Archive for the ‘New York City’ category
Roofers in Downtown NYC
August 8, 2012Olympics On Board (NYPD) – Friday Flash 55
August 3, 2012
NYPD cruiser noses one spot on riverside, again, again.
Crowd peers over railing, seeking the suspicious. Six months back, men in wetsuits retrieved a baby carriage (empty), but who knows what now? A corpse? A bomb? (Could get lucky.)
Inside boat’s cabin, synchronized divers jackknife into water blue as sky, again, again.
All suddenly transfixed.
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Here’s my Friday Flash 55. True Story. Unfortunately, the pic I got shows the TV scanning the (I think) Chinese team rather than the turquoise swimming pool but you get the idea. Tell it to the G-Man.
And dive into a great weekend.
And speaking of diving! Check out my very silly (but fun) novel Nose Dive, for those interested in musicals, cheese and downtown NYC, or just in escapist fun.
One Tip To/Of Manhattan
July 18, 2012
Fluorescents, light on train
July 2, 2012
Park Bench, shaded, lit, leafy (night/day NYC)
June 29, 2012
Beyond Fleece-Enlightened Use Of Used Plastics
May 9, 2012
400 pounds of used bottles, cake tins, egg crates, and assorted packaging made light by Katharine Harvey. At the World Financial Center, downtown NYC, through May 11.
“Here Sounds The City” (A Fleurette? Maybe. Agh!)
May 7, 2012
Here Sounds in City
Here sounds in city; hard to tell
each source, as if a starting bell
triggered buck-shot reverberation,
a clanging-to sensation from a scattered knell–
Neighbor? Or a siren blocks away?
A din downstairs? Or, in ceiling’s sway?
But some tones sound inside the heart–
we hear those with a grasping start; they break our day,
not just with decibellic pierce
(though tuned at times to volume fierce):
a neon cry, you bitch, a crack
of sob; a dog’s strained bark, its back fur raised in tiers;
the loud and hipster’s swank and file;
the dumpster 3 A.M.–the pile
of what we were last week acrashing–
and (at it again) the smashing of coupled bile.
But the sound I’m trying to get
at–that gets to me–that, when met,
uplifts me to a golden mean
(present perhaps in every scene though I don’t let
myself much feel such measured calm)–
is that softly intervaled psalm
of a somehow-urban mourning dove–
a healing pulse that sounds in love though every balm
seems petrified where blocked cement
must be pushed by. Yet, the call’s ascent
makes all that forces its stubborn way
through brick—weeds, worry, will—say ah, nest the moment.
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This is my attempt at a Fleurette – a rather odd form – AABA (with a extra long fourth line that internally rhymes with B – the third line.) I wrote it as part of a challenge posted by the poetry blog With Real Toads.
The mourning dove is that wonderful bird whose call lilts so wistfully and that can, amazingly, be sometimes heard even here in New York City.
MayDay Night Lower Manhattan
May 1, 2012
MayDay Night Lower Manhattan
Helicopters strap the sky here as
the President speaks from Afghanistan, of
the deaths that laid
their ash a block from where I sit and so
many more since.
Earnestness
in the half-shadows below his
eyes, and I wish hard
for time to pass, to get, fast, to whatever
date he speaks of–that date that date that date
while copters buzz-saw the night, weedwhacking
lamplit peace, and I wonder
whether they are on the look-out for
terrorists or 99 percenters?
Nearly every wall here bordering Wall, so is it
retribution or redistribution that
they target?
I don’t know, only that
the endless tomtom (blades blades blades blades)
triggers a quiver in my innards, and I feel
thwap thwap
histrionic, yes, still
buzz
like a woman whose husband–New York–
has beaten her enough that
she listens hard now
for his return, any love left pleated
with dread.
Is his step heavy on the stairs? Is his lurch hard? Goddammit
they are really coming
close—
though what she mainly hears is her own
strained breath, her hovering heart, each
swallow.
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Agh! A new poem written for dVerse Poets Open Link Night, hosted by Natasha Head (Tashtoo), under surveillance of endless helicopters down here in Lower Manhattan (even as I hope that Obama’s speech means we are moving closer to some kind of negotiated peace in Afghanistan.)
Hep Cats On New York City Morning – 11th day of National Poetry Month
April 11, 2012
New York City Morning
It was grey that day
on Broadway and Dey,
greyer still beneath the scaffolding,
where a guy stood not even half-holding
a cat, that sat
upon his head.
It was not a Seussian feline,
(you know, the Cat-in-the-Hat kind),
but a cat worn as a hat, rather like
a stovepipe (without
the Lincoln hype) and
with fur, of course,
and purr (I assume)
and a tail instead
of a brim.
Honestly,
the guy didn’t hold on to it at all–
though the cat was two feet tall,
when seated–which he was
because
there was really no room
for him to stand
on the guy’s head.
The guy did stead-
y the cat, shifting shoulders and weight
in a levered stand-still gait,
a no-step dance of balancing.
But it looked precarious–
hidden claws nefarious–
also heavy–given the
size of the cat hat.
I looked, but kept moving up Broadway,
heading, as I do that time of day
to my subway stop,
not stopping to talk to the guy,
or to his cat either, this being,
after all, New York City.
This is my poem for the 11th day of National Poetry Month. (It was inspired by all the New York City poems posted lately by Claudia Schoenfeld and Brian Miller of dVerse Poets Pub. And also by the guy on Broadway with the cat on his head. Unfortunately, my battery was dead so I did not get a photo.)
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