This, here, is a project still in the works. I'm not quite sure where to go with it from here. I'd love feedback on what people think so far. The idea is to structure a poem (about the city of Philadelphia) like a musical piece, i.e. it will have different movements and shifts in pace, structure, etc. Each neighborhood, then, is supposed to be a different movement. As I said, this is only partially finished. I'd like to add a few more segments to the Presto, a good deal more haikus to the Badinerie section. The Adagio con Forte section is very clearly unfinished. And, of course, I have not written a finale or opening movement to the entire piece (though I have working sketches of both). Again, I would really love feedback on this.




Presto

I.

Gleaming glass Comcast opaque in day’s sun
Translucent, glow like a jellyfish
when city stands in hours between

Cross Rittenhouse on cold winter night
fountain drained of water, park rimmed light
laugh in concrete pool, towers exhale

their life visible the same as hers
pumping cacophony down Walnut
to sushi, old empty theater

Sitting on Sansom sticky and dour
wait in the gloaming movie flicker
Kiss, then slouch and laugh, brace for the cold

Walk south, trace river, hear city go sour
past big fighting brownstones guarding Spruce
playground overflow with cabs, she-hes

slamming doors in clicking march of heels
where businessmen come, innocuous
past post modern rows, one holding Joyce

which is where you celebrated her
watching her green yellow eyes roll over
before you called her back with a hand

grazed with photographs of back alleys
cluttered with yellow leaves, pink flowers
resin of both gone to rain’s pieces

And now the hum of towers is back
growling with Precambrian menace
Sunny in the park, so kiss her good bye

II.

Skaters rumble through Love like a subway
while you and him peer over a crowd
massed hopeful and hateful to listen

But come summer, they’ll forget all this
Gone fiery oratory, come back
millions lined in humid shade, waiting

while you walk with your sometimes lover
past the Rodin, smoke with the homeless
beneath boxes, statues silhouette

Dangle your feet from George Washington
Punch the March air, now April morning
Watch her sway and weave, and give to her

all your fear, but also hopeful ahead
while she laughs and laughs, dark hair curled
covering her eyes, ears, giggling mouth

pale face peeking out, so full of life
You want to envelop all her grace
take it with you hurtling down steps

snow covered museum, brandy warm
sled with your other scion, screaming
as she holds your stomach, falls backward

roaring with joy, feel it in your hip
speeding around back all for the view
climb water work cliffs bare foot, then throw

way back down the parkway, City Hall
standing gothic but slim, once alone
but now dwarfed by peers less ornate than he

III.

Fall into Washington’s murky water
while cheap drunk on the fourth of July
clanging Independence Hall stealing

all the romance of your iced faces
brought together after ruining
a wide plain of freshly fallen snow

There’s the bell you’ve never seen up close,
The parking garage you smoked dope in,
The church where Franklin sat in the cold

Pirouette like new life down Elfreth’s
pockets clank with stolen chinaware
florescent like some movie, this town

is so much like meeting a woman,
throwing your hope and fear into her
one overheated night in July

then never seeing her form again
unable to remember her eyes,
the exact pitch of her soaring voice

(nor the orchestra’s inhale, tuned
with the Kimmel alight, Broad's glass boat
stepping into dawn, a world waits

ready to spring ill, noisy with crowd
find her bitter space in downy shade
overwhelm nostalgia like a kiln)

On Addison, grown dusk with mourning
picking through trash, Philadelphia
remembers being twenty two, in love



Allemande

West Philly calls over the Schuylkill
Imploring my heart to step out,
Beat some place much more visible
Put in the center of big windows

Peering east to horizon’s city lights
Pressed cool to tall glass, sloshed like water
While all around, power goes out
With a seductive, drunken grin

Though perhaps it beats with the ambiguity
Of our city’s heart, down there at our feet
Which we both profess to adore,
This place lit up like us in the night

Charged like the gap between us,
Being closed by your hand inching closer,
With firing, restless electrons
Pumped into bright being all the same

Suppose there is some current to love
Down there careening towards time,
Some ineffably drawn character
Lined with sparks like a highway leading home

So all below can be felt as a whole,
Thinking of highwalled wood floors
Reverberating out on Pine, and a courtyard
humming with autumnal song on Walnut,

Come tearing out of that dive bar
Feckless, reckless, wise and infallible
Thumping with collected soul, spilled blood
Grown into the cracks of the street

Spreading out in formless narrative,
Brimming in gaps, between the Palestra, Franklin Field,
In the produce aisles of a supermarket on Chestnut,
Where I touch your coat, admire your gait

And on down those big porched row homes,
Can’t you see them shiver with intimacy
Hiding their soul for fear of being found out,
Of being no different than you or I

Quivering in the foreknowledge of death,
Clinging desperately to our private hearts
But wondering, why, oh why, can this city
In all its brotherhood, open me up?

I think this in the moment I crawl inside,
Slant away from your hand, from what should be said
Because I am afraid of such vibrant hurt,
Preferring this memory fall into the electric flood below



Badinerie

Why don’t we slow down
Take a three step waltz Northeast
Foreign as Bashu


All this world knows:
A pizza parlor, up this
The Port Richmond way


A few bars down in
Northern Liberties, of course
(we all know a few)


My father, the kid
Drunk, leering at some blonde girl
Me on blue line home


Well, there is a room
Cluttered, strewn with the madness
Of art, unfaithful


Your church steeples burn
Towering over your rows
Flat, less glamorous


Dawn shines, glass city
Looming distantly like a
Glowering fief lord


Twenty four hour
Flowers; surreal beacons
Deep in the night time



Con Amore

Work your way east on Roosevelt, elevate over
North Philadelphia, though take some time and descend
four years, in fact, four years amongst the American version
of a slum, whole blocks burned with the jolt of bullets,
Three homes boarded but lit up with squatters’ candles
For every home un-shuttered, glowing with electricity
Leave your place on Carlisle, past the empty lots,
Turn down the beggar on the corner of Susquehanna
Reeking of urine and last night’s 40, then five more
Coming at you like zombies on Broad, and don’t dare
Go into the corner store for a beer, they’ll swarm
Like pigeons around a handful of seed

You begrudge them this, yes you do,
Though you see every day where they’ve come,
The schools covered in black ash like some horror
Out of an old time Dickens novel, seen the shops
Owned by Koreans, hiring only Koreans,
And where else would they go for work?
Mickey D’s? The half stocked Rite Aid?
Maybe one of those guard stands at Temple,
Or maybe just onto the corner,
Waiting for a bullet, or the cops, to get them out of here

Yeah, but it doesn’t mean they have to crowd you
Stinking like feces, fresh off of masturbating
Behind that parked car, like the one you saw
Up on Seventeenth and Diamond, eyes jaundiced
And mad on something you wanted nothing to do with

There’s the big field on Cecil B. and Tenth
Littered with Hurricanes and syringes, dried out and sere
Like some desolate stretch of prairie gone to hell
You playing catch, just throwing a ball around
In gym shorts, a t-shirt, the first warm day of spring
So this band of kids approaches, looking feral,
They’re young, some no older than six or seven
The oldest of the bunch might be touching sixteen,
Surrounding you and swearing like prison, the young ones, too,
Barely old enough to be in school, let alone skip
Hey white boys, I fucked yo girl last night
With my big black cock, fucked her right in her ass,
Fucked yo mom ‘til she came, busted a nut
All ova her face, made her beg for my cock
Said she ain’t never had a cock like mine,
Said she was tired a fucking yo puny little fag dick

Keep throwing the ball, ignore them, be curt
But cordial, that’s something they probably don’t get,
And then remember they’re still kids, maybe all they want
Is to throw a ball around, too, to remember they’re kids
And can still act like kids, even though they’ve buried friends,
Seen fathers leave without a word, thrown away to rot
So toss them the ball, laugh with them, see,
Just see and laugh, and feel you’ve done something
Until one of those niggers sucker punches you
Square in the jaw, cuts up your mouth, leaves a contusion
That coats the side of your face like an oil spill
And now they’re all running like hell,
Back to their shithole homes and non-existent parents,
Which you are so kind to remind them of,
Screaming after them like thunder
Roaring impotently in the wake of lighting,
Leaving you bleeding all over this dry, dead earth,
Bloodied and feeling used, a lone racist in the field
Born some place not here, so instead you have hope
And they have the story of that white boy they socked
After they told him they fucked his mom like a dog

But if you love a place, it’s like loving a person
You don’t pick the days to love them, or the parts
You love the gracious intellect and lively chest
Along with the self absorbed paranoia and sagging thighs
You love those kids along with the man on Norris
Who hands out poems and sings songs from memory,
Who always has a relative going on dialysis,
You love those corner peddlers along with
That corner bar just off Girard, the bartender
Missing all her teeth but pouring you free shots,
The music man, with his gem studded hat
And soprano sax, swaying at the end of the bar
Next to the girls that grab your ass every time
You pass them to use the bathroom,
And you love that night your friend
Wandered all over the neighborhood for weed,
Ending up on some crack den block on Erie
Where all the street lights had long gone out,
And those two guys who had been following you for change
Said, hey, you should get outta here,
‘fore those guys in there fuck you up,
How generous of them to do all that
and only for our bag of Tostitos

Meandering home, sans chips and salsa,
No weed either, but admiring the rotundas
Lining Broad Street, their frames rotting with termites,
Imagining how Wanamaker once lived here,
And Connie Mack led a baseball team up this way,
Before the war, before Levittown, before Philadelphia
Abandoned large swaths of her people to ruin,
you decide that Yes, you love this, too, you love it all.



Adagio con Forte

We’re high on a deck, reveling in beer
drenched in new summer, catcalling Italian broads
third generation, of course, hair sprayed, velour shorts
legs faked tan, booties bounced out on display
They’ll chin up on their heels and smirk our way
We’ll laugh and clap, dripping sweat, not a little bit
like those black guys on South, Damn girl, you hot as shit
Yes, girl, they’re preaching the harassing truth
I’m jamming in the choir, soulful sway
begging you to join in, have a beer, shake your hips
give me some soft skin to remember, wet and naked,
your skyline hazy, maybe a mirage

We’re wrapped up in morning’s ethereal whiteness
poised, precipitally ready to plunge

Down below, in a bakery café
The fathers of those Italian girls argue, fight
Gypsum dry wall facades leaking, a glass breaking
And out front comes a man running bleeding
splattered his cratered face, striated hair
dousing sidewalk brown so away sirens swirl
with a storm warning’s ferocity, an air raid’s
tenacity though these rows don’t need bombs
to bare their exoskeletons, just time
which they’ve seen plenty while mortar cracks in winter
But brick is hardy this block, stoic and strident
when called upon, reeking of fresh garlic

Oils and salts thrown out the door and asked to mask
another factory closing, more blood

Or maybe just to drive away the stench
wafting down Washington from Mexican hoochies,
the Vietnamese supermarket of fish heads
encroaching like some stinking airborne plaque ......?