I.
The Mars Hill Baptist Church
Stands amid Summer cottages built by Martin Aircraft in 1943
Announcing, in Korean lettering, a pilgrim's faith in the universal,
Like the Sinclair dinosaur,
Relic of the golden age.
II.
Someone unloosed newspapers on Lexington Street.
The pages somersault like kids at a playground,
Sometimes sliding like stingrays over the asphalt,
And sometimes totally still, when the wind decides.
They populate the streets.
We can no longer read.
The lies dance like uncatchable playthings.
III.
I cannot enter these marble walls.
Oh, one can go in the building,
Be given a tour by laughing friends one knows inside,
But when the eyes dart sideways
And the questions turn serious,
The paid frowners and auditors will escort you away.
I cannot enter these marble walls.
IV.
Office stiffs in cars
Hearing drive-time loquations with Raybans,
Urging past the signal.
But for every green light, a red one, and at this one,
I stand on the bus, packed like an olive jar,
Eyeing for a seat so that I won't kick like a part of the engine.
To the side of the road, a statue, the smiling face
Of a municipal engineer, who thought these superhighways
Lifting away like equations from the city.
V.
I looked for you at the Knickerbocker Hotel,
In with the other junkies and their lies to keep the doomed quiet.
I waited at the Sip and Bite, handling scrapple and some Camels,
Wandered a block from Albemarle, but I only saw
Elvis Presley in the window of a formstoned rowhouse,
Behind doily curtains, a ceramic Mary, and the fat TV
Singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in a velour suit and fake sideburns.
I went to the docks, no boats, just drunken sailors,
And million dollar condos soaking up the view.
The blue church with the iron rail
Did not have sprayed on its walls your name.
I finally saw hives of gypsy moths
Infecting with frosty batting
Whole wings of leaves and branches,
Cocoons jumping from tree to tree,
White death in random pockets.
VI.
All the mayors go to jail immediately at the end of their terms;
Like some equation on the board from when the world was very small, it's simpler that way.
To find out why, spend some time in an Upton Street crack house,
Boards nailed to every window, nothing but
Trash and blankets, rigs and stems scattered.
These people are truly happy,
But each is in his own alien zone, in some blissful pain,
Wandering around loosely, no harm to anyone
If left alone from salesmen and profiteers,
But they are dragged through the heap
As the self-fulfilling prophesying symbol of what you have to fear
And what keeps withheld the things you cry for.
VII.
The children of the alcoholics stare
At the evening sky
with its changing patterns
Of never quite realized blue.
The mentally ill philosophers
State "the world ends every day,"
They are descended from immigrants
Escaping oppression
From the deep South, Poland, West Virginia.
The conservators here, with money stashed underground,
Don't have any higher claim to morality,
They merely look after their interests more thoroughly,
So fewer questions can be asked.
Yet questions are asked
In the only place where geniuses are accepted,
In tumbling city blocks where even the facade is corrugated
And the locks are left broken,
And the space in between moves away.
A Summer squall from a distant resort
Carries banana suntan oil into the battened-down town
Preparing for war.
The ties are knotted more tightly, the homeless get more
Greedy, blue ravens fly overhead.
Thousand of dead businessmen, arms flailing, march the street
As if they'd rather fail again in the earthly mission that killed them
Than stay dead.
The new immigrants
Laugh at all this pretense, for them,
Roles are not so clearly delineated,
"Everything that moves is fair game, we came to make money," they say,
Not seeing how easily attained everything they want is anyway
Or that they'll have to silence their own victims, too.
VIII.
The bongo players have left the suburban lawns,
And are muttering like schizophrenics the laws of the Lord
Shivering over grates of Hell,
Saying "this time we won't make the same mistakes twice,
This time the revolution is won,"
While resolution clicks on
Like a dark, final switch.
