How To Bury A Lost City In A Decade Right In Front Of You

How To Bury A Lost City In A Decade Right In Front Of You

bombs killed the anarchist fishmongers

who wanted to organize something

under the colonial paving stones

that were europa too young

to walk on their own legs

in immigrant clothes

naked in the cold

in a hundred years or more

undocumented workers would smoke blunts

in the bathroom for the top o the world

while the world traded possibilities

under the towering gaze of twin

free market standing sentinels

as if it was impervious to its own

limited liability denial

that looked down

on all the mobs

of impetuous

trump hopefuls

trolling in and out

of all the subway platforms

at the clay feet of a commercial high rising upward

so many ghosts hit the skids that day

running away from the zeroed out ground

as fast as the wind could blow them out

running through Chinatown and SoHo

all the way up to the alphabets of Loisaida

the old park is a walk from gershwin's stoop

up around the corner from the 2nd ave deli

past st. marks where corso slips a dollar in

pulls it out past the square for fair on the L

going back to brooklyn in the morning

     o gregorio     o gregorio 

o we see so clearly now, only too late

the bomb came for us as we were warned

by the cloak of poems that gave us cover

only for so long as those words could

everyone gazed upward

toward the morning sun

with national camera eyesight

as we all looked on in unexplainable surprise  

still life with an ash tray in a diner that no longer smokes

roll past graham through ghosts that have become hipster bubble gum flavor assortments giving away all potential to the dive that overcharges and artistically under performs, still, everyone is a critic when the world is less critical when the mass is less critical when it is less complicated when it is all just a puzzle with an easy piece missing in action so the chatter goes all night long in a clinky clank of cocktail glasses that must be avoided at all costs after the latest rent increase

     catch the car service to bushwick and metropolitan into the lost world of thievery gone co-op

make a get away to flatbush all the way up to church and breath deep the jerk sauce aroma

where dutch became dutchie in a reformed church cemetary blowing sound blowing minds blowing blowing blowing

make a get away to the coney island that is no longer a dream or a nightmare just the last refuge of goons, gumbahs and mermaids on the lost boardwalk running like a comet with a splintered tail where the ghosts of your first tattooed ladies ride horses off of diving boards into the pooled tear drops of elephant palace memories that once held cheers for bums dodging trolley cars out into far rockaway and back on a lonesome plane ride off into sunshine away from home plate sliding fantasy leagues where the dust of fallen towers never touches the empty graves of lost friends who didn't leave enough of a concern for anyone to stop a war for as they were too busy starting wars for someone else who had more friends and was better thought of than the bike messengers, panhandlers, undocumented workers that left no discernible DNA rubbed into molten metal skeleton structural remains of a lost day in time

missed flight on the 9th means nothing 2 days later or even 10 smoky years afterward

walking it off in a haze that has left many for dead who had no choice since then only

it was not the first time death took innocence for granted on the lay away plan it would

make the whole repertoire more chic than ever as texas finally cried for yankees like never

before seen footage of popular mechanics tragedy lessons learned stateside as if uncle sam

were an islamic bee keeper with guantanamo bee hive unleashing istani drone attacks all over

the god damn fields of inglorious vengeance against the internal apartheid of soulless decisions

that kiss hot ashen limbs all over battery park as the soot of a lost mosque goes undetected on

the wailing walls scored by roman swords and spears an unfashionable empire ago

these words were just a bloodletting for those that never saw it coming in so many places

in so many ways in so many times in so many lands

most people wanna be left alone unless you are gonna make them famous

no one wants to pay the price for fame as long as fame is paying the price

we make bombs as if it were potlatch for children to return it to our unborn

unconceived unadulterated generations yet to come

the blood all mixes in on the sidewalk but it can't be demarcated

from the scorched earth that buries ideals and convictions

in graves now trampled and left unmarked