Cityscape 1
Let the aroma of need waft across the river to New Jersey: all the snow and hills, a sky that moves and moves. I saw a rose in the clouds, I saw happiness on fire.
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At least once a week
I walk into the city of bricks
where the rubies grow
and the killers await
the coming of doves and cats.
I pass by the homes of butchers
and their knives sharpened by insomnia
to the river of black sails
and the torn-up sea and the teeth of dogs.
She waits for me in a narrow bed,
watching the rain
that gathers on the broken street
and the weak light of dusk
and the singing trees.
Let the aroma of need waft across the river to New Jersey: all the snow and hills, a sky that moves and moves. I saw a rose in the clouds, I saw happiness on fire.
for Karen Bentivenga
Sometimes in the heat of the snow you want to cry out for pleasure or pain like a bell. And you wind up holding each other, listening to the in-between despite the abyss at the edge of the table. Hell. Mulgrew Miller plays like a big bad spider, hands on fire, the piano trembling like crystal, the taste and smell of a forest under water. The bartender made us a drink with butterfly wings and electric wire. Bitter cold outside, big silence, a whale growing inside us.
God likes to be played like a piano.
Dawn glows with sailors dancing in the eye of a storm
by the river of black water. These days
things make sense under the green and yellow
and brown sky of Granada and I wear a tie as penance
for the sins of my navel. The saints of the north
and the saints of the south fly by dropping scorpions
down my neck and those women
with fire in their eyes drink melon juice and wink.
I play billiards on the other side of town
thinking bone in and bone out is the legacy of canines.
The camouflage, the hunt, the war of ice and water.
God knows. He clinks all day and night.
Fly me to the moon. Yes, I’d rather be sleeping.
A slender, tender rain comes over Granada
and the storm passes and the city sighs.