Found a poem,left by a officeron the sidewalkof an unnoticeable building.Like the City’s violation checkerstuck a vivid ticketin your windshield,but for passerby.What did the poet say?We are made of carbon,all in our current formsby chance.By creation.By conspiring.
Tag: city life
In Our Taxi
In our taxi
we take a shortcut
through 30th St.,
which I wouldn’t walk.
Which doesn’t seem
to end but carry on
with warehouses,
indefinitely.
And with the broken
streetlight disappearing
address numbers,
all graffiti, upturned
trash or shopping carts,
shattered shadows
into hulking ones…
We were in Detroit
or Los Angeles, maybe
Baltimore.
I think it is the
longest street
I’ve ever seen.
The Good, The Hard, The Daily
I sit down to write a poem
and find nothing waiting
to be voiced. There is
the liquid purple sunrise
that lingers for me to wake
now that it is fall. And there are
the two sleeping babies
I have just left, one chattering
into the bars of her crib.
There is the tight flutter
in my chest I can’t name.
But all these things are
already being appreciated.
There is a couple waiting
at the crosswalk, who turn
one after the other to point
at the brilliance of the new day.
The faces of the skyscrapers
are glowing gold, for everyone,
even the ones who might prefer to be
heading the other way, home.
We all know the pattern.
Seen From the Early Morning Bus
Biker whose helmet
has a blinking
row of lights.
See me.
I want to
stay alive.
See me.