Thursday, June 11, 2015

PASSER -BY

Passer- by my city
a Beat poet with gentle proofs
welcomes you with a candle
returning to my past
half ghost voices going higher up
to his apartment for a reading
while resting in forgiveness
here beside a rock garden wall
near a sandlot playground
where the hounded
throw stones at the wounded
the night watchman arrives
on the fire escape
who barely catches sleep
in the deepest part of Babylon
where there are no hours
to stop the lights 
between the taxi screens
and screams of cab calls
hailing its daily emergencies
near this poet's old hang out
in his adolescent years
outside a dance floor
as voyagers play jazz
on faceless Sixties nights
over the Brooklyn Bridge
quoting Ginsberg and Crane
on wisteria street walls
filled with young graffiti
as a Gothic young Edgar Poe
dressed up at carnival time
in black clogs
jogs by though the shadows
who refuses to pardon his past
putting his tongue out
as Oz's scarecrow
insists he is a futurist
as a breathless witness
of a world of art now gone
by summoning memory
which leaves you hungry
feeling in temporary distress
and powerless,
suddenly the big media sends
drones above us
eyeing a five star actor
once in TV soap operas
who signs off
on his former contract
suddenly appears
for an outside audition
in a summer playhouse
of Shakespeare in the park
wishing for bravos
and autographs from a chorus
in radiant darkness on stones
like a loner Odysseus
returning home
having been in exiled perdition
after sailing the seas
now hearing an oboe wind
reciting life verses of Homer
about the human condition
awaiting his lover
and wife Penelope.




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