Silk City PIT: 1. The Place

Point In Time Homeless Census

it was warm

for a winters eve

unusually warm

but damp very damp

birthing a persistent

midnight mist that

crawled over everything

avenging

halogen angels

flitted down from

streetlight perches

skidding through

bare limb bars

of broken trees

roped in by sagging

telephone wires

skulking

seraphs

joined

ebullient

neon auroras

laughingly

brake dancing,

jittering away on the

pock marked rims

of hip hop streets

the fine drizzle

descending from the

black urban heavens

splayed holy water

over the bodies

of anything

that moved; and

layered mounds

of transparent beads

on all inert things

chiding those yolked

 to weighty burdens

to seek relief of

a much needed

breaking point

our

slouching city

mired in a cycle

of a prolonged

historical rut

beavers away

to lift the lid

on tomorrows

tipping point

in a desperate

labor to stop

tripping over

itself...

a dinged up

Sentra’s

flashing spinners

twisted round

our dark corner

nearly clipping

our troop

inside the

yakking low-riders

scuttled along,

their hidden ganja eyes

cruising the stoops

and cyclone alleys

scoping opportunities

for the next

jolly hustle

to feed

a growing

angry fix

tonight

Mother Nature was

running a balls

to the wall third shift,

manufacturing a

stationary low

of gagging precip

churning volumes

of Vulcan smoke

conjuring

convective spirits

from all the

dim places

emanations lit

the balmy January air

rising from

stubborn gray patches

of despoiled snow

and rancid ponds

organic gutter water

composting

in distilled pools

awaiting leakage

through flotsam

clogged sewage grids

Paterson’s

litter police

could close the

city’s budget deficit

if all infractions

were properly cited

and paid in this

neighborhood

this queer elixir of

rising vapors from

evaporating snow

escaping the cracks

lining the bowels of

mordant streets

joining descending

screens of billowing mists

blurs boundaries of light,

diffusing temporal time

people and things

lose precise definition

reducing sentient beings

to moving silhouettes of gray

framed in dribbling palettes

of pastel hues

our

5th Ward mission

planted in the

hub of a neighborhood

still holding on...

Old WASP’s

of St. Paul’s

long ago

deserted

the princely

Episcopate

principality

the abandoned
conical nest, its
chambers filled with
the mud of 50 dead

Anglican Rectors
precariously clings
to its shivering
boulevard corner

its endowment depleted

its earthly treasure rusting

grandiose Tiffany windows

remain the last legacy of an

opulent faith now

shamefully rattling away

in moth eaten frames

once icons of

adulatory reverence

the final sparkling asset

of a distressed religion

begs to be monetized

by flummoxed vestrymen

yearning to extend

a stewardship

over a dissipating

ESL flock

distress in the hood

parades down Broadway

in all directions

a few blocks east

a shuttered

Barnert Hospital

transfigured into an

urban enterprise zone

for health-care privateers

working overtime to

extract federal

corporate welfare

rent subsidies

dutifully fulfilling

fine print obligations of

Obamacare legislation

Old Mayor Barnert’s

namesake synagogue

once hard by

City Hall

is long gone

its absent footprint

now centered by

a thriving

White Castle

near Broadway’s end

on the outskirts

of Eastside Park

Art Deco Emanuel Temple

the last anchor

for the city’s Judaism

lies vacant

awaiting a renewed

purpose

fraught with irony

a thriving Islamic Center

stands juxtaposed

across the street

from the old

Hebrew Temple

we wonder what

will emerge

from the

hallowed chrysalis

of decommissioned

Emanuel?

rumors of a

Great Falls Art Center

trickle like a leaking faucet

failure to secure a mortgage

in the post credit

bubble pop economy

dams the possibility

of a new centers

coming to fruition

will

the city’s

changing

demography of

reverent Muslim’s

genuflecting

across the street

take time away

from prayer to

patronize a venue

offering decadent

bourgeois jazz and

risqué reviews

of retro Borscht Belt

vaudeville?

when Constantinople

became Istanbul they

converted the Christian

churches into mosques

when the Inquisitioners

drove the Moors from

Granada they converted

the Grand Mosque to

the Cathedral of the

Incarnation

what incarnations

will this city’s

twilight bring?

As Byzantine

begets

Constantinople

begets

Istanbul

the links

in the Silk Road

spanned west

to the new world

of mechanized looms

powered by

Great Falls

raceway water

and a distribution

and procurement

chain anchored

by the Morris Canal

Capitalist

modernity

begets

our Silk City

it also bespeaks

its demise

in the courtyard

of St. Paul’s

a muffled chorus

trawls the thick air

a posse of pimps

done wrangling

their stables

of $5 w****s

sing reveries to

the evening haul

midnight lullabies

of corner crooners

lift a Capella hosannas

from the dark armpit

of an alley behind

the Autozone

“i said

you say

what can make

me feel this way

my girl”

juiced pimps

cashin in

livin large on

a skanks

50 cent haul

the trade in flesh

of distressed

human capital

remains a

growth industry

Music Selection:  

Temptations, My Girl

jbm

3/1/13

Oakland

Author's Note

work in progress
extended poem
updating William Carlos Williams
Paterson

Reviews

[r. f. jordan]

"Rolling in, top up,
under, thrust and recoil, a great clatter:
lifted as air, boated, multicolored, a
wash of seas-
from mathematics to particulars-

divided as the dew,
floating mists, to be rained down and
regathered into a river that flows
and encircles:

shells and animalcules
generally and so to man,

to Paterson."

William Carlos Williams (1946)


The one quality that maddens me, (in an invigorating way) most, regarding Williams is his ability to balance what i believe Wordsworth referred to as the grandeur and tenderness that surrounds all of us. What strikes me is the verbal scalpel Williams slices his imagery into shape with; how bold, minimal, and brilliant the result becomes.
One of the only poets I've met, in my limited travels, who has this gift of balancing imagery and tenor, tenderness of meaning and grandeur of voice, is this riskrapper.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that i may be enthralled into transferrance by the truth that riskrapper is a close friend of mine, i seem to lack the ability to communicate to him the pure tenderness that seems to have become his voice.
" halogen angels " brilliant, the double entendre's that flow through this piece like riddlers skipping by on the sidewalk, invokes a depth impenetrable. I would switch the spelling of Centra to Sentra unless the Irish supermarket chain has opened a satellite in P_Town I don't know about.
The valuing imagery of episcopelian decline in attendance measured against the tranformation of Instanbul is genius.
what i see as the grandeur included in the Grand Central Station poem by the same authior appears mostly absent, to me, from this cityscape of once and future dreams. What i adore most about William's narrative, as i hope is illustrated by the opening excerpt from him, is the mix of optimism and pessimism of the piece swirls and intertwines like the bottom of Great Falls.
His ability to cut throught to the existential image vaults him into an inclusion that transcends politics, race, finance, creed, and individual will. the self becomes the collective, and the collective embraces the self. Perhaps i drank too much Kool-Aid as a child. Perhaps i am still drinking it now. But I actually believe Paterson holds more room for revival than in the times of the original piece. I believe i read in some distant epiphany on the Mall on Washington, that things might worsen before they improve but they will improve nonetheless. i do not see the dream that the daughter of the five dollar w***e is having, that already has inspired her toward a changed generation to come. if the wordsmith that penned this piece can add a swirl of the thriving positive energy to the palpable decadent decaying bliss, the true throb that i believe that city holds, could be identified within all of us who trapse through cities.....................with love, honor, respect, and an eyetwinkle of positive regard,

r.f.

[riskrapper]

Preface to Paterson
from Texas Tech School of Architecture website...

http://arch.ttu.edu/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams_-_Paterson

[riskrapper]

RF: the passage from Paterson leaves me cold...brilliant summation of WCW getting sucked into the inertia of this great American city...he is the true historian.... like yourself he is an able dispassionate penetrable intelligent seer...my journey to understand and learn the narrative of Paterson requires me to overturn the cold stones littering the lots of this city... we're on an urban archaeological expedition.... we'll send intermittent field reports on our discoveries
gonna change that c to an s right away....
merci mi hermano
rr