Tag Archives: city

POEM: Dark City Sonnet

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any city you enter after dark
will not reveal itself until the morn
you’ll see it like a scrawny sheep unshorn
vague blankness punctuated by landmarks
you’ll see nothing in the darkness of parks
not junkies sprawled out in clothes, rank and torn
though you see neon twenty-four hour porn
you’ll know not the dogs by their noisy barks

light makes it more pretty and more ugly
you’ll see it pick itself up and brush off
like shame walkers concoct a makeshift coif
turning focus from the bloody and stubbly

to see a city at its worst and best
catch it when it’s wearing last night’s dress.

POEM: Budapest

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I know you best by the gray of your winters

when road salt coats the sidewalks

and a witch of wind rides down the Danube

whistling around pedestrians on your broad bridges

      — except there are no pedestrians

                  — save for me —

river crossers huddle in yellow trams

or pack into the Metro that rolls under the river

I know your beauty can be unsullied

I’ve seen a Budapest in bloom,

under blue skies and cotton clouds

But your gray days lend a distinguished air

a melancholic miracle is birthed from gloom

a sweep of story,

 a piece of poetry,

that would move a stoic to tears

And escape is always close at hand

for Kürtőskalács fires sunshine in my mind

POEM: Endless City

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city at the end of time
sprawling to the shoulders of reality
spilling into the sea
sprouting vents from the ocean floor
to breathe the collective exhalation
a planetary breath
bubbling toward the surface
but lost in churning seas

and wind tears through urban canyons
that crackle the surface
as seen from the satellite sphere
glints from a glassy past now subdued
plasma windows play a bucolic reality
that residents pretend is true
we are a mole people
in the under-story of a mechanized canopy

POEM: Park from a Hotel Balcony

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I see a canopy of trees.
Wind-rolled like undulating seas.
A strange green scene from my balcony.



Seems like such a vast expanse
of trees tossed, locked in a dance.
From sidewalk, they’re of stalwart stance.



But from here they are an ocean to me.