Mexican War Streets

Though by the path I lead
The passing of time and the pouring of tea
Are all I’ve lately seen
O my soul {SH 159}
Until the temporal bridge be burned
Until our anchor stocks hold firm
Where the hands of clocks don’t turn
O my soul
May our lips remain discreet
While your traps are beneath our feet–
But how long before our tails are caught
By our “free” thought?
Sugar in the cane, candles low
Kettle on the flame for the teapot? No
I tremble at the thought
Sugar in the cane, candles low
Southside Flats where the upscale go
I tremble at the thought!

On the Streets of Mexican Wars
I battle with the

Memory of a first fight
In our contemptible youth
I quoted White Nights
“My God, a moment of bliss
Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetimes?” –F. Dostoevsky
Thinking that’d get rid of you
And waited with a stone in my hand
But you were quite right:
Nature had another plan
(& failed to run it by me)
Nature had another plan
Some other surrogate self
To live in the sediment of so many somebody elses’
Innumerable lives and you were right:
It’s not a person who dies
But worlds die inside us –Y. Yevtushenko
Sugar in the cane and the candles are low
On the West End Bridge looking down at the Ohio River
I tremble at the thought of what’s often referred to as ‘karma.’
The sugar and the candles are gone
You panic like a mouse when the lights go on
(I ADMIT, IT WARMS MY HEART
TO WATCH YOUR WORLD FALL APART)
The colorful hills talked me down from the bridge:
To heck with all the drugs my parents did
I’d like to meet whoever said the words we print in red
With a coin in my teeth on the Mexican War Streets

Rivers of sadness and mutual need
In the loud desperation of social routine
The rock of salvation, lightly esteemed (-Deut. 32:15)
And distance surging like oceans between us
Suspended by strings
Over rotating wheels
Via magnets and springs
Of Carnegie steel
With ‘representation’ our fashionable theme
And unfathomably powerful forces
Like oceans between us
We have all the signs we need
Do we decide not to read?
“My will: his will that fronts me
Seas between.” (-James Joyce)
And those who precede: the relation between
Is listening beside me
At night like some seismic machine
While the metal vibrations of petrified men
Are etched in translation by pendulum pens
And the movements of underground plates
Do nothing to bridge or exacerbate
Oceans between us