Tag Archives: city

Five City Limericks

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There was a buxom lass of London
who was perpetually undone —
her plotting, it flopped —
her buttons, they popped.
She was undone in more ways than one.


There once was a man from New York
who would only eat using a fork.
You’d think soup his ruin,
but ’twasn’t his undoin’ —
he starved over a giant slab of pork.


There was a young gal from Tokyo
who used her umbrella in the snow.
‘Twas structurally sound,
and held eighty pounds.
huge biceps had that buff girl of Tokyo.


There was a young man of New Delhi
who thought himself the new Machiavelli.
He said, “Make them fear,
or you’ll see them sneer!”
…’twere not for his knees made of jelly.


There was a salesman from Nairobi
whose mind trick was like Ben Kenobi’s —
or so he did think,
but — despite psychic link —
he couldn’t sell even one Flowbee.

POEM: Perpetual City [Day 18 NaPoMo: Prose Poem]

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The day drizzled on and off into the night. Dreariness seeped to a cold-soaked bone. And I was schlepping down that saturated sidewalk, feeling like I was being watched. That cloud rides overhead when one haunts a city that hasn’t another soul in sight. The denizens must be somewhere, and some must be outward-facing. They might be in the shadowy maw of an alleyway or watching from the warmth and anonymity of a darkened room, but the city never went without eyes.

This was the throbbing heart of the city — if, also, the darkened heart of the city. Within a two-hundred meter radius hemisphere of my position who knew how people were seeking heat? Some would be wrestling away from dank recessed pits in the backrooms of minds run amok. While others were in the act of surrendering — plummeting into that dim pit with abandon. Who knew what was happening? But — for some reason — I had to believe that something was. As I pressed a palm to a wet stone wall, feeling for the trace vibration of hyper-living, I had to believe that the perpetual city was still wound.

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