Cast Wide for Third Eye

It’s got to be

real early

before cab brakes

whistle like clarinets

and the corner bum

snores Sam Cooke

The darkness

of these early hours

used to draw the eye downward

wary of cracked pavement,

looking for the sure step

but there’s less of that these days,

the sidewalk is smoother—

maybe not so many broken windows

I’m not sure it speaks to progress

because, well—

The school kids will soon start

their morning march

And I know for a fact

that their classrooms

are split still:

cleaved wide open

Hey, Ms. Johnson,

what do you have to say

to tri-lingual kids

who used to slalom

open manholes

in their strollers

like stock car racers?

I don’t know if this is progress,

or that we’re just more

eager to apply

lipsticks to pigs’ lips

Listen: can’t we just dispense

with cosmetics?

We’re a lot less eager

for the gastroenterologist,

optometrist;

stay away from the guts

don’t need to correct vision

where can I look for collective wisdom?

Workshop Result: Magnetic North (updated)

Magnetic North

All my books have missing pages
now fastened to the plaster,
or grafted onto my skin:
mile markers and compass needles both—
the snapped branch
that can put you on my trail
if you care to follow me
through the brush
and the thicket

Don’t worry:

I’ve cleared the thorn bushes,

laid planks across streams,

and built bridges over

roaring rivers

You’ll need to be running

at full bore
to leap frog

super-highways
that stretch serpentine—
mountains high,
valley's low

Pick your way through the decades,

I’ve a route mapped for you:

I know it intimately,

been there and back too many times!

Yeah, I'm living whole lifetimes over here

three or four at a go!

Even so,

when you tell me—sometimes—
that you'd like to take a look, sometime

I have to steady my breath

like it was my very first time

So I need you to hurry, just this once

and I don't care if it's only curiosity

that finally wins out.
I don't need to see your calculus:

You are here!

Unbutton my shirt and travel overland

the length of my spine—
Seine to Seville

Woodstock to these city streets

You are right here
and I bet you stay all night.

---

My good friend Megan S., herself a really engaging writer and phenomenal poet, offered a constructive critique. Here's some of what she sent:

[referring to the poem's beginning] ...the words link up and do something nice, but i feel like they need more anchoring.

...there [are] so many great phrases like "stretch serpentine" and "pick your way" even though i wish the pick your way part were more visceral. yeah, maybe that's it. the poem starts laying itself down like [particular] train tracks and then around the middle it seems to become these [other, though similar] train tracks you are aware of having imagined and you start going, well this is what else is in my head...and i just want more train tracks to lead to the calculus part which is for sure more steel and bolts. and the end is the last bang of that hammer, which is great, i love that couplet.

Do you think I addressed these concerns without fundamentally altering the original piece (posted below)? Also, any other perspectives out there? I would very much appreciate the commentary!
  

Workshop #1

Let me pitch an idea:

I need spaces where I can gather with other writers and glean some sound criticism of what I offer here. Propinquity of space is unnecessary; perhaps, internet anonymity will even facilitate more honesty. What do you all think?*

I wrote this on the train today. It has a way to go, but I'm pleased with the start.

Magnetic North

All my books have missing pages
now fastened to the plaster,
or grafted onto my skin:
mile markers and compass need both--
the snapped branch
that can put you on my trail
 if you care to follow
through the brush
and the thicket

Leap frog super-highways
that stretch serpentine--
mountains high,
valley's low;

pick your way through the decades,
yeah, I'm living whole lifetimes over here
three or four at a go!

You tell me--sometimes--
that you'd like to take a look,
sometime.

But I don't care if it's only curiosity
I don't need to see your calculus:

You are here:
unbutton my shirt and travel overland,
the length of my spine
Seine to Seville

You are right here
and I bet you stay all night.

*[note: I am fully aware there are very few of "you" at out present juncture. That's okay; I'm coming for you.]

Brooklyn Dervish

 Around and around, a thousand revolutions

             Around and around, with ever increasing speed

                        Around and around, won't you join her?

                                   Around and around, all through the night

This night--
I saw a woman spinning
on the street corner
like a Brooklyn dervish,
holey sneakers
smoothing the concrete,
kicking up gravel
and old candy wrappers                                        

This, the story
of her life:
ecstatic visions
born of mean streets,
muttering mantras
that will likely go
unheard & unheeded—
always have been
why expect
different this evening?                                       

I try to listen,
I want to see
what I might learn
but quickly find
I lack the vocabulary;

my palms
are too soft--
my shirt cuffs
unfrayed                                       

I have nothing to offer
but cold change
culled from couch cushions

I wouldn’t dare interrupt.

There and Back Again

Did a Hoboken stumble
as pretext to see family,
wanted to exchange secrets;
we bartered,
and tried to puzzle out a generation's
skeletons and revelations
through crowds of teens
being cited by the badge--
Just look at 'em strut and preen!


Back across the water
I want to forget the others
Want to pull a splinter from my own eye
So I:
Knocked twice, again, once more
Had to see friends
with whom revolution is a given,
where the question is not "why"
but "how?"


And even they tell me
that nagging melancholy is best forgotten
I say: "Sorry, if I need help, 3/2 time is my psychotherapy."


But they might be right,
and later tonight
I'll take
Brooklyn high-life
under my knife--
Blunted.
Night-time boomline
has my eyes wet with moonshine


Dance a little.


Meet Stacey,
who took my lips
and told me she was married
in the same breath!


And in the night-time
she looked mighty fine
but daytime sunshine
showed me her years
and her tears:
fine wrinkles at eyelid's crease
looking for some one
so she could speak her piece


Still I wondered
why she was here
why she choked talking 9-5
and kept smoothing out her skirt
and squirming in her skin


Then, my answer:


Jersey girl
with lipstick
an inch thick
grabbed a great handful
of nappy dreads
and said:


              "Oh my God. Your hair is just too pretty!"

I say:
              "Just when the fuck did white folks decide that shit
                was okay?"
Anyway,
It's 8:30 am
Sunlight pouring in
on me--last man standing, come undone
Parted ways with the fray
got lost in Israel as only Brooklyn does it


Tried to find some cigarettes
but people
"Don't smoke here! A very good thing!"
Exclaimed the store manager to me
as I pressed him
on where I could find some smokes


Asked for some
water, aspirin
to beat away the billy club
battering my brain


He forced a grin
Asked me,
told me,
you haven't slept yet my friend.

Today's Prophets?

Where are those unwitting,
who see angels in the furrows of waking life?

Are they quiet and pious
and simply adorned?

Are they tempered by their vision?

See,
I imagine them distant:
glowering on mountain top
or drawing shallow breath
standing filthy in the city street
shouting themselves hoarse--
ragged and unkempt

Forget the angels!
They're only wispy apparitions,
more memory than mediator:
Gabriel's no magpie,
not anymore

Otherwise, you wouldn't
see a people paralyzed 
by somber account of heavenly whim,
leather bound and prim,
looming from bed side and mantel top

No more words!
let's see some action!

I'll start worrying about the horsemen
after I can feed my family

Debutante, Eleventh Hour

An imploring sigh issues from
cob-webbed lungs
and curls raspy and melodic,
just like the too-many cigarettes
she had smoked at galas
and benefit dinners
a lifetime ago

It diffuses
and seeps into atmosphere
high above the Manhattan skyline;
it mingles with thunderheads
over the Kansas plains

Who says the offering is adequate just because?

Still,
the old crone stands transfixed,
warm granite in a quicksand square,
and shakes the horizon with her rattling breath;
She's all clenched fists and gritted teeth:

clock's ticking.

The corners of her mouth are
crumpled arrowheads that fall to a fleeting earth
and splinter into fine powder hued peach and rose

Then follows the grand arch of her spine,
stately lineage faced with imminent demise

ground by time, brittle bones
offer little protest in the twilight

She asks only:

"Can't I keep my pearls?"

-----

Also, here's a link to the Diane Arbus photograph "Debutante of the Year, at home, 1966" She was my inspiration for the final poem. I know this is a lot--and I surely expect feedback--but there's no rush. Not like finals are imminent or anything...

Space Walk Boog-a-Loo: a poem in two parts

#1

Often I wake
early mornings—crack of dawn
unlatch my window
and watch the shift change:
conveyor belt to breadline
and back again
each morning—crack of dawn

I let my head fall
until the bridge
of my nose is pressed hard
against knuckles and skin

8 million coffee pots, jack hammers,
garbage trucks, street sweepers—

The city is tickled from her stupor

And somewhere in the new sun
the “I” changes

Not ocularis
but me.

Suddenly,
my capillaries fill and expand;
I am 20 feet tall,
then a hundred.

I could step down
from my fourth floor window
right onto the pavement

Start ripping the tops
from supermarkets
and punching holes
through bank vaults

gather everything up
in my great big arms;

I feel my great big heart beating wildly.

I’d give it away!
I don’t want any of it!

I’d give it all away!
See if the shift change still happened
each morning—crack of dawn

But I’m stuck,
my body having grown so large
too quickly:

one arm reaches through the door
and down the hall;

the other punched through the brick
and now waves at the carwash men down below

and my feet smashed right through
these cheap tenement walls
all plaster and lathe
and  now occupy
Poor Ms. Esperanza's kitchen;

she attacks them ferociously,
thinking they’ve finally come for her—

Doesn’t much matter
if it’s the devil or the INS

They’ll get you in this life
or the next!

#2

Often before sleep
I unlatch my window
and crane my neck
to watch the passersby,

each movement rendered red
in the faithful hum
of LED light:

“12 pk. bottled artisan water for $10.99!”

What do you mean you buy that ‘cause you like the taste?
my faucet gives me only rust, so fuck you!

Again, the “I” changes,
but quietly this time,
pulls out until I’m somewhere beyond the atmosphere;

my skin shrivels in the cold,
there’s not so much glory in my heart anymore,

so what if my brain cracks electric
a hundred billion times a second?

All of a sudden
I am very small

Like space opened up
along a deep fault

groaned, yawned, and said
to everyone in a shouted whisper:

Gig’s up!

                       cosmic subversion trench
                      but for the briefest moment
                         space-walk-boog-a-loo

Downshift for Long Odds and Shot Brakes

I just bought this bicycle
but I can imagine
six months from now
recounting near misses
with wry smiles

like the time
that asshole
clipped my back wheel
with his shiny new
BMW.

Your hand pulled me
to safety then;
I soon returned the favor:

this is our way
and I'll keep offering my hand
even six months from now
when you'll be far away

I'll close my eyes
& remember yours
the way they shine sometimes
like they're filled with
almost-tears

like you still hurt
when you see a lost puppy
or hear a change cup
clanging on the corner.

But this is not a love poem
No, I don't write love poems!

I play with possibilities
and trade in small mysteries

like the small of your back
like the curve of your shoulder blade

like how it feels
way down in my stomach
to have your hips
pressed against
mine

Yeah, I deal in anticipation

the held gaze,
the "no-I-shouldn't-
but-I-just-want-to-
so bad"

I'm fine in this space
but then I don't like getting
too comfortable.

Do you remember?
we're barreling down
the FDR at sunset
no helmets
Semi-trucks spitting stones
Wide-eyed children
with open jaws

You look even
more beautiful
in the twilight

but I won't blame you
if you keep your eyes
on the road.

Listen: I make no promises

Too often I'm capsized-soggy and treading water-and unable to post.

But I will try to post each day: a new poem, a new link.

I trade in small mysteries. But I need to right this fucker first and bale some water.