors war veterans. The concession are has a fence with iron bars. One of my cousins stuck his head through the bars, and could not get free. The fire department had to pry the bars open. Perhaps the bars are still warped after all these years. According to Knickerbocker's History of New York, an inebriated Dutch sailor followed dolphins up the East River and encountered the devil dancing on rocky islands in the Hell Gate. There were tales of a distant relative who did not like life in America, who wanted to return to Italy, and who committed suicide by walking off into the water. There is also the possibility that a ship, the Hussar, loaded with treasure, sank in the Hell Gate and still lies there. One of my teaching colleagues told me a story of a baby getting into the drain of a swimming pool. All in all, from diverse sources, these are the images that have gone into the creation of this poem.

Appendix: astoria park

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the banks of brook avenue

and brook avenue runs

straight through the crooked world

from railroad yard

north to the meat market

and curves and disappears

into the heart of the bronx

where tenements burn and die

and stare black eyed and hollow

like the dead waiting for the soul to rise

and america flies to the moon

and america drops bombs

and america makes war on crime and drugs

but brook avenue never ends

the old mill stream flows long buried

in the great sewer beneath the great street

of the great borough of the bronx

where founding fathers sleep

beneath the shadows of saint ann's church

and indian villages deconstruct

beneath abandoned factories

and the belgian paving stones on which horses clopped

lie beneath the asphalt where automobiles drift

from the bronx kill to the american mainland

and the millbrook housing projects rise to the heavens

above tarpaper roofs where pigeons and junkies

forget their way home

and the brook babbles beneath the surface

and the brook finds its way through the underworld

to the ocean that brings

immigrants to the new continent

they build skyscrapers and railroads

they fight wars and they play baseball

they make money and move to the grand concourse

they make more money and move to the suburbs

or they remain impoverished and searching

for brook avenue grass for brook avenue women

for a steady man for a steady job

for the ship that sails to paradise

the winters are cold in unheated apartments

fire hydrants flood the summer streets with toddlers

and on the banks of brook avenue i see

the world as it is

and the sun beats down

and the bootblacks toil and sweat drops from their brows

and the bootblacks beat beauty into old shoes

and the bootblacks earn a living one dollar at a time

in america where we vote for our kings

and the police beat whom they wish

and the strong beat the weak

and the women walk to store to church to playground

and the children play beneath shady tenements

where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

and the children laugh and the children cry

on the banks of brook avenue

and the sun sets and the night rises

and the pool hall grows smoky and serious

and the children dream and the children have nightmares

and the darkness of heaven and the darkness of civilization

and the sighs of the lonely and the sighs of lovers

are indistinguishable

on the banks of brook avenue

where childhood is idyllic

and the world could not be more beautiful

****************

Commentary

This is the last poem of _The Bronx Trilogy,_ so the collection ends where it began. Our family's shoe shine parlor was on Brook Avenue, just south of 138th Street, and it was the shoe shine parlor that inspired what I thought was my first good poem, "making it." I began to write other poems about my family, our customers, and neighborhood events. And about the sad reality of riots, overdoses, police brutality, arson, and cold apartments. As I completed my first book, _the shoe shine parlor poems et al,_ I became interested in the history of The Bronx. I was fascinated to learn that Brook Avenue lies atop a stream, the Millbrook, which was incorporated into a sewer. That image inspired the title of the poem: "the banks of brook avenue." Gouverneur Morris, who helped write the Constitution, and Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence, are buried on the grounds of St. Ann's Episcopal Church. Morris Manor included most of the South Bronx. I sometimes tried to imagine how beautiful The Bronx must have been when it was owned by the Morris family, or in its pristine state when Jonas Bronck first came to settle there. And how beautiful it was to my grandparents and to the other immigrants who arrived there a century ago. And I wondered how America could achieve so much while allowing its cities to fall to ruin. In the 1940s, America saved the world from tyranny and rebuilt Europe. In the 1970s, parts of the South Bronx looked like post-war Berlin. But there is hope: the brook still flows to the Bronx Kill and its unseen waters give their pittance to the Atlantic Ocean. Much rebuilding has occurred: the rubble has disappeared; their are new parks and new trees and new children play in the old neighborhood. And that is beautiful. But the shoe shine parlor is gone, and the bootblacks are nearing extinction. And many of the old problems still remain. Their threat slithers like a serpent through this rebuilt paradise.

Appendix: the banks of brook avenue

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Bibliography: Previous Publications

avenue b, 14th street, looking south

_You Are Here: New York City Streets in Poetry._ P & Q Press. 2006.

_Z Miscellaneous._ Winter 1989.

the beach beneath the bridge

_North Coast Review._ Issue 7, 1995.

the fountain of youth

_The Prose Poem: An International Journal._ Vol. 2, 1993.

the gambling leaguers

_The Glacier Stopped Here: an anthology of poems by Dane County writers._ Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission & Isthmus Publishing. 1994.

grandfather: a photograph

_The Spirit That Moves Us._ Vol. 6, no.1, 1981.

justice

_Live Lines: Is There a Place for Poetry in Your World?_ Pearson Canada Inc. 2011.

_And Justice For All._ Perfection Learning Company. 2000.

_Welcome to Your Life: Writings for the Heart of Young America._ Milkweed Editions. 1998.

lost again on old subways

_Tokens: Contemporary Poetry of the Subway._ P & Q Press. 2003.

_ne cede malis:_ **poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx**

_The Bronx County Historical Society Journal._ Vol. XLV, nos.1 & 2, spring/fall 2008.

on the coping

_Dusty Dog._ Vol. 2, no.1 **,** January 1991.

standing upon the fordham road bridge

_Connections: New York City Bridges in Poetry._ P & Q Press. 2012.

_North Coast Review._ Issue 7, 1995.

triborough bridge: suspension

_POETS_ on the line _._ No. 3, spring 1996.

yankee kitchen

This is an elaboration of a short poem, **genghis khan** , which appeared in

_Wormwood Review._ Vol. 33, no. 3, 1993.

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Appendix

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Appendix: forbidden places

This is an early version of the poem:

forbidden places (@ 1989)

in all the forbidden places

like round the corner

and too far up the block

and up and down the you'll fall from it fire escape

and across the bad boy bad girl rooftops

of fertile pigeons and antenna thieves

and through the sinister shadows of subway stations

and beware of dogs junkies and the drunken super basements

my mind has wandered

and not yet has found home

I liked the images in the poem: fire escapes, shadowy subway stations, and rooftops where in the 1950s gangs sawed off television antennas to make zip guns. Behind our tenement there was a large open space, called an airshaft, so that there could be ventilation for the rear apartment windows. I guess the airshaft was about fifty by one hundred feet, and the bottom, which was maybe sixty feet below the roof, never seemed to catch a sunbeam. The building's supers had apartments in this gloomy underground world.

However, I was not happy with the last two lines of the early draft. I played with the poem over the years. I have always been fascinated with Conrad's _Heart of Darkness,_ which led to the idea of exploring the urban wilderness. As I began contemplating _from the banks of brook avenue_ manuscript, I knew that this would be the opening poem. I did not want a poem that would be over a page long. I wanted a piece that would be understandable and that would lead the reader into the book. I also wanted a positive end to the piece, thus the promise of flowers emerging from the ruins.

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Appendix: a moon full and cold

The poem originally began "once there was an old moon when once i was young/and smaller than I thought in a big wide world/a cold november moon hung amid the tarpaper sky."

As I worked to prepare the book, I learned that "old moon" could suggest a waning moon, and it was a full moon that enraptured me. The poem was set in November. Consulting the Farmers' Almanac, it was certainly not the Harvest Moon, nor the Yule Moon, and the Full Beaver Moon did not seem to have the right ring to it. Hence " a moon cold and full."

The original draft mentioned loneliness: "a moon calcium and distant/as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate." Perhaps to wallow in this loneliness, I wanted to sit in a dark living room. My parents never wanted to shut the living room lights off. Not when the television was on. Not even when the Christmas tree lights were on.

This was referred to in the early drafts: "I played war on the linoleum and saw the moon/in my bones pressing my nose to the windowpane/looming over lovers and battlefields/i wanted to sit in its black/the fearless loveless bloodiness moon/to drink in the heavens to fill my blood with night/such darkness forbidden among the unfortunately awake/there were rules to be followed and deaths to die."

These lines led in to a perverse despair: "i vowed to drown in snows which never came/i became a ghost with a child's polite smile."

I think that twenty years passed between the early draft and the final revision. I chose to create a poem with six line stanzas. I eliminated a lot of the despair and recalled the toys I played with. I loved my toy soldiers, and always regret reaching puberty and giving away the miniatures, HO scale, that I had collected from stores and penny gumball machines. I had a gyroscopic space ship. I had a monster called The Great Garloo, and a robot the name of which I cannot remember. Thanks to the internet, I could look up Fort Apache and see the log walls of its fort and the teepees, and the cowboys, and the Native Americans. I still have the castle set, maybe I will take it out someday and set it up.

Before I had children, I played a fantasy game called Dungeons and Dragons. This led to an interest in military strategy games, many of which were produced by Avalon Hill. This led to an interest in learning about World War II, and I read about the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad from books I borrowed from he library at the high school where I worked. I taught _Romeo and Juliet_ to freshmen, three or four times a day, for over three decades, so after going through the play for one hundred times, I was very aware of the references to the moon in the balcony scene. The juxtaposition of the images of youthful passion and impassioned slaughter emerged: the moon over the carnage of frozen battlefields, and the moon as a backdrop for young lovers.

The despair present in the original draft is alluded to in the final piece: "beyond the who and what and where of the sun's despair," but the reference to the moon that precedes it is reminiscent of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale: "to drink in the heavens to drown in wonder/ecstatic and enraptured/sated and thirsting for more."

The original ending line to the first draft: "its crescent chill beckoned unanswerable" was flawed as it did not recall the image of a full moon. Finding a replacement for "crescent" made it more accurate: "its stark chill beckoned unanswerable"

an old moon: early notes (March, 1989)

once there was an old moon when once i was young

and smaller than i thought in a big wide world

a cold november moon hung amid the tarpaper sky

which loomed above the rooftops which shrouded our souls

white and full beyond empty streets

and tenements of stories of unlit windows

and unseen sleepers and reason and dream

calcium and distant

as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate

a leafless lifeless moon threatening winter

while the radiator hissed through its cracked paint

i played war on the linoleum and saw the moon

in my bones

an old moon (1989)

once there was an old moon when once i was young

and smaller than i thought in a big wide world

a cold november moon hung amid the tarpaper sky

which loomed above the rooftops which shrouded our souls

white and full beyond empty streets

and tenements of stories of unlit windows

and unseen sleepers and reason and dream

a moon calcium and distant

as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate

a leafless lifeless moon threatening winter

while the radiator hissed through its cracked paint

i played war on the linoleum and saw the moon

in my bones pressing my nose to the windowpane

looming over lovers and battlefields

i wanted so to sit in its black light

the fearless loveless bloodless moon

to drink in the heavens to fill my blood with night

such darkness forbidden among the unfortunately awake

there were rules to follow and deaths to die

i vowed to drown in the whiteness of snows which never came

i became a ghost with a child's polite smile

the disappearing moon

beyond the who and what and where of the sun's despair

the crescent chill beckoned unanswerable

an old moon (2008)

once there was an old moon when once i was young

a lone child in the big wide

unwanderable world

kept safe by my parents and warm

by the radiator which hissed like a domesticated dragon

through ancient scales of cracked paint

a cold november moon threatening winter

while plastic soldiers prepared for combat on worn linoleum

a leafless lifeless moon amid the tarpaper sky

which rose above the rooftops which shrouded our souls

stark white beyond empty streets and unlit windows

beyond unseen sleepers and reason and dream

a moon calcium and distant

as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate

i pressed my nose to the windowpane and saw the moon

looming over lovers and battlefields

i wanted so to sit forever in its black light

to drink in the heavens to fill my blood with night

the fearless loveless bloodless moon

beyond the who and what and where of the sun's despair

the crescent chill beckoned unanswerable

This 2014 revision is getter closer to the final version:

a moon full and cold (September, 2014)

there was a moon full and cold

and i was a child in the big wide

unwanderable world

kept safe by my parents and warm

while the radiator hissed through ancient scales

of cracked paint like a tame dragon

through green forests and brown fields

across the footworn linoleum

soldiers advanced from the doorsill beachhead

there was no gore

just valor and victory or death

and i was the general

or the prince or the khan or the centurion

anything is possible in the moonlight

this is the moon that shone over stalingrad

when death oozed through the rubble

and over the balcony when romeo swore his love

and juliet was enchanted

a leafless lifeless moon amid the tarpaper sky

which rose above the rooftops which shrouded our souls

stark white beyond empty streets and unlit windows

beyond unseen sleepers and reason and dream

in the moonlight all seems possible

santa claus will fly in its silver light

and beneath the stark sun the peasants sweat and toil

a moon calcium and distant

as a future as a friend as a life beyond the immediate

i pressed my nose to the windowpane and saw the moon

looming over lovers and battlefields

i wanted so to sit forever in its black light

to drink in the heavens to fill my blood with night

the fearless loveless bloodless moon

beyond the who and what and where of the sun's despair

its chill beckoned unanswerable

back to a moon full and cold

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Appendix: just another new york city subway near death experience

I do not recall any great struggle from early draft to final. Perhaps that is because the poem tells a story. The beginning sets the scene and creates the mood. The plot opens with a suspenseful scene: he stands over me; what will he do?

Fortunately for me, not much is going to happen in the plot!

So how the story is told important. is The suspenseful threat of the dangling belt is lengthened by the parenthetical comment, and the context that the train, like the rest of humanity, is "rocking along," indifferent to my "imminent doom."

Fortunately for me, the guy just tapped my knee three times and walked off.

I hope that the short lines and the details of his action and my inaction effectively create in the reader the fear that I experienced. And I hope that the reader shares the "comic relief" suggested by "I have transcended humanity in a subway tunnel beneath spanish harlem."

Fortunately for all three passengers, the gentleman in the gray sports coat completes his ritual and walks off, presumably looking for more knees. From my viewpoint, this was a most happy ending.

But it is anti-climatic. The story may be over, but the poem is not. I could not ignore the comparison of three knee taps with the three ax blows the Green Knight bestows on Gawain. Great heroes are transformed by their quests, but I was a young teenager on a subway train beneath Spanish Harlem: "i have learned / that experience is not unique / and that the inevitable is somehow avoidable / though i do not know how." But certainly every fifteen cent token brings the promise of a new adventure!

It has been about fifty years since this happened. I do not remember if one of the passengers said "shoot boy it was just another / new york city subway near death experience," or if I made it up. I hope it was a direct quote.

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Appendix: yankee kitchen

This is the 1993 version of the poem that appeared in _The Wormwood Review:_

genghis khan (1993)

genghis khan

we secretly named him

the anonymous infamous cook

of yankee kitchen restaurant

charges from the grill waving a butcher knife

at customers who complain

while we laugh

and to the last lick of grease

eat our plates clean

As I was planning _from the banks of brook avenue,_ a poem about Yankee Kitchen was on my list of possible ideas. The restaurant is no longer there, so I tried from memory to recall its decor. I remember the painting of the sailing ship, and of a town, which I presume to be Nantucket. I do not know if clam chowder was featured on the menu, but it would seem to fit the restaurant's theme.

Saint Jean Baptiste Catholic Church is now a historical landmark. It is a beautiful church, with an abundance of stained glass windows (not mentioned in the poem) that were created in Chartres. As a teenager I did not appreciate its beauty, nor was I thankful enough for the kindness of the Blessed Sacrament priests and brothers who let me, a kid from The Bronx, into their Boy Scout troop, who eventually employed me as a clerk, and who let me play in the gym with my friends.

Thanks to the internet, I could view photographs of the church, and I focused on the statues over the main entrance. At the corner of 76th and Lexington, the "winged herald" still "wields a trumpet," but as teenagers we probably only heard the honking horns of the incessant traffic.

I try to capture a time of innocence, "that delicious time," when our worst offenses were throwing snowballs or shooting spitballs at paintings. As we sailed "the winds and waves of adolescence," we wandered off into life, and I could see that some were going in directions that would "make the angels cry."

And thanks to the internet, I could investigate the "American Gothic" painting. Ralph was not an exact replica of the dentist, but he was tall and skinny, with a "lean and drawn face." Claiming that Ralph had "the patience of a saint" may be an exaggeration, but he never asked us to leave. And, more importantly, he never asked the cook to ask us to leave.

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Appendix: the beach beneath the bridge

I am writing these comments in 2017 AD about an event that occurred in the early 1960s. Our culture has changed. Many now prefer to replace AD with CE. When I was young, feminine hygiene products, birth control devices, and male enhancement products were not advertised on television. On _The Dick Van Dyke Show,_ Robert and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds. So perhaps that puts our finding of what Lenny Briscoe on _Law and Order_ refers to as "Coney Island starfish" in perspective. Recalling that time of longago, it seems accurate to say: "the beach is awash with a love we barely understand," and to end the poem with the image of stumbling "in the cold dark waves."

By separating "beach beneath the bridge" from "ferry point park," I was able to give a sharper focus to the two distinct themes: "beach" captures a moment in early adolescence; "ferry point" portrays a father and son memory grounded in a particular time and place.

These are some notes from my 1988 notebook:

beach beneath the bridge notes (7/11/88)

at twelve years old we ran fields

and hopped barefoot over the rocks

and through the cool sand

the rings of disintegrated condoms

washed on the beach like sand dollars

beach beneath the bridge notes (11/9/88)

the beach beneath the bridge

a strip of sand between the breeze blown grass

and the dirty waves

the suburbs beyond the water

we walk away from

parents and baseballs

across the muddy sand

there are driftwood and mussels

a horizon and a sky

a smell of something almost natural

the wind calls us to our future

rings of condoms

litter the beach

like pointless starfish

ashes of bonfires burnt out like a passion

but today we are just pirates

Looking back on these notes, "the suburbs beyond the water" and "a horizon and a sky" are ideas that were put into "ferry point park." In retrospect "ferry point park" is about time spent with my father, and it was best to keep that experience distinct from this one.

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Appendix: after seeing night of the living dead

I believe the original version appeared rather easily, but made no reference to Poe. I vaguely remember seeing a black and white film, _The Raven,_ played on a screen on one of the lawns of Fordham University. Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Jack Nicholson were in it. As I used the internet to research material for my manuscript, I decided to add the lines "where edgar allan poe / once haunted the jesuits." The lines seemed to work. According to an article "Edgar Allan Poe and the Jesuits" by historian Dr. Pat McNamara, Poe often walked the grounds. Poe's wife died shortly after their move to The Bronx, and the grieving widow often joined the Jesuits for dinner, cards, conversation, and consolation. Poe's Cottage has been preserved and restored; it is not far from the Fordham campus.

This is the earlier version:

after seeing night of the living dead

stiffarmed we limp across the commons

"they're coming to get you barbara"

we yell from dormitory bushes

no one is scared so we

stagger into the pub to bend

our elbows till dawn

pretending to be

cinema heroes and poetic rebels

and in the platonic light of day

when we are only ourselves

they up and run

premeds

junior accountants

student politicians

literally up and run

they conform so well

we not at all

they will flourish and prosper

we will write and paint and teach

and grow old paying bills

starving for the days

and nights when we

roamed the gothic campus

young alive hungry

liberal arts

rebels

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Appendix: on the coping

An earlier version appeared in _Dusty Dog:_

on the coping (1993)

on the outer edge of coping

he stands atop the roof's parapet

between ungraspable father sky

and the concrete skin

of mother earth which buries all

where we play punchball in the afternoon

beneath ruddy tenements

on the irish side of the street

but stop to watch

those black sneakers

on the downward slope of chocolate tile

scarred arms righting the kite

in a wind which does not blow

on the children below

he stands curbside casual

a jaundiced junkie face

turned toward the clouds

and the heavens so far away

his sneakers but a hundred feet above

certain death

the kite flies like a soul it seems for an hour

till he turns from a mythic fall

to walk back into his pedestrian life

to be found years later

dead in the stench of an unlit doorway

The revision changes the opening to focus on details of the danger. The tenement roof had a low wall, a parapet, topped by saddle coping, in this case, smooth tile which sloped downwards in two directions and which peaked in the middle. I calculated his height above street level by multiplying the five stories of the tenement by ten. He was actually on the side of the building, not the front, and if he fell he would have landed on the roof of the W. T. Grants five and dime. A forty feet fall could be fatal.

I also added more about the children watching. I could not resist echoing Romeo's lines from the balcony scene, where Juliet, being over his head, is as glorious as an angel bestriding the clouds over "white-upturned wondering eyes." But we were watching neither an angel nor a thirteen-year old girl ensconced on her balcony; we were fixated on a reckless teen age boy standing on the edge of death with the casual demeanor one might have standing on a curb waiting to cross a street.

I also chose to echo Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper." The untethered kite "sports in the wind" recalls Blake's posthumous, and naked, chimney sweeps who "rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind."

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liberation

Nouns and verbs, objects and actions, are the most important words in a poem, and the words that describe them, adjectives and adverbs, the second most important. Nouns and verbs comprise images, and one way to construct a poem it to offer images to the reader. These ideas, I think are reflected in the sparse lines of this poem.

I love sarcasm and irony, which is suggested in the main title and last line of the poem: "liberation." A music aficionado may be disappointed that the four parts of the "quartet" are not written in four distinct voices. I am not well schooled in music. To me, "quartet" suggests an elegant treatment of a worthy subject, and this poem is about hard times and petty crime in the South Bronx: the title is an overstatement of the content.

Brook Avenue, as I learned from research, follows the course of the millstream and was subsumed by the construction of the street. I think it is now part of a sewer. The virgin wilderness of the South Bronx passed from the native Americans to Jonas Bronck and became Morris Manor, which included orchards. There were no trees on the block where I grew up, but I could, with a sarcastic imagination, envision parking meters as "money trees" and the thief as a "lumberjack."

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justice

The poem is written without punctuation, and there are no line breaks to establish breath groups, so my task was to create a rhythm that would carry the reader along while telling a logically coherent story. The repetition of sounds and of words is important to the flow of this poem. In an unpunctuated prosepoem such as this, conjunctions organize the story and contribute to the rhythm.

The repetition of "i suppose" helps organize the poem. The phrase seemed appropriate as I was writing about an even I did not directly observe. It conveys a world-weary attitude, an acceptance of the outrageous or the absurd. It seemed to make a fitting end to the poem: "if she weren't more careful with her plants she would get a ticket for littering i suppose."

This is an earlier and longer version:

_justice (1990_ )

he grabbed the old lady's bag as she walked beneath an overpass built by the wpa when thugs were thugs and the government was a friend as even today we like to believe and babe ruth still played baseball and the world was wonderful except for stuff like hunger fascism racism purges and polio but at least in the bronx you could still leave your door open all night so the milkman could deliver right to the icebox if you could afford milk and since no one had much anyway it was easy some sunday night to move after the "two months rent free" expired and before the bill was due to move to another "sixty day free stay" (and she had survived all that) and movies were still a nickel where you could also leave your door open because the poor are proud even when they are hungry and movies were still a nickel as we had heard so many times and this old lady danced with soldiers in times square at the wars ended gave birth during the korean war and sent her sons to vietnam and grew old and gray old while they married and divorced and lost jobs and melted into the streets and was enjoying the peace of this afternoon lugging her shopping bag when this kid grabbed her bag

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Appendix: she is leaving but

The earlier version was shorter:

she is leaving but

she is leaving but

the ceiling falls

the obese father

wrestles his obese son

half our dining room

ceiling crashes

my amazed aunt

had turned to talk

just a bit more

stopped on the threshold

of doom by mundane words

a second before bricks

and whiskey bottles

left by turn of the century italian plasterers

and genuine plaster

crash in a dusty thud

she laughs to see

a leg poking through

she laughs just to be alive

in the bronx where no one

escapes death

The details I added about our living room ground the poem and bring me back to that place where our family often gathered. With four sisters living on the same block, there was plenty of family. Adding "and she laughs" as the last line gives a sense of the joy of life: laughter is an oasis of sorts.

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Appendix: what could have more impact than a bus

The basic content of the poem stayed the same between the early and final draft: the bus, the old priest, and the pigeon.

One major change involved elaborating on our reaction to the imagined death of the priest.

selected lines from the early version:

in the very lane where daily the old monseigneur

damn near ran out of breath while we watched

and wagered how long he had left how many

months or minutes until he could no longer hobble

to safety before the light turned and he would splatter

beneath the flophouse which will die and rise

and become a condominium scattering

the congregation he may have been trying to save

but he died humbly in his sleep instead

and we were just streetcorner losers

from the final version:

in the very crosswalk where daily the ancient monsignor

damn near ran out of breath while we wondered

how long he had left how many months or minutes

until he could no longer hobble to safety

before the light turned and he would be caught

in the stampede of uptown traffic and be killed

while we watched like the crowd at calvary

and did nothing to save him

we would carry the guilt to our graves

we would suffer gruesome memories and grisly nightmares

but he died quietly in his sleep

and the angels carried him away

and we were just streetcorner losers

with time to kill

Another major change was to end the poem in a way that would draw it together:

_selected lines from the early version_ :

and it fell wide eyed and feathers drifting slowly

spiraling white and red upon the asphalt

ground down by car after car until

even the blood disappeared

and the flying spirit disintegrated into the busy world

from the final version:

spiraling white and red upon the asphalt

ground down by car after car until

even the blood disappeared

and the flying spirit disintegrated into the busy world

outside the dive bar beneath the flophouse

that will die and be reborn

in a paradise of condominiums and upscale cafes

with no room for the congregation

the aged priest may have been trying to save

or for elevated trains or bored teenaged boys

there was prophecy and revelation and the promise

of eternity and we knew

we too might grow old someday

if we were that lucky

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Appendix: plaza of the undented turtle

After I completed the early draft, there were no major changes until I did the final edits for the book manuscript. Given how easy it is to access the internet, which was not the case when the poem was drafted, I was able to determine that the car was a Pontiac Firebird. That would explain the painting on the hood, which I refer to as a phoenix. I expanded upon the original lines:

Selected lines from the early version

the turtle

does not cry

the car drives off

no reporter

asks the cop at the wheel

about inanimate

reincarnation

Selected lines from the final version

the turtle

does not cry

the pontiac

has chosen to remain silent

then the impounding officer

starts the engine

it purrs it revs and it's off

to automobile prison

there is no reporter

asking the cop at the wheel

about inanimate

reincarnation

The driver may have gotten away, but the image of the car getting arrested seems a nice lead in to "there is irony to fulfill."

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Appendix: avenue b, fourteenth street, looking south

It is short, simple, and I do not recall any editorial struggles after getting the initial wording onto the page. The poem was written in the 1980s. Positioning it after "plaza of the undented turtle" seemed appropriate: the two poems are set within a few blocks of each other; after a couple of long poems, a shorter one is welcome, especially if it reinforces the themes.

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Appendix: the push and break and chase of it

Once drafted, this poem did not require much editorial attention, although I did deliberate about whether or not to use punctuation. It is quirky, and a bit different in style from the poems that precede it, but the image of a dog chasing a broken car seemed appropriate to the book, and "a wholly new ordering of ordinary affairs" seemed to provide a suitable ending for the first section.

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Appendix: the third avenue el

The earlier version of the poem was not divided by years:

the third avenue el

I. the new colossus

liberty enlightening the world

a torch a book a stern look

glorious timeless stoic

staring toward the tempestuous atlantic

the great torch in the great harbor

flickers a wary welcome

this is the land of the free

like buffalo the indians vanish

by boatloads the americans arrive

the tired the poor the wretched

masses huddled on the teeming shores

of lower manhattan

the year of our lord 1886

the new colossus rises from the waters

the year of our lord 1886

the great aqueduct of humanity

bridges the harlem and trains rumble

to the bronx to the mainland to the paradise across the river

the third avenue el is mortal it lives it moves

and the great green lady has donned her robe

with a book to read and a light to guide

exiles to the promised land

sure footed she is stepping

in the direction of battery park terminal

II. the torch

rivet by rivet the rails move north

from the straight torso of manhattan steel tracks curve

a mighty arm of enlightenment betokening

the golden age of the beautiful bronx

where the poor inherit the earth

one apartment at a time

and the new world rises from fertile fields

bronx farms become bronx tenements

immigrants become bronx americans

who will rest who will eat who will work

who will raise families and save their nickels and ride

that great train to a modest job

and home to a modest kitchen

where old country recipes simmer

on the flame of freedom

aroma of garlic and cabbage permeating

the airshafts while commuters flutter

past bedroom curtains and the windows rattle

green stanchions green stations

the sidewalks are gray the tenements are brown

and children fill the streets with games and laughter

the wheels squeal the third rail crackles

children who grow and fight in foreign wars

and look to heaven when thunder rumbles the rails

III. the book

influenza prohibition depression

war and more war

the pages of history are written in blood

and sweat and tears

children wear dogtags

children are taught to duck and cover

when the bombs strike and children

watch cranes remove the main line

from the bronx hub to battery park

the aquarium has been drained

ellis island is closed and the great statue watches

for ships which do not come

the once great el is merely

a minor shuttle an appendix

lost in the intestines of the bronx

the dodgers and giants migrate west

the yankees wane and rust

mottles the rivets of industry

america the beautiful wrestles with itself

riots and assassinations

planned obsolescence and withdrawal with honor

on rotting ties and flattening rails the weary el

clatters like a faithful milk wagon

the tenements crumble and die

IV. the eternal flame

the last run is made in the dark

near midnight the motorman waits

the policeman padlocks each station

the train whispers through the darkness

to whatever land of forgotten dreams

trains go to when they die

broken glass shattered tenements

and the bronx burns

cranes uproot ancient steel

third avenue is open to the grim sunlight

the sidewalks are no longer in shadow but somehow

the world is not so wonderful

urban decay and suburban sprawl

the bricks lie where they have fallen

the statue stands above the gray water

exodus and crime

bankruptcy and terrorism

this is the valley of the shadow of death

where the el no longer runs

and there is love amid the ruins

the bronx is not dead

it is just being reborn

the great dream smolders in the wasteland

saplings and townhouses grow from the rubble

twin towers will rise where twin towers have fallen

above the gray waters above the gray city

the great torch of liberty points

to heaven where stars

are flickering stations

and the great train inches toward paradise

As I revised, I decided to use four significant years as the focus: 1886, when the railroad first crossed into The Bronx; 1920, when the El reached its northernmost point at Gun Hill Road; 1955, the closing of the line south of 149th Street; and 1973, the last year of service.

I spent many hours on the internet researching the facts. I took a video train ride through The Bronx. I heard recordings of its deafening roar. I read about the Carrollton Massacre and the Seattle Riots which occurred in 1886. And about the Statue of Liberty. I spent a lot of time trying to find photographs which would prove that the original El really had green stanchions. I really wanted them to be green, as I was making a comparison to the patina on the Statue of Liberty. Most of the photos were black and white, and the color photos left much to be desired in their quality. I even contacted a transit historian. Finally, I look at catalogues from paint suppliers. I found one color, olive green, which was a brownish green, but it had green in the title. Not the green of the Statue of Liberty, but it did call it green, so I went with the lines: "green stanchions green stations / lady liberty has turned green above the gray water."

I had a great wrestling match with the third stanza of the first section. In 1886, there was a court decision which accepted the idea that corporations are entitled to equal protection under the law. A cruel contrast to the actual treatment of Indians, Chinese and Blacks. This version of the stanza reflected that contrast:

selected lines from "the third avenue el"

in the land of the free where neither man

nor corporation may be denied

equal protection of the laws

and geronimo is imprisoned and chinese laborers

are expelled from seattle and former slaves

are massacred in a mississippi courthouse

But after many hours this final version evolved:

selected lines from "the third avenue el"

where geronimo is imprisoned

where chinese laborers are expelled from seattle

where former slaves are massacred in a mississippi courthouse

no one is indicted for their murder

in this great republic where the lord

and manifest destiny work in mysterious ways

I was also concerned that the poem did not duplicate images from "welcome to the mainland." I worked on them during the same general time period, and I think I succeeded in keeping them distinct.

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Appendix: standing on the fordham road bridge

I found the 1988 version printed in fountain pen in one of my notebooks:

_standing on the fordham road bridge (1988_ )

on a walk from nothing to do to nowhere to go

i stop somewhere between heaven

and the harlem river which runs

like a neverending subway from spuyten duyvil

to the hellgate

beneath bluffs of tenement and project

all those little people with their big lives

all those big people with their little lives

asleep now or wandering the streets

searching for a cool breeze on a humid night

or cheap or expensive thrills which will

bring momentary forgetfulness to whatever

pain there is to life

searching for a sweet dream

the river is darker and deeper it seems than space

itself though the night sky is a grayish pink

a hazy reflection of city lights which obscure

the stars like we are obscured

we cast no reflection

striations of light on the midnight water

a thirst to be salted by the unfathomable oceans

of souls and molecules which have gone down the river

This is the 1995 version which appeared in North Coast Review _:_

standing upon the fordham road bridge (1995)

on a walk from nothing to do to nowhere to go

i stop somewhere between heaven

and the harlem river which curves

dark and shiny like a neverending subway

from spuyten duyvil to the hellgate

past train yards and busbarns and power plants

beneath bluffs of tenement and project

through a valley veiled in concrete and night

all those little people with their big lives

all those big people with their little lives

asleep now or wandering the streets

searching for a cool breeze on a humid night

or cheap or expensive thrills which bring

momentary forgetfulness of whatever

pain there is to life

searching for a sweet dream

and i have found the river

waters darker and deeper it seems than space

itself though the night sky is a grayish pink

a haze of city lights which obscure

the stars as we are obscured

and i stand above the unheard currents

hum of tired tire on the rusted plates of the drawbridge

at the halfway point between the two towers

awaiting the ship which does not sail

and i watch striations of light on the midnight water

which casts no human reflection

and tells no tales of what it carries away

souls and silt and civilization's sewage

the silent inscrutable current which is

a thirst to be salted by the unfathomable oceans

and i walk off up the great hill

while litter blows like pollen in the dawn breeze

It was written in three stanzas of eight lines, followed by a seven line stanza with a and a two line finale. By going to four six line stanzas with a two line finale, I could keep the poem on one single page, which would help the layout of the book and keep printing costs down. A practical motivation, but I think the poem benefited from the pruning and revision.

The revised ending echoes Hamlet's lines: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world." But it also offers "the faint vision of dawn / bringing a new to this weary world."

A better ending, I think, than "litter blowing in the breeze."

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Appendix: halloween

These are two earlier versions:

halloween (early 1990s)

tonight we may see the dead

only the living will hurt you

my parents said and they did

there are no living loving arms

strong enough to fend off the world

the riots of summer

the winter shadows where thieves lurk

and the war always the war

politics and heroism

young blood and old grief

bloated bodies beside the river

the children the innocent die

tonight soldiers will rise from sprawling graves

tonight urchins will drift across the minefields

their ghostly songs whining like artillery

while eggs drop like bombs from the rooftop

detroit burns the bronx is mugged

police pummel whom they may

and throw carcasses to angry lawyers

pirates and devils torment

candy from the naive

the apples are poisoned and the princess

hopelessly lost

with socks full of rocks the learned beat

money from mortal flesh

o do wear a mask of a monster or mutant

it is less hideous than to look

helpless into the face of humanity

there were saints and gods among us

and we killed them

blessed are the dead who have been purged

of cruelty and greed

they know what has been lost

forlorn paradise heaven uncreated

the perpetual procreation of pain and stolen joy

our fathers and fetuses

Ghandi and Buddha

Christ and the Great Earth Mother

the intentionally killed the merely neglected

they who should fear but who love nevertheless

they will come who have been liberated

from pride and rage

they will come and they will dance

look look their bliss wafts through the tangible

we smile and we pray that the children will be safe

let us feed the darling monsters coin and corn

we who send yet more

suffering to their graves for our great blessing

halloween (2008)

tonight we may see the dead

only the living will hurt you

people say and they did

there are no loving arms

strong enough to fend off the world

pirates and devils

torment candy from the naive

detroit burns and the bronx is mugged

with socks full of stones the wicked beat

money from mortal flesh

summers of riot

winters of shadow where thieves lurk

and war always a war

blood and grief and bloated bodies

children starve and the innocent die but tonight

the slaughtered rise from sprawling graves

tonight urchins drift across mine fields

their ghostly songs whine like artillery

and in mockery eggs splatter

like bombs from unseen rooftops

o do wear a mask of a monster or mutant

it is less hideous than to look

helpless into the face of humanity

there were saints and gods among us

and we killed them

blessed are the dead who have been purged

of cruelty and greed

they know what we have lost

forlorn paradise heaven uncreated

they know and they will come

the intentionally killed the merely neglected

they who should fear but who love nevertheless

they will come who have been liberated

from the perpetual procreation of pain and stolen joy

they will come and they will dance

look look their bliss wafts through the tangible

we smile and we pray that the children will be safe

let us feed the darling monsters coin and corn

we who who are so generous and who will send yet more

souls suffering to their graves for our great blessing

(Note: The last five stanzas are the same as those of the final version.)

Most of the editing of the 2008 was to revise the opening stanza; the first three stanzas of this version were condensed into two. The final 2016 version begins with "detroit burns and the bronx is mugged," as such:

beginning of the final version:

detroit burns and the bronx is mugged

with sock full of stones the wicked beat

money from mortal flesh

pirates and devils

torment candy from the naive

riots and thievery and war always war

there are no loving arms

strong enough to fend off the world

blood and grief and bloated bodies

children starve and the innocent die but tonight . . .

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Appendix: _ne cede malis:_ poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

The color versions of the Seal now available on the internet does not seem as ominous as its black and white counterpart. I wonder what the poem would have been like if I had viewed the color version first. Be it as it may, The Bronx of my youth was not a paradise. This is reflected in a very rough first draft of the poem from a 1991 notebook:

ne cede malis early draft (1991)

_ne cede malis_ the motto

yield not to evil meet misfortune boldly

the bronx flag flies over the bronx

well maybe outside some municipal building

its sun has indifferent eyes and shines

inside an acorn beneath an eagle

is this symbolism or prophecy

i have seen pigeons fly

over the hollow eyes of arsoned tenements

the smell of smoke and decay

emanating from the doorway

buildings die like trees

stand dead for years

smell of smoke and decay

in this nut of reality

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Appendix: washington comes to visit

I wanted to write a poem about Washington visiting the South Bronx. The original idea was along the lines of "even Washington fled from here."

This is a rough beginning from my 1991-1992 notebook:

washington fled

washington fled

amid fear

maybe landings at port morris

maybe men of war

sailing the shallow bronx river

three ambushes

route the hessians at pelham bay

each slaughter they thought the last

imagination exceeds reality

in this land of battle

who would be surrounded

on a peninsula

there's white plains

and new jersey

the suburban wilderness

This is from a word-processing file dated the July 29, 1997:

washington fled here (July, 1997)

even washington retreated north amid fear

maybe landings at port morris

maybe men of war sailing up the bronx river

who wants to die on a peninsula

and the land was left to cowboys and skinners

political gangs who stole livestock of any persuasion

while the british fortified randall's island

to stare at the mainland

and they stared so long that the opposing sentinels

agreed not to shoot except for a rookie lieutenant

who was reprimanded and the practical peace prevailed

while the cowboys and skinners professed politics

but did not argue ideology with the cattle and horses they stole

and plundered the bronx as the dutch had counterfeited indian currency

making sewant of imported glass

using glass imitations of the sewant

they hung a quaker three times here

leaving him penniless and almost dead

ne cede malis on the bronx flag

yield not to evil meet misfortune boldly

the sun has eyes and shines

inside an acorn beneath an eagle

having left the beautiful bronx manor

valleyed between rolling bluffs and blue estuaries

fruits were grown here and exotic trees collected

a mill was built upon the brook that became an avenue

and the orchards and the exotic trees

and the forest vanished beneath the buildings

the brook into a vast sewer

Much of the historical information comes from an old book, _The History of The Bronx and Its People._

The Dutch did counterfeit wampum. That fact made it into a draft of "randall's island," then was cut as that poem was revised. It is alluded to in "ps 43" in the lines: "is that real money or are these guys just / a couple of broke tulip farmers with counterfeit wampum."

The reference to The Bronx motto and flag became the subject of _"ne cede malis...."_ The brook being subsumed by a sewer is referred to in "liberation, or the brook avenue parking meter quartet."

In the summer of 2015, I was working to complete the _from the banks of brook avenue_ manuscript, and the idea of a poem about Washington was on my list of possibilities. I read in Ultan's article that Washington had reached the hill at 140th and Cypress Avenue when the firing began, and that his guides took shelter behind the mill at 137th and Brook Avenue. The article also mentions how Washington and Rochambeau, amid the bombardment, had passed the hiding guards. So he really did visit the old neighborhood. But my family was not there yet!

I started to play with the idea of their not being there. This approach was much more positive than that of my earlier notes. I had fun imagining all the things that did not happen because my family was not there yet!

And I enjoyed suggesting that his plan to conquer Manhattan was motivated by his desire to stop the noise. "and washington plans to attack manhattan / to stop the noise / but he marches to yorktown instead / and the rest is history."

I was delighted to come up with that ending: historical accuracy and a corny joke!

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Appendix: grandfather: a photograph

I think the poem makes a nice transition from "washington comes to visit" to "bootblacks on the loose." I did make some changes to it in 2015. This is the original version that was published by _The Spirit That Moves Us_ in 1981.

grandfather: a photograph 1981 version

standing outside

the shoe shine parlor

a little man

in a long apron

brushes in hand

elbows crooked

& a gray face which says

hurry

take the picture

i have a customer waiting

back to grandfather: a photograph

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Appendix: bootblacks on the loose

These are some selected notes or rough stanzas from around 1997 and 2000. Most of this will not make into the final version. One approach to the writing process is to widely explore the general topic. There is also repetition in these notes, as I often copy and paste a stanza in order to work on it.

bootblacks on the loose (notes from 1997--2000)

it is Tuesday

they don't wear shoes

so we don't work

he picks us up early

in the blue mustang

rumor has it he hit the number

just before the car appeared

he hit the number

and bought a mustang

a dollar a week for most of his life

could have bought a Cadillac

but it wouldn't be the same

could have worked the day shift

after the graveyard shift at the freight yard

he drives up in the pale blue mustang

rumor has it his number came in once

and honks to gather his nephews

real or honorary

whichever happen to be working for him

that summer

for a morning swim at the palisades

and we drive off

while the ghetto basks in the morning sun

and the hoodlums are sleeping and the cops are sluggish

and the old ladies walk to their groceries

to the italian deli to buy heroes

guinea sandwiches we insiders call them

then it's off to jersey

to the best pool i could ever imagine

salt water which does not burn the eyes

a waterfall pushing gentle waves

we are bootblacks on the loose

when we work we work

ten maybe twelve hours a day

bent over the shoes till our feet swell

our hands cramp and our sweat

drips into the shine but now

it's summer it's tuesday

the shop is closed and we

are going swimming

uncle al has finished the midnight shift

at the railroad express agency

he honks at the corner to collect his nephews

we buy sandwiches and we are off

to the world's largest saltwater pool

we are bootblacks on the loose

it's summer it's tuesday

the shoe shine parlor is closed and we

are swimming above the Hudson

in the world's largest saltwater pool

at palisades park in the morning

when the rides are quiet and admission is free

we are bootblacks on the loose

it is summer it is tuesday

the shanty is closed and we

swim above the hudson

the world's largest saltwater pool

palisades amusement park

it is morning

the rides are sleeping

the game wheels are not spinning

the perpetual music

of 77-wabc drowns in the waterfall

we cling to the ledge

the water pours over our heads

and down our backs

we are lost in the water

blinded by the water

immersed in the water

we might be sea creatures

lulled by mermaid song

to a world beyond desire

lost in a womb

of cool liquid sunlight

we are bootblacks on the loose

it is summer it is tuesday

the shanty is closed and we

swim above the hudson

the world's largest saltwater pool

palisades amusement park

it is morning

the rides are sleeping

the game wheels are not spinning

the perpetual music

of 77-wabc drowns in the waterfall

we cling to the ledge

the water pours over our heads

and down our backs

we are lost in the water

blinded by the water

immersed in the water

we might be sea creatures

lulled by mermaid song

to a world beyond desire

lost in a womb

of cool liquid sunlight

we are bootblacks on the loose

it is summer it is tuesday

we are kings of the deep

end of the pool

ten feet down the eardrums throb

we strain to touch absolute bottom

the chipped paint bottom

of the world's largest saltwater pool

we rush to surface

to breathe in a world

so deep the skin is clean

of work

here there are no shoes to shine

it is like chimney sweeps in blake's heaven

Eventually, the poem began to find a new direction:

we are bootblacks on the loose

anything is possible

saturday nights it's

chinese in yonkers

or ho jo's on bruckner

al tells the waitress

i'm a thirty two year old midget

and a big spender but she just

smiles at her wedding ring

i'm really thirteen

more interested in dessert

and being out with the big boys

after a twelve hour day

of pounding brushes on leather

sundays it's the pool hall

big bill hits the balls so hard

they dive in the pockets to get away from him

sandy coaxes them soft and sweet

they do what he wants

i always seem to be

behind the eight ball or to find

something awkward like a pair

of men's jockey shorts in the center pocket

and dream that someday

i will be good at something

but for now i am king

of brook avenue looking

out those large smoke stained windows

onto the deteriorating horizon

of tenements and housing projects

and seeing the former elegance

of a lost era in rusting modillions

and moldings painted so thick with green enamel

they resemble alligator skin"

This the draft that most immediately preceded the final version:

bootblacks on the loose (6/26/15)

we are bootblacks on the loose

and we might be found

in jersey or north

of the county line

on summer tuesdays we are swimming

at palisades the world's largest

salt water pool and we cling

to the boards beneath the waterfall

and our troubles wash away

saturday nights its pepper steaks

at a chinese restaurant in yonkers

or a burger at ho jo's

where my uncle tries to convince

the waitress that i am a thirty one year old midget

thought i am thirteen and still wrestling with puberty

sunday afternoons it might be

the bowling alley by yankee stadium

or the pool hall on brook avenue

cousin billy throws the ball with the strength of a gorilla

and smashes the rack into the pockets

and pounds the shoes into a shine

sandy finesses his strikes and sweet talks

the bank shots and coaxes the shoes

to perfection

i seem to suck at everything but have fun anyway

and am learning to sweat my way

through a shine

not the strongest

not the suavest

but i get the job done

but i cannot outswim

uncle al though billy

can beat him at bowling

and sandy can beat him at pool

but al's arms are like tree trunks

and he has been shining shoes

longer than the three of us have been alive

and he loves to take us places

when we are not working

Much of the revision of the June, 2015 version involved coming up with a better ending. I kept envisioning our lunch breaks on the boardwalk, and our view of Manhattan, and how wonderful it seemed to be, and the lines emerged.

back to bootblacks on the loose

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Appendix: al

To develop a poem, it helps to contemplate the memory or image that inspired it. Uncle Al seemed to have a slight smile as he was buffing the shoes with a rag. And there seemed to be a graceful aspect to his posture. He liked county music on the radio, but would put on AM rock for us youngsters. Maybe sometimes he listened to ballroom jazz. I am not exactly sure anymore: it has been fifty years. But the image seemed to fit the poem.

early notes: al's arms

al's arms are like tree trunks

muscular flexible

not a bodybuilder but a man

who spent years lifting boxes all night

in the railyards then opened

the shoe shine parlor and worked some more

he handled the brushes

a fast shine but he never hurried

he paced himself but his pace was

efficient with fifty years of bootblacking

al's arms are like treetrunks

muscular flexible

not a bodybuilder but a man

who lifts boxes all night

in the railyards then opens

the shoe shine parlor and works some more

as he handles the brushes

a faint smile appears beneath his moustache

a fast shine but he never hurries

he paces himself but his pace is

efficient with fifty years of bootblacking

when he shines the sides of the shoes

he leans slightly like a man

gently holding the waist of a woman

in a prohibition era ballroom

back to al

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Appendix: p.s. 43

One way to write a poem is to focus on an image, then write down everything that comes to mind about it. I attended P.S. 43 from kindergarten to third grade. I began writing the poem thirty or so years later. It was a mental stretch to recall many of the specifics. But I remember seeing an elderly Eisenhower in a press conference, and the mural, and lining up in the cafeteria to begin the day. And the kid having to clean up his or her own vomit. I think I began the poem in the 1990s. Years later, thanks to the internet, I could call up "street view" and look at the building, still standing, although some of the adjacent tenements had disappeared. Part of the motivation for this, and some of my other poems, is how the clean and orderly Bronx of my mother's youth succumbed to devastation and ruin.

The early version was an expansive rant. It included references to the Webtech scandal, the savings and loan scandal, and the Chrysler bailout, homelessness, health care, and economic inequality, and references to places such as the Mott Haven Canal, the coffee factory, the highway, the railroad, and the 600 school for juvenile delinquents. Most of these were cut from the final version.

The lines "when we ask for money for ice cream the fathers say / do you think i'm rockefeller" appear in a slightly different form in the poem "skully," which appears a few pages later in this section. This early draft is much longer than the final version. I include it here so that you can see what happened during the revision process.

p.s. 43 (1998)

jonas bronck elementary school still stands

amid the ruins red and white above the rubble

of tenements where friends once lived

no one told us who he was or where

he settled in 1642 near the banks of the harlem

river beneath the barclay barclite sign that blinks

barclay

barclite

barclay barclite

on the square beamed industrial building

the past and the present are one

barclay

barclite

barclay barclite

in the waft of the coffee roaster

where the grand concourse and boulevard

butts the major deagan

the railroad crosses the river

broad streets carry crosstown traffic

the highways lead to new england and queens

the canal ran here long ago

i saw it once in a dream

as it may never have appeared

but history is illusion

what

was barclite

who was barclay

no one ever said or cared

it is as forgotten as the webtech scandal

so much for jobs in the south bronx

that's the south south bronx to you

the bronx that was

before the english arrived

right there on the mural behind the stage

in the auditorium where we assembled

to watch rocket launches

america had to beat the soviets to the moon

so the russians would not invade the bronx

and when there was a delay in the countdown

we watched my little margie

which made us laugh

the painting of the dutch guys

in strange clothes was not funny

spandex pants maybe and long stockings

but spandex was not invented yet

and well postured native americans

in loin clothes but we were too young

to know about loins

they were all making a deal

beneath the trees

as if there was a time before highways

this is the land the yankees made famous

and dutch schultz

money is heroic

sailing two thousand miles across the atlantic

is nothing

it was a tough school

if you barfed in the cafeteria

you had to clean it up yourself

which led to more barfing

you cleaned and barfed till you barfed no more

and there was nothing more to clean

then they called your mother

if you didn't behave there was

the 600 school across the street

with barred windows and fifty foot fences

it was delinquent land before there were too many

delinquents to school

they lied to us anyway

crime does pay

politicians and corporate executives

make more in a year than our fathers could in a lifetime

when we ask for money for ice cream the fathers say

do you think i'm rockefeller

what does the old man know

this was decades before reagan unleashed

the corporate wolves on the middle class

what is a corporation

but a being which cannot be hauled off to jail

chrysler or a savings and loan

can receive welfare but

wheelchair annie cannot

millions for defense but not a penny for youth

the right to life is the right to die in america

die in a war

die without a home

die without medical care

die in a crime

die in the electric chair

what the hell does anyone care

if you're not a fetus

you had your chance

they made you take it

the native americans could

simply say no to money

this land was so rich in wampum

that the jealous dutch counterfeited it

importing european glass

another economy broken by greed

money is a drug

like heroin but it's legal

and the law says

that little children must go to school

and i went

it was an old school

when my mother went there

a teacher put a clothes hanger

in a kid's shirt to promote good posture

they let us slouch if we wanted

as long as we wore shirts and ties

or skirts and dresses

it was where i learned

that in america you cannot go to the bathroom

when you want to

if you go in your pants

they make you sit in it

even if you are five years old

and that america

is the land of the free

as long as your definition of freedom

is like everyone else's

why should i believe in the moon

it is just another streetlight

without a pole

they made us collect leaves

and paint them

from whatever trees there were left

as if god's colors were not good enough

and we stood each morning

to pledge allegiance to the flag

and we had nuclear disaster drills

kneeling beneath our desks

but they did not allow us to pray

we lined up every morning

in military formations

they trained us

for war and work

if we did well they let us play

this was life as we knew it

there were film clips of eisenhower

talking to the soviets

and walter cronkite

took us to space

we were quick learners

in kindergarten we were not taught the alphabet

in the first grade the teacher assumed we had learned it

we knew this is the way

life would always be

in third grade i fell in love

with a leopard skin coat

a redhead inside it

i don't remember her name

but what a coat

they painted the halls pink

and put a do not touch sign on the walls

how could i

resist

shoving my hat into it

they would not arrest me for it

they would not send me to the principal

the redhead would not be impressed

even my mother would not yell

at something so stupid

it was like taking money from the poor

it was like going to the moon

it was like sending troops to die in asia

it was like arsonists burning tenements

even when the slumlords did not pay them

it was like writing poetry

instead of working on wall street

it was because there was a sign

saying not to

it was like the dutchman

settling the bronx

it was like dutch schultz

selling booze during prohibition

he went to school here too

in the good old days decades before

the drug dealers set up open air markets

it was because

the tenements were dying and the trees had vanished

and john wayne had killed all the indians

except for a few token sidekicks

it was because

it was there

and i had a hat

and the paint was wet

and i was a stupid kid

receiving a great education

in america

back to p.s. 43

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Appendix: cypress avenue

This is a meditation on a place. The early notes from 2000 ramble, but they do include the basic images which appear in the final draft: the abandoned school, sitting in the car, the music, and grandmother's house. When I worked on the final version in 2015, I walked the street in my mind and on the internet. In my mind, I sat in that car again. And tried to recall what I saw from Nana's window. I could almost taste the jelly bars. And I remembered the Black Knight. I spent a while on the internet ascertaining the names of the other Aurora models in my collection. I even came upon a photo of the abandoned school.

The original version of the final quoted two lines from Dee Clark's song "Raindrops." I eventually learned that I would probably have to get permission to run the quote. Actually, I learned this after receiving a galley from the printer. I immediately pulled the galley, which was good, as it gave me the chance to make some final edits on a few other poems in the book.

I considered just referring to the title of the song, but I was afraid that readers might confuse it with "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." The B. J. Thomas song did not fit the mood of my memories, and it was not from the time period in which the poem was set. So I mentioned the Bert Kaemfert's "Wonderland By Night," which I also remembered and associated with sitting in Dad's car. And I was able to play off the word "wonder" and make a transition to my fascination with the abandoned school.

These are some early notes:

cypress avenue notes (2000)

once the street was lined with american cypress

the morris family's arboretum

but i remember only the sumac in the parking lot

and the abandoned school that crumbled

beneath the housing projects

bone white in the stark sun

a grey shade beneath the moon

and i sat one night while dad warmed up the plymouth

staring into the windows

glimpses of christmas trees and blinking light windows

the pink bricks of the high rises

new and baby pink

rise high on the horizon

they are the horizon beyond which there is nothing

but the rest of the world

this is the road to grandmother's house

is treeless and the wolves are watching

daddy wears a hat and trenchcoat

has flat feet and walks slow

they think he's a detective

mommy has a loud bark

the streets are full of deconstructionists

even philosophy has no meaning

the priests are praying

the mayor fiddles

while tenements burn

this is a deconstruction zone

philosophy has no meaning

everything is relative

to the cultural context

and the poor are eternal

the priests are praying

those housing projects

atop the great hill those housing projects

ghetto skyscrapers

the elevator to heaven

back to cypress avenue

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Appendix: skully

Originally called "sidewalk checkers," the early notes tried to describe the rules of the game. This became unnecessary because the rules of Skully (the game) could be found on Wikipedia.

These are some notes from which the poem emerged:

_sidewalk checkers (2000_ )

bottlecaps and dungarees

poor man's golf

thirteen boxes

of all the street games this is the one

a street game where the players are one with the street

crawling on the sidewalk

aiming shots like pool players

thirteen boxes drawn on a cement square

four in the corners

five through twelve midway on each side

the numbers alternate across the board

shots six through eight

and ten through twelve

must cross the deadman's zone

to land there is to die

until another player hits your checker out

to collect the reward of advancing his piece

the offered number of boxes

players shoot from box to box

make the box and shoot again

miss and wait for the next turn

be spiteful and hit another players piece

into deadman's land

or blast it off the board

thirteen boxes on a cement square

four in the corners

five through twelve midway on each side

thirteen in the middle

surrounded by deadman's zone

the numbers alternate across the board

shots six through eight

and ten through twelve

must cross the deadman's zone

to land there is to die . . .

This is an earlier draft of the final poem:

skully (2015)

we shoot our bottlecaps from square to square

flirting with deadman's zone

we squat we crawl we kneel

we lie on the cement

like pool players aligning difficult shots

this big city game demands

intimate contact with the street

and we love it with a summer frenzy

that worn slab of cement outside 514

sea gray and smooth almost as hallway marble

the only one like it on the block

in the bronx in the known world

unmarred by cracks

even the residue of long lost chewing gum

has become one with the surface

this man made stone made perfect by time

and we shoot with thumb and middle finger

and we grow calluses on fingers and palms

and we wear holes in our dungarees years before

it becomes fashionable and our knees blacken with soot

but we do not care about arthritis

we do not care about how stiff the iron on patches

on the knees of our jeans are before we wear

holes in them too and how our fathers say

who do you think i am rockefeller

when we ask for a dime to buy soda

we dare not mention ten bucks for new levis

they were children of the great depression

they are hard working men and if there is change

in their pockets we'll get that orange nehi

and cut down our pants to ragged legged shorts

and we'll save the cap and fill it

with melted crayons and we'll line up

at square one and shoot away

the summer afternoon

from square to square angling across deadman's zone

like our fathers went from poverty to war to thankless jobs

like the big boys flirt with

drugs police crime paternity

there is a wall around Berlin

the russians are building missile silos in cuba

and vietnam waits beyond the sunset of many childhood's

the line between victory and defeat is chalk thin

the thirteenth box is dead center

in deadman's zone

it takes a perfect shot in

back to skully

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Appendix: the tire man

The idea for the poem was listed in my notes, but I found no very early drafts. The poem emerged when I was constructing the manuscript during the summer of 2015.

The poem was written over the course of a few days. From first draft to the final edit, I changed the tense from past to present in these lines:

"tests have been returned and the professor says"

"there were no spitballs"

"and he threw a perfect game"

In the final edit, these lines:

"though the vectors involved and the probability

of repeatedly dropping the tire onto the exact spot

that gives it momentum and accurate path

can be explained but i left

the engineering program to become an english major

and the poetic beauty of it is enough for me"

become

"i cannot explain the vectors involved nor the probability

of repeatedly dropping a tire onto the exact spot

to give it sufficient momentum and an accurate path

i left the engineering program to become an english major

so the poetic beauty of it is enough for me"

back to the tire man

back to main table of contents

Appendix: a small but perfect world

The original notes were sketchy, and the original title suggested a focus on the plastic houses made by Bachmann. I had a pretty clear vision in my head of the track layout Dad usually used, and of where the accessories were usually placed. I did use the internet to refresh my memory, and I spent a bit of time looking at vintage Lionel and Plasticville products.

plasticville notes (7/28/15)

before the world trade center

there were clearing houses and discount stores

and my father worked on wall street

and the bargains came home

my future wife never knew

until a small plane crashed in saint mary's park

that she lived in a ghetto

i heard the same on the radio

after a minor riot

the world is crumbling around us

and we think this is the best

of all possible worlds

we build a world of illusion while the tenements decay around us

while the world of illusions crumble around us

my father has laid the track by hand

back to a small but perfect world

back to main table of contents

Appendix: the fountain of youth

An earlier version of this poem was published in _The Prose Poem: An International Journal._

the fountain of youth (1993)

the sewer backed up and the street filled with glowing green water and it all began when a neighborhood juvenile delinquent who was not very neighborly who robbed from friend and foe alike like he just didn't care lifted the manhole cover to show us the sights and we gathered round to watch in awe brown walls of waterbugs writhing like times square on new year's eve a few leapt up into daylight armor plated waterbugs the winged panzers of the cockroach army that mere sneakers could not demolish and we jumped back squealing and laughing then but not later and he liked the attention so he threw seven milk crates perfectly suitable for sitting down the shaft just to impress us but no one would sit there that night because the sewer backed up when the crew came to repair it and we watched the strange sight of something actually getting fixed and the street filled with glowing green water which the maintenance crews left like they just didn't care so for a week no one played outside and the shoppers and the commuters walked next to the buildings to avoid the chartreuse stench which took so long to recede the evergreen symbol of what the city thought of us like they just didn't care and of how we could not play on our own street which we would never forget though someday we might get lucky and hit the number or write a hit tune and move someplace where glowing green water would never happen like fifth avenue or sutton place without losing the ripened dignity of the poverty of youth

back to the fountain of youth

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Appendix: welcome to the mainland

welcome to the mainland: early work on the opening (4-15-14)

stagger from the atlantic's swell

to seek land legs on ellis island

floundering

through bureaucracy

and ferried to the shores

of manhattan where the streets

are awash with people

the bridge is magnificent

a temptation indeed

but brooklyn is the beginning

of a long island that disappears

east into the broad ocean

pointing back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

the bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

but brooklyn

leads to a long island that disappears

eastwards in the ocean

pointing back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

and you migrate north

across harlem and beyond hell gate

that beautiful borough beyond the wrestling waters

welcome to the mainland

behold the bronx

that beautiful borough beyond the rivers

there are parks and side streets

where your children can play

to that acorn peninsula

just beyond the hell gate

across harlem and beyond the hell gate

that juts from the continent

into the broad eastern ocean

that acorn peninsula beyond the rivers

your children will play in parks and on side streets

welcome to the mainland (5-6-14)

stagger from the atlantic's swell

seek land legs on ellis island

floundering through bureaucracy

and ferried to narrow streets awash

with humanity on the golden shores

of lower manhattan

the brooklyn bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

the lure of the long island

that stretches east and disintegrates

pointing back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

so you will migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor

yearning masses huddled and tossed

as the train rattles and rocks

through the wonders of the growing city

freedom is a peninsula

beyond the wrestling rivers

past the hell gate the golden door

opens to a world of valleys and ridges

where freedom

is a peninsula

welcome to the mainland

behold the bronx

that beautiful borough beyond the rivers

there are parks and side streets

where your children can play

freedom is a peninsula

just beyond the wrestling rivers

across harlem and beyond hell gate

that beautiful borough beyond the wrestling waters

welcome to the mainland

behold the bronx

that beautiful borough beyond the rivers

there are parks and side streets

where your children can play

to that acorn peninsula

just beyond the hell gate

across harlem and beyond the hell gate

that juts from the continent

into the broad eastern ocean

that acorn peninsula beyond the rivers

your children will play in parks and on side streets

this is not wherever it is you have come from

so you will migrate north

your ship has come in and it has left

you are tired and poor

and huddle with the yearning masses

while the train rattles to that peninsula

of freedom just beyond the wrestling rivers

so you will migrate north

your ship has come in and it has left

you are tired and poor and huddle

with the yearning masses while the train rattles

freedom is a peninsula

just beyond the wrestling rivers

so you will migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor yearning masses

huddled in the train that rattles and rocks

freedom is a peninsula

just beyond the wrestling rivers

so you will migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor yearning masses

huddled and tossed as the train rattles and rocks

freedom is a peninsula

just beyond the wrestling rivers}

welcome to the mainland (6-5-14)

stagger from the atlantic's swell

seek land legs on ellis island

floundering through bureaucracy

and ferried to narrow streets awash

with humanity on the golden shores

of lower manhattan

the brooklyn bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

but that alluring long island

stretches east and disintegrates

it points back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

so you migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor

yearning masses huddled and tossed

through the wonders of the growing city

as the train rattles and rocks

metal wheels grind upon metal rails

freedom is a peninsula

beyond the wrestling rivers of hell gate

and you have arrived

the brakes squeal the doors

to the new world open

welcome to the mainland

welcome to the bronx

where all seems possible

here subways whoosh

underground and roar through the sky

tenements rise in their wake

there are rooms for rent

and there is always room for one more

friend relative countryman

for the entire world

and the horizon fills

with brick and glass

behind every silver window lies a dream

which may or may not be fulfilled

and in the cold snuggling of dark winter

or the wriggling of humid summer nights

babies are conceived

and they are born

in america

this is not the land of your birth

though the native tongue remains

and the food tastes familiar

at dinnertime that old world aroma

wafts through the hallways

and the clatter of pots and pans

reverberates in the airshafts

where clotheslines sag with laundry readied

for the great assimilation of work and school

and prayers and curses in many languages

echo and rise to the heavens

there are churches and synagogues

and streetcorner preachers

and rooms where idealists

contemplate utopia

and the right to believe

or to not believe

your children will play

in sandlots and side streets

and parks and playgrounds

there will be times of prosperity

with work for all

and times of common desperation

there will be saloons and speak easies

and saloons once again

there will be vaudeville and movies

and all manner of entertainment

under the sun

and under the moon

and war will come and peace will come

again and again

and the cobblestones and the trolley tracks

will be paved over

and neighborhoods razed

and the pink bricks

of housing projects will rise like towers of babel

and the tenements will burn

and crumple and fall

and tourists will come and gape at the ruins

and ellis island will fall to ruin and be restored

and the bronx will burn to rubble and beget

pocket parks and duplexes and housing developments

to schools where teachers try

to wash away the old world

welcome to the mainland (10-10-14)

stagger from the atlantic's swell

seek land legs on ellis island

floundering through bureaucracy

and ferried to narrow streets awash

with humanity on the golden shores

of lower manhattan

the brooklyn bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

but that alluring long island

stretches east and disintegrates

it points back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

you migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor

yearning masses huddled and tossed

through the wonders of the growing city

as the train rattles and rocks

metal wheels grind upon metal rails

freedom is a peninsula

beyond the wrestling rivers of hell gate

and you have arrived

the brakes squeal the doors

to the new world open

welcome to the mainland

welcome to the bronx

where all seems possible

here subways whoosh

underground and roar through the sky

tenements rise in their wake

there are rooms for rent

and there is always room for one more

friend relative countryman

for the entire world

and the horizon fills

with brick and glass

behind every silver window lies a dream

which may or may not be fulfilled

and in the cold snuggling of dark winter

or the wriggling of humid summer nights

babies are conceived and they are born

in america

this is not the land of your birth

though the native tongue remains

and the food tastes familiar

at dinnertime that old world aroma

wafts through the hallways

and the clatter of pots and pans

reverberates in the airshafts

where clotheslines sag

with laundry readied for the great

assimilation of work and school

prayers and curses in many languages

echo and rise to the heavens

there are churches and synagogues

and streetcorner preachers

and rooms where idealists

contemplate utopia

and the right to believe

or to not believe

your children will play

in sandlots and side streets

and parks and playgrounds

there will be times of prosperity

with work for all

and times of common desperation

there will be saloons and speak easies

and saloons once again

ice cream parlors and candy stores

vaudeville and movies

all manner of entertainment

under the sun and under the moon

war will come and peace will come

again and again

and you will grow old and remember

those days of struggle and joy

those friends relatives neighbors

lost in a changing world

where streets disappear beneath

housing projects which rise

like towers of babel

belgian blocks and trolley tracks

drown in asphalt

and moses parts the land his great road

cleaves its heart

there will be exodus

poverty desolation and tragedy

tenements will burn and fall

there will rubble and more rubble

and anger and despair

and the years will pass

and hope will grow

like weeds in in the ruin

the survivors will fight

for their stake in paradise

and new americans will come

and the void will fill

with townhouses and pocket parks

and there will be new music

and new art and new words

and the aroma of exotic foods

will seep through the streets

and ellis island will be become a museum

and liberty will enlighten the world

welcome to the mainland (10-28-17)

stagger from the atlantic's swell

seek land legs on ellis island

floundering through bureaucracy

and ferried to narrow streets awash

with humanity on the golden shores

of lower manhattan

the brooklyn bridge is a masterpiece

a magnificent temptation

but that alluring long island

stretches east and disintegrates

it points back to the world

you sailed so long to leave

so you migrate north

your ship has come and it has left

you tired and poor

yearning masses huddled and tossed

by the rattle and rock of the train

metal wheel upon metal rail

grinding and sparking

through the wonders of the city

beyond hell gate to paradise

where the tenements are young

where freedom is a peninsula

with heat and indoor plumbing

the brakes squeal the doors

to the new world open

welcome to the mainland welcome

to the bronx where all seems possible

here subways whoosh

underground and roar through the sky

there are rooms for rent

and there is always room for one more

friend relative countryman

for one more lost soul

for one more exile

and the horizon fills with brick and glass

behind every silver window lies a dream

which may or may not be fulfilled

and in the cold snuggling of dark winter

or the wriggling of humid summer nights

babies are conceived and they are born

in america

this is not the land of your birth

though the native tongue remains

and the food tastes familiar

at dinnertime that old world aroma

wafts through the hallways

and the clatter of pots and pans

reverberates in the air shafts

where clotheslines sag with laundry

readied for the great assimilation

of work and school and pronounced

in many languages curses echo

through backyards and alleys

and prayers rise to the heavens

there are churches and synagogues

and streetcorner preachers

and rooms where idealists

contemplate utopia and the right

to believe or not to believe

there are times of prosperity

and times of common despair

and always the children play

in sandlot and side street

park and playground

the sound of laughter and joy and tears

there are saloons and speakeasies

and saloons once again

ice cream parlors and candy stores

vaudeville and movies

all manner of entertainment

under the sun and under the moon

war will come and peace will come

again and again and there will be

parades and memorials and protests

and you will grow old and remember

those days of struggle and joy

those friends relatives neighbors

lost in a changing world

where streets disappear and housing projects

spring forth like towers of babel

belgian blocks and trolley tracks

drown in rivers of asphalt

and moses parts the land

his great road cleaves its heart

there is exodus

poverty turmoil and tragedy

tenements burn and fall

there is rubble and more rubble

anger and desperation

ash and dust and broken bricks

and a spirit that suffers but does not die

and a hope that emerges

like weeds from the ruin

and the survivors will fight

and new americans will come

and the void will fill

with townhouses and pocket parks

there will be new music

new art and new words

and the aroma of exotic foods

will waft through the streets

fragrant and pungent

hopeful

and free

back to welcome to the mainland

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Appendix: america's favorite pastime

This earlier version is much longer than the final; it gives more background about my two miserable years in middle school.

america's favorite pastime (8/23/03)

and so it came to pass that the shortest kid in ninth grade was tired of the tallest kid in ninth grade not tired of the vertical difference but just damn tired of being pushed around so one bright sunny bronx schoolyard morning the short kid came with a baseball bat and chased the tall kid all around the schoolyard until the teachers stopped it and took the bat and sent us all to class it was a melting pot school where we had been dumped by the new york city board of education because the last school we attended was a bit wild with vandalism and gangs which upset a lot of the parents because we were the bright kids who were supposed to finish both seventh and eighth grades in one year but they had not finished building the school yet so we did not have full days of class until after new years which made us pretty darn bright because we finished both grades in a half year and at that rate we might graduate high school before completing puberty but someone must have complained because for ninth grade we were deployed to another school where there were no gangs no vandalism just a principal who did not want us in her stew because maybe we did not fit her recipe and maybe we were a bit indigestible so her plan seemed to be to burn us before any melting could occur and isn't it great this american pastime of bats and balls and watching the big guy take a fall unless you're a yankee fan which most of us were being from the bronx and all and the principal must have been a great yankee fan because she certainly loved beating up on us little guys that she didn't want ruining her nice school so she found a homeroom for us wherever space allowed in home ec on the floor in the gym and finally in the shop where she let us live out the remainder of our wonderful year at her delightful institution after decimating our class from thirty two to sixteen by pulling a few very clever tricks like having us retake the reading test because our grades were too high and declaring eighty-five the passing grade and making us stay after every day for extra classes even though it was not our fault that we spent the previous year at a school which was under construction and where gangs beat up anyone who wasn't violent and she wasn't nice about it either just came into the room one day and read off a list of names of kids who were being kicked out of the academically advanced program and being sent back to eighth grade in their respective ghetto schools where they could join gangs or get beat up or make themselves invisible which sent one of the girls crying and screaming down the hallway but what did the principal care she was just a little girl from some other neighborhood and this is america this is social darwinism only the strong survive only the toughest piece of meat does not get chewed like that short kid with his baseball bat that they took away but they couldn't stop him and after school he took out a baseball from his pocket and chased the tall kid all the way to the train station and is that not america's pastime the big guys beating on the little guys the little guys beating on the big guys and the spectators laughing glad they're not getting beat up and just hoping to survive

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Appendix: yankee fan

The process of revision included adding my mother to the opening section and checking my facts. Mel Stottlemyer did not hit a World Series home run. But on July 20, 1965, he hit an inside-the park grand slam into Yankee Stadium's Death Valley. I saw it on television, and probably confused that memorable moment with watching Stottlemyer pitch in the 1964 World Series.

yankee fan (6/25/04)

i wear my cap

the dark blue one embroidered with the white oversized NY

i bought for five bucks at an asian store on creston avenue

one of those converted newsstands that sells handbags and trinkets

statues and umbrellas and everything but candy and newspapers

like many shops on fordham road now do which makes

trips to the bronx interesting and i wear it

all over madison wisconsin where everyone is so

politically correct and motivated

by humanitarianism or legislation not to hurt

anyone's feelings but these friendly

and sensitive midwesterners are compelled to say hello

and like some landlocked progeny of the ancient mariner

they must catch my eye and tell me

with compulsive conviction that they hate the yankees

and i must smile and listen

to these hardworking middle americans

as they denounce good old american capitalism

at least as it applies to winning teams

but i am too polite to tell them

i mostly wear the cap to keep the sun out of my eyes

though i do have some recall

of kubek boyer and richardson

and an aging mantle hitting a home run

three balls two strikes two outs in the bottom of the ninth

to win the game and mel stottlemyre's world series home run

but i was too young to understand the game

and when i was old enough to really appreciate baseball

the yanks were so bad they had rocky colavito pitch

and the best catch i saw at the stadium

was made by a fat i mean overweight i mean corporally gifted woman

she had a straw hat with a three foot diameter and when the foul ball

bounced off a box seat rail and headed toward the field she held up her hat

the ball went right in

she might have been from the midwest but the fans

applauded the beauty of it

a standing ovation and we wanted to offer her a contract

but how can i explain this to those who are compelled to tell me

that they hate the yankees

while i am compelled to listen

i who was raised

in the era before lawyers and psychologists

in an environment so insensitive it invented the bronx cheer

i who do not hate

the cubs or the brewers or even the white sox

though i will not watch the braves

after all those america's team commercials

because this is america

and no american should be told who to root for

and that smiley faced cleveland indians' logo is too much

even for my politically incorrect taste

but i do not explain this

it would take too long and these friendly

fellow americans might ask

about my brooklyn accent even though i'm from the bronx

just like the yankees

so i let them talk and when their strange power of speech

is done and they are once again

congenial madisonians

i keep my cool and simply reply

the more you boo us the more fun it is to win

the more you hate us

the more

we enjoy it

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Appendix: the gambling leaguers

An earlier version of the poem was published in 1994 in _The Glacier Stopped Here: an anthology of poems by Dane County Writers._

the gambling leaguers (1994)

thus eternal youth fulfill the american dream

president and millionaire would trade all

for a few hot seasons on a winning team

a crisp uniform a sunny blue afternoon

the stark illumination of a muggy summer night

cheer of crowd crack of bat slap of leather

the game that could last forever if the pitching held

a battle of statistics and manipulating odds

win more than lose to stay ahead

what beauty in the grace of the great

in the arc of arm of ball of leaping body

sketched upon diamonds and the skillful passion

of these sandlot softballers our truly free agents

never to play before caesar in yankee stadium

only the umpire's thumb reveals their fate

these gambling leaguers these seasonal warriors

waging serious sport in parks and playgrounds

the childhood game fought with adult ferocity

against a background of bridge and school

of factory and tenement a colorful postcard

of the ordinary and no one asks autographs

just victory over despair

on land investors don't want or can't buy at fifty

or a hundred per position or more

sidebets among spectators all serious to win

stake the rent on a big game and root for the best

the winners are rich the losers poor

any game may redistribute the wealth

the fans live and die in suspense

rookies and veterans perpetually prepare

it takes years of hustling to make a good team

and like the politician like the entrepreneur

they play till the money runs out

till legs no longer run till arms no longer throw

and vanish in the memory of glory

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Appendix: lost again on old subways

From my notebook (February, 1990) written after the dream:

riding on an empty subway train

we pull into third avenue 138th street

and the lights go out

this is a dream i had last night

riding on a blind subway train

it was spooky because i was going to the wrong

part of the bronx and would never get home

without going all the way back

and getting on the right train

and i wasn't alone at all

i was standing or sitting before or beside

a strange knapsack with many pockets

which folded out to have

a sink in the middle

and i wasn't alone

there was a laughing lunatic

somewhere in the darkness of the closed door subway car

as it wound through the black tunnel and rose

in the dark night

These lines appear on the next page; they suggest that I did not get on the 4 train at 125th Street, but stayed on the Pelham Bay train.

riding the subway home

i do not get off at 125 street

i do not on the right train

that will take me to my new home

and i don't know why i don't

so i wind up back in the south bronx

the train pulls into the third avenue station

which was always deserted

and the lights go out

this is all a dream i had last night

riding in a blind subway train

i was all alone but was not

In November, 1990 I came up with these lines:

the subway stops between stations

an empty care the lights flicker out

night slips in through the tunnel

the laughing lunatic laughs

and laughs as though the night

were terribly silly

you have no newspaper to hide behind

and the doors are locked

As I worked on the poem, I focused on the darkness and the laughter. And on an image that I had of the train flying over my parents' apartment and St. Luke's Church. A surreal image, as the 6 train ran underground through my old neighborhood. The image may have been part of the dream. Or just my imagination.

back to lost again on old subways

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Appendix: randall's island

From the 1996 version to the final, there were a few changes to the first section. The second section underwent much revision; I took out references to the colonial history and included the island's subsequent use as home to a house of refuge for juvenile delinquents, a foundling hospital, and an idiot asylum--their name, not mine. Until Robert Moses came along, the island was a place for the unwanted. In the 1930s, Moses had the institutions closed and converted the island into a park with a stadium for athletic events. Downing Stadium opened in time to host the Olympic trials in 1936, and hosted a variety of sports and music events over the years.

The early and final versions of the third section of the poem begin in the same place: the plaza outside the stadium. Both versions include similar imagery: the parakeet, the filling-in of the Little Hell Gate, the psychiatric hospital, the irrelevant bridge. And the rabbits. I was fascinated when I saw a rabbit run across a field on the island one evening as we drove home. Most parks in New York City had squirrels. But a real live wild rabbit! Wow!

The research that led to the early version of Randall's Island's was done from _The Bronx and Its People: A History 1609--1927._ I came across it at the Wisconsin Historical Society Library, and after it was removed from their collection, I purchased the three volume set, which I found on the internet. The internet also gave me information about the post-colonial history of Randall's Island. And about how this paradise of my youth has been transformed into a sports complex, with a golf driving range, tennis center, and numerous fields.

I prefer to remember it as it was when I was young.

randall's island (9-11-96)

I

here the sky is blue and the water dark

and the bronx invisible

here clouds roll off the continent

goodbye goodbye and rain upon the old world

if it still exists

here the city meets ancient tides

at the corner of harlem and hell gate

distinctions obscure

where is the end where the beginning

how many have drowned like names in the wind

chaotic currents chaotic streets

an orderly megalithic shoreline

curbs the wrestling rivers

of the fishdead metropolis

rats dance on this fallen stonehenge

i cast my line into the emptiness

launch my kite to the sun

there is no one to meet

this is a forgotten island

inconvenient as childhood

even i am not here

II

the confluence of memory and dream

a prehistoric erosion from the mainland

time is a muddle

of dandelions roaring in

sunlight

the west wind the shimmering patient grass

ghost canoes wander the wampum shores

an economy of periwinkle broken

by dutch counterfeiters the guns

of revolution line the muddy kill

wayward boys drift from destitute studies

the great bridge born of the great depression

immigrant artisans craft this park

fight in wars move to the suburbs

the flag flies in the asphalt plaza

gray and empty

this is american soil conquered and paid for

with blood with wealth with concrete and steel

the rise and the fall of the beautiful bronx

what wetlands what woodlands what whispers

of lost life hush these broad lawns

wisps of arson smog the horizon

III

trimmed hedges low walls red brick

i balance between fantasy and failure

no one sees my awkwardness

green ticket booths silver railings

herd the crowd which is not here

to games which are not happening

the bronze discuss thrower is naked and alone

new deal art lost in the new age

the sleeping stadium awaits its heroes

there is solitude in the multitude of the city

there is solitude on this vacuum of an island

beneath the pillars of the triborough bridge

i learn insignificance

in this sacred place we bury

parakeets in shoe boxes when they die

while feasting gulls circle and caw

the seasons pass the garbage landfill

closes the little hell gate its furious waters

beat the irrelevant bridge to the psychiatric hospital

what insane dreams wander the wasteland

darkness drizzles and rabbits run mad across evening fields

night awakens the tenements and i am not here

wisps of arson smog the horizon and i must return

i must

back to randall's island

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Appendix: triborough bridge: suspension

Much of the writing process involved getting the words and phrases into a form that could re-create the shape of the bridge. The description had to be accurate, and I used the internet to look at photos of the bridge, over and over again, and to read about the terms used to describe its structure. I wanted to layout the poem horizontally, but that would have meant spreading it across two pages, and it would have not have worked for the printed book. This poem is followed by a double-paged poem, two single-paged poems, and two more double-paged poems. My rule for double-paged poems is to begin on the left page and continue on the right. Spreading it across two pages would negatively impact the layout of all that followed. So I laid it out vertically. If the reader turns the page sideways, the shape of the bridge appears. The early version of the poem below was too long to fit vertically on a single page. Closing the space between the lines would not do, as the shape of the bridge would not be as obvious, at least not to my eye, so the final version required me to cut "sun and storm" and "atop two ornamental towers." The word "cathedral" also was removed.

triborough bridge suspension span (6/8/15)

the

sky

road rises

quickly above green

shores and gray waters

from astoria to wards island from anchorage to massive anchorage

through sun and storm

graceful cables curve

sturdy

blue

arches

crowned

with art deco lanterns

atop two ornamental towers

steel cathedrals that aspire to heaven above the turbulent hell gate

bearing the stress of humanity

festooning the night

with man

made

stars

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Appendix: triborough bridge: stasis

This is the version as it appeared in _POETS_ on the line in 1996:

triborough bridge (1996)

where is everybody going

the best part of this bridge is the middle

between blue heaven and swirling hellgate

here the wind murmurs through cables

and words are invisible

why must every polluted river be crossed

i savor the land for what it is

the primordial musk of the imagination

gone money mad

skyline of penthouse and project

life submerged behind tiny windows

like stars in the sleepless city night

o the homeless home beneath broad buttresses

beyond obscure shorelines

yes even humanity seems beautiful from a distance

green growth upon landfills

i can't see the sewage for the waves

the sanitation plant the abandoned asylum

where lunatics laughed at pedestrians

long gone the days of open windows

where i never walked

reality is an imposition

the manhattan psychiatric hospital

stares at my feet

wards island park

misfits picnic beneath trees

if sanity permits

o the suicidal tides

the war memorial

on the astorian shore

the past is no more

the future is but the loss of the present

leap to the sky

i'll not fly

jump to the water

never to swim again

walk ashore

i live and die in the eternal city

where the meek await to inherit

what is left of the earth

o the hovering the hovering

This is a version from June, 2015:

where is everybody going

the best part of this bridge is the middle

between the war memorial

and the manhattan psychiatric hospital

between the above and the below

to the east the grim smile

of the railroad bridge over the bucolic hellgate

to the west the land of opportunity

and misfortune

here the wind murmurs through cables

and words are invisible

why must every polluted river be crossed

savor the land for what it is

the primordial musk of the imagination

gone money mad

the magnificent skyline

a forest of penthouse and project

where homeless home in the shadows

humanity is beautiful from a distance

the landfills bloom with green growth

frivolous waves drown the sewage

the sanitation plant the abandoned asylum

where lunatics laughed at pedestrians

as they walked across the sky

in the longago days

of carefree strolls

in wards island park

happy people picnic beneath trees

if sanity permits

reality is an imposition

the past is no more

the future is but the loss of the present

leap to the sky

not to fly

jump to the water

never to swim again

walk ashore

to live and die in the eternal city

where the meek await to inherit

what is left of the earth

o the hovering the hovering

The above version was a stepping stone to the almost-final version, which was completed in September, 2015. I added more directions: the words "north" and "south" and "above" and "below." The word "stasis" is added to the text; I think this helps to posit the bridge as a focal point.

triborough bridge: stasis (9/13/15)

where is everybody going

the best part of this bridge is the middle

between here and there

between above and below

between all the points

on the invisible compass

of our existence

between scylla and charibdis

to the east the grim smile

of the railroad bridge over the bucolic hellgate

to the west the land of opportunity and misfortune

the magnificent skyline

a forest of penthouse and project

where the homeless home in the shadows

humanity is beautiful from a distance

the landfills bloom with green growth

and frivolous waves drown the effluence

of the money mad world

to the north the sewage treatment plant

that will never make us clean

and the manhattan psychiatric hospital

and the center for the criminally insane

and the abandoned asylum

where inmates laughed at pedestrians

as they walked across the sky

in the longago days of carefree strolls

before random violence

and muggings in broad daylight

and the happy people of wards island

picnic beneath trees

to the south children splash

in the clear blue water of astoria pool

imagining that they are sharks

or whales or submarines

imagining that summer will never end

reality is such an imposition

like the grim stone of the war memorial

just beyond their youthful laughter

above the clouds drive by

on their ceaseless commute

below there is bedlam and mayhem and the tides

swirl over suicides and shipwrecks

but here in the middle is peace and stasis and the music

of wind murmuring through cables

why must every polluted river be crossed

here words are invisible

and the past is no more

the future is but the loss of the present

leap to the sky

not to fly

jump to the water

never to swim again

walk ashore

to live and die in the eternal city

where the meek await to inherit

what is left of the earth

o the hovering the hovering

back to triborough bridge: stasis

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Appendix: triborough bridge: genesis

This is an earlier version. When I edited it for the final draft, I wanted to limit it to one page while keeping enough of the details about the grand scope of the bridge-building project. The final version eliminated many unnecessary "ands." Italics were added to help the reader through the poem. In this case, the italics do not indicate anything directly stated by any being, mortal or otherwise. But based on my research, they seem appropriate to this fictionalized speaker.

triborough bridge: genesis (June, 2015)

in the beginning there was the land and the water

and the water separated the mainland from the islands

and moses said may there be a great bridge

to join the islands to the islands and the islands to mainland

and it was good and moses said

may there be roads and highways to lead to the great bridge

that joins the islands to the islands and the islands to mainland

and it was good and moses said

may there be parks and playgrounds

for the people in the cars that drive

on the roads and highways that lead to the great bridge

that joins the islands to the islands and the islands to mainland

and it was good and moses said

may there be money to build the great bridge

and the roads and highways and parks and playgrounds

and behold there was money

and the nation went to work and it was good

and steel mills lit their furnaces

and cement factories reopened

and forests were felled to make forms for the cement

and barges were lashed together to carry girders over the water

and towers rose and cables were wound and anchored

and the great bridge joined the islands to the islands

and the islands to mainland and there were parks and parkways

and the president came for the opening ceremony

and the people came and rushed to be first

to pay the toll and cross the bridge

and the more people kept coming

to pay the toll and cross the bridge

and more people came and more money

money that could be used to build more bridges

and moses looked down

and it was all good

but he did not rest

back to: triborough bridge: genesis

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Appendix: triborough bridge: kinesis

This is an earlier version from June, 2015. As it evolved, I tweaked some of the wording, and changed the last eight lines from past to present tense. The addition of the line: "and we have no money to give to trolls" seemed appropriate to the context.

triborough bridge: kinesis (June, 2015)

an automobile vortex

where three bridges meet

its design is an act of genius

twelve directions of traffic

twenty two lanes that do not intersect

cars can go from here to there to another there

but this is america and there are tolls

to pay and toll booths to collect the money

and police to collect those

who do not pay the toll

but we are kids and oblivious

to the wonders of engineering

when we walk the bronx span to randall's island

we run and scream and play

in the cement towers

and we want to ascend the spooky staircase

and explore the walkway to manhattan

but mommy herds us to playground

where she can sit in the shade and talk to the matron

while the cars whirl overhead

and harry sits on his hill

a small patch of grass bordered by an access ramp

beneath the grand junction

where the harlem span t-bones the viaduct

harry in this undershirt

drinking his quart of beer hidden

in a brown paper bag

basking in the sun

alone in the quiet

he did not build bridges

he did not have a car

he worked hard and died in poverty

they gave his ashes to the winds

and he intersected

with everywhere

in the great universe

and the cars sped by

and did not notice

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Appendix: astoria park

This is the ending of the 2008 version:

this pool was built for the huddled masses

doff those work clothes and be free

bathing suit naked

beneath the lightning before the wind

in a distant memory of childhood

the iron bars keep us safe

we will not walk into the wine dark tides

of the hell gate and never return

we simply do not leave

at night underwater lights shine

like the new jerusalem

the gray skies darkening with stars

the spirit rising over radiant water

we simply will not leave

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Appendix: the banks of brook avenue

When I composed in pen, preferably a fountain pen with a smooth tip, I often copied what I had written and tried to keep going. As I began doing more writing on the computer, I used copy and paste to advance the poem's direction. This is evident in this very early draft:

the banks of brook avenue (6/14/98)

on the banks of brook avenue the old mill stream

lies buried in a great sewer beneath belgian paving stones

beneath the asphalt river where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

from the banks of brook avenue

i see

the great river ocean

beneath the shades of the tenements

i became a man

idyllic childhood beneath the shades of tenements

beneath the shady tenements

brook avenue girl

brook avenue grass

the pool hall

elephants in the alley behind the puerto rico theater

and brook avenue runs

straight through the crooked world

from railroad yard

north to the meat market

and curves and disappears

into the heart of the bronx

where tenements burn and die

and stare black eyed and hollow

like the dead waiting for the soul

from the primordial slime

while america grows

we reach the moon

we fight communism

brook avenue never ends

and i was a child beneath shady tenements

an idyllic childhood beneath shady tenements

of brook avenue

on the banks of brook avenue where the old mill stream

became a sewer

on the banks of brook avenue the old mill stream

was buried in a sewer that was buried in a street

covered in paving stones and covered in asphalt

and the millbrook housing projects rise to the heavens

above the tarpaper roofs where pigeons and junkies

forget their way home

on the banks of brook avenue i saw

the world as it is

and i dreamed of the millbrook

drowned in the sewer so long ago

and babbling beneath the belgian paving stones

on the banks of brook avenue i saw

the world as it is

and i dreamed of the millbrook

babbling beneath the belgian paving stones

long drowned in the sewer

beneath the asphalt river where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

on the banks of brook avenue i saw

the world as it is

and the sun beat down

our sweat fell to the ground

the bootblacks sweat fell to the ground

the horizon of tenements

and i dreamed of the old mill stream

babbling beneath the belgian paving stones

where horses clopped

long drowned in the sewer

of civilization

beneath the asphalt river where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

In the next version, the first thirteen lines have emerged in their final form.

the banks of brook avenue (6/23/98)

and brook avenue runs

straight through the crooked world

from railroad yard

north to the meat market

and curves and disappears

into the heart of the bronx

where tenements burn and die

and stare black eyed and hollow

like the dead waiting for the soul to rise

and america flies to the moon

and america drops bombs

and america makes war on crime and drugs

but brook avenue never ends

it twists through the capillaries of the survivors

the straight reminder that civilization

is not heaven that the world

could be more beautiful

and the old mill stream was buried

in a sewer that was buried in a street

and the belgian paving stones where horses clopped

was buried in plain asphalt

and the millbrook housing projects rise to the heavens

above the tarpaper roofs where pigeons and junkies

forget their way home

and the brook babbles beneath the surface

and the brook finds its way through the underworld

to the ocean that brings

immigrants to the new world

and on the banks of brook avenue i see

the world as it is

and the sun beat down

and we beat beauty into old shoes

we earned our living

one dollar at a time

we vote for our kings

and the police beat whom they wish

and the strong beat the weak

and the women walk to store to church to playground

and the children play beneath shady tenements

where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind . . .

The next version has a direction for the poem's ending, though there will be some rearrangement of the lines in the final draft:

the banks of brook avenue (6/28/98)

and brook avenue runs

straight through the crooked world

from railroad yard

north to the meat market

and curves and disappears

into the heart of the bronx

where tenements burn and die

and stare black eyed and hollow

like the dead waiting for the soul to rise

and america flies to the moon

and america drops bombs

and america makes war on crime and drugs

but brook avenue never ends

and the old mill stream lies long buried

in a great sewer beneath the great street

and the belgian paving stones where horses clopped

lie covered in asphalt where automobiles sail

from the bronx kill to the american mainland

and the millbrook housing projects rise to the heavens

above tarpaper roofs where pigeons and junkies

forget their way home

and the brook babbles beneath the surface

and the brook finds its way through the underworld

to the ocean that brings

immigrants to the new continent

and on the banks of brook avenue i see

the world as it is

and the sun beats down

and the bootblacks beat beauty into old shoes

we earn our living one dollar at a time

we vote for our kings

and the police beat whom they wish

and the strong beat the weak

and the women walk to store to church to playground

and the children play beneath shady tenements

where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

and the children laugh and the children cry

on the banks of brook avenue

where childhood is idyllic

and the world could not be more beautiful

and the sun sets and the night rises

and the darkness of heaven and the darkness of civilization

and the sighs of the lonely and the sighs of lovers

the children dream and the children wait to be born

The next version develops the middle of the poem by elaborating on what the immigrants do and by expanding the lines about the bootblacks:

the banks of brook avenue (7/17/98)

and brook avenue runs

straight through the crooked world

from railroad yard

north to the meat market

and curves and disappears

into the heart of the bronx

where tenements burn and die

and stare black eyed and hollow

like the dead waiting for the soul to rise

and america flies to the moon

and america drops bombs

and america makes war on crime and drugs

but brook avenue never ends

and the old mill stream lies long buried

in the great sewer beneath the great street

of the great borough of the bronx

and the founding fathers are buried beneath their gravestones

and the indian villages deconstruct beneath factories

and the belgian paving stones where horses clopped

lie covered in asphalt where automobiles drift

from the bronx kill to the american mainland

and the millbrook housing projects rise to the heavens

above tarpaper roofs where pigeons and junkies

forget their way home

and the brook babbles beneath the surface

and the brook finds its way through the underworld

to the ocean that brings

immigrants to the new continent

they build skyscrapers and railroads

they fight wars and they play baseball

they make money and move to the grand concourse

they make more money and move to the suburbs

or they remain impoverished and searching

for brook avenue grass for brook avenue women

for a steady man for a steady job

for the ship that sails to paradise

but the winters are cold in unheated apartments

and fire hydrants flood the summer streets with naked toddlers

and on the banks of brook avenue i see

the world as it is

and the sun beats down

and the bootblacks toil and sweat drops from their brows

and the bootblacks beat beauty into old shoes

and the bootblacks earn a living one dollar at a time

in america where we vote for our kings

and the police beat whom they wish

and the strong beat the weak

and the women walk to store to church to playground

and the children play beneath shady tenements

where boughs of streetlights

do not dance in the wind

and the children laugh and the children cry

on the banks of brook avenue

and the sun sets and the night rises

and the pool hall grows smoky and serious

and the children dream and the children have nightmares

and the darkness of heaven and the darkness of civilization

and the sighs of the lonely and the sighs of lovers

are indistinguishable

on the banks of brook avenue

where childhood is idyllic

and the world could not be more beautiful

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