Lament For New York
By Elliot C. Mason
Sat, 04 May 2013
- 1692 reads
4 comments
Written in Jackson Heights, New York, on the 28th April 2013:
and all the blessed beggars
and the fashionable drunks
and the rambling scraps of
paper in Chinatown
and the beautiful women
on the Lower East Side
and the red-lipped
wine-stained hipsters in
Williamsburg and the regretlessly greying
suave millionaires
in suede and silk
in Greenwich Village
and the bottles of rum
in the Pennsylvania hotel
16th floor
7th Avenue
and the stunned tourists
under the screeching
sleepless lights of Times
Square and the brass bands
at Penn Station
on the subway to Brooklyn
slim heavy hard dark
Brooklyn
shouting at the wind
and the moon
and the cloudless blue
and the fat pizza dribblers
and cheap can drinkers
on the sandy noisy
levee in Coney Island
Bay and the bush-lovers
and nature sex walkers
in Central Park
and the cold wet sad
foreigners working for nothing
who want to go home
to Florida
to Massachusetts
to Iowa
to Oklahoma
and the bouncers
huge and troubled
and wrecked who talk
of Harlem and the Bronx
that's New York
man
and the empty poets
who die to test
themselves and this futile
drizzly life to check
the shame the care
of man to see
if they will cry
no one cries
in New York
people drink and eat
and sleep and ride
and live
but no one cries
in New York
and that's why this
this here in my pen
my fingertips
my lips
my pocket
my mind
this here
in my tongue
and my palm
is New York
that's why this
is New York
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You captured it perfectly,
Permalink Submitted by hudsonmoon on
You captured it perfectly, Arthur Ray. Enjoyed this very much.
Rich
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