Best Tenements Poems
How much of life do we catch
as we walk briskly past windows
behind each a drama unfolding
How much of life do we miss
as we speed past tenements teeming
with primal emotions, like downed power lines
alive with passion and angst
How much of life can we know as
as we fly across continents
spanning time zones of populations divers
running the gamut from AI-creators and
manipulators to prep cooks, no-counts and killers
How much of life would have enriched us if attention were paid
to the windows on the journeys that you and I've made
3/2/03
I saw no way- The heavens were stitched
I felt the columns close
The earth reversed her hemispheres
I touched the Universe
378: Emily Dickenson
The Shape of Death
Because I could see through all the eyes of men,
Pandora's sin,the sum of every joy and sorrow crowded in
I felt the paucity of greed.
The simple mood of life enriched by guileless generosity
I asked, "Are good and evil mixed?"
I saw no way - the heavens were stitched.
And stitched perhaps until the hour of death
Because I could see through all the eyes of men,
I knew of life's inevitable end
that closure, that omega rose
that brings eternal sweet repose.
That stealth of life in increments
the broken bond of flesh to death
Within its marble tenements
I felt the columns close
The columns closed, my mother passed,
Because I could see through all the eyes of men,
my solace weighed in beauty that we gathered,
in all my childhood hours
In sunsets, birdsong, clouds, and dew
in measured memory of her face
I turned myself away from our lost years
The earth reveresed her hemispheres
Reversed - that algebraic leap,
Because I could see through all the eyes of men
All wisdom spilled to unity of life,
Death un-veiled - benign as the blank page before birth
returning that Divine immortal leaf
like the shape of space that waves traverse,
when split, between a particle
And I can say with nothing to coerce
Perhaps....I touched the Universe.
After a cacophony of ramblings,
day bows gently---
Infants slumber with ease in cradles,
lanterns flicker above tavern stools
as mellow winds drift around gold-hued roads
paving the way
for flights of quietude:
Somehow, mothers hush their loved ones
to tend angel dreams
before sunglow ascends… while elders pat
loyal dogs in tenements far from home:
And young girls close overused iPods,
widows reminisce; single fathers
unlock the fence, tired—
Somehow, heartbroken women lay
on empty chairs alone,
Lovers fondle sigh deeply relieved.
This is nightfall. Its language of voices
breathes through different tones,
climbing into our hearts
where we exhale syllabic pain and glory,
until robin-wings unravel our incantations
to liberate us against hidden wails.
~
For PD's Impress Me with an Old Poem (002) Contest
Written 12/2018 ,S.O.
Resubmitted 10/7/2020
Love comes in all
shapes and sizes – Thank God!
Myself having evolved in some
rather, undesirable directions...
But what is the same anymore?
Environmentalists say, not the sky!
Not the seas! (Seagulls flying off
with bees to who knows where?)
As those wide-open spaces – gone!
Concrete and steel having replaced
colorfully tinted rural faces, with grimacing
gray features – tenements rabid with crime
and moral filth...desperately in need
of far more heavenly graces – or, at the least,
the lofty illusions pearl-necklaced TV Moms
once gave us.
Libraries, the sacred cloisters of
of enchanted places and mystical dreams,
no longer bearing, at the least
informative fruits for deliberative
minds; such institutions polluted
with Liberal Politics, personal greed
coupled with insane hunger for
for power over more docile others,
a hollowing of the human soul
leaving a bitter emptiness
and disconnect where once
thrived the fertile seeds of cooperative
living...
So, what is the new normal?
Hell if I know! Politicians
speaking out of both sides of
elongated, medically enhanced
lying mouths – technically new?
Educators enunciating with their
backsides – but now their pant’s fully down,
Punctuating a Marxist agenda, their
transforming goals openly on display --
perhaps for them, a new honesty?
College students confused as to which
way to turn in bed – enough to confound
the most flexible contortionist….
Thank God for alcohol!
Ever pass a street garden
On the lower East Side
You know the kind
Long and narrow
Squeezed between two tenements
Ever wonder how it came to be
Who made it?
Where did it come from?
Odds and ends
And garden tools clutter one corner
Benches are set aside
A children’s swing waits at the far end
The garden is not magnificent
Like the ones you see in suburbia
But like every garden in the City
It beckons to you with a history of its own
Take a long look
When you peer through the chain link fence
See the rows of growing green things
They didn’t happen by accident.
Grassroots activists fought to stop the decay of the lower East Side
Squatters took over abandoned houses
Theirs were marked by struggle
Hardship
And violence
They and kindred spirits captured the activism of the 70’s and 80’s
From Alphabet City
Running along Avenue A to Avenue D
They used terms
Everyone understood
Affordable apartments
Living spaces.
Neighborhood volunteers
Worked the soil
Hunched over
Hands black with dirt
Digging past bricks, rocks and rubble
Breaking up the ground
Feeling the moistness of the Earth
In their fingertips
Their whole being
Sensing the beginnings of new life.
Some have passion and
Dreams in their hearts
That weave in and out
Beyond the edges
Of small places
Their dreams may be only words to some
But to them they mean everything.
And others,
Just as young,
Run off
With no plans
No ideas
And never a second thought.
The dreamers and the aimless
Eventually meet
In the East Village
Center of the counterculture in New York
Birthplace of artistic movements
Punk rock
The Nuyorican literary movement
Site of protests and riots
A place of coffee shops and smart pubs
Hidden inside tenements and dank basements.
And every corner busy.
The older residents
Are immune to the antics of this place
Living in the neighborhood for decades
They have witnessed its many changes
Speaking a hundred different languages,
Accents from the cold climate
Of Eastern Europe
And warm places in the Islands,
Theirs is a smaller world of
Cheap apartments
And open air markets
Where customers
Still haggle over prices.
In dark places
Painted over decades of neglect
Old Polish ladies silently pray
In empty Catholic Churches
Built over a hundred years ago.
By Fall the last Summer’s batch of young leave
Some with promises
Others with regrets
But if there is a regularity
To the ebb and flow of this place
It is the tide
Always bringing in the new.
On Avenue A,
Just off Tompkins Square Park,
An old Spanish woman sits
In a doorway
Watching the artists, radicals and fashion lovers
Walk by
Anyone who cares to listen
Will hear her sing
An old lullaby
"Close your eyes little ones and sleep
And dream while the angels watch over you
I will hold your hand
And when you wake up in the morning I’ll still be here."
Love In The Library
by Edmund Siejka
( East Of Seventh, poems by Edmund Siejka available on Amazon)
He was a scrawny kid
In 1st grade his lunch money
Often disappeared
By the 5th he was street wise.
Mother worked in an office
And Dad assembled radios in a factory on the West Side
On his own most of the day
He had a choice
Of going to the Boy’s Club
Or the library
For some reason
The library became his favorite place
A place of books and knowledge
A place of hushed voices
Bespectacled librarians
Hard wooden chairs
Light maple rectangle wooden desks
Marred by carved initials
Grownups
Reading
Sleeping
Or glancing at their watches
That’s where he met Susan.
She was twelve years old
A year older
A little taller
Red hair and freckled face
Aggressive
Attractive
And smart
She asked if he would walk her home
To a tall apartment house
On 12th Street
Bricks the color of pale mustard
Leaving her by the lobby elevator
He listened to its muffled sound
Gliding effortlessly
To a place he was never invited.
In the privacy of his room
He dreamed of her
Incessantly
Clutching his pillow tightly
Making believe it was her
Blood flowing
Roaring sounds in his ears
Dreaming that they were always together
Holding hands.
She, wearing a starched white shirt
Carelessly unbuttoned
Looking deeply into his eyes
As he leaned forward to kiss
Her with every passion he could muster
That Spring
His days were inspired
With dreams of her.
One rainy morning
Awakened by familiar kitchen sounds
He wandered in
Yawning
Arms folded
Fighting the morning chill
As a feeble day
Silhouetted the rims of the fire escapes
And the sea of blacktopped tenements.
In the misty light
Among the empty rooftops
She danced in the air
Her body turning
Twisting
Spiraling away from him
A fixed smile on her face
Mocking,
Mocking,
Mocking him.
Her nickname "'sunshine" where she worked,
She's always smiling, some confide.
She has a certain lilting perk
Of hidden beauty deep inside.
Her journey home was twenty miles
Of mostly dark, forbidding streets,
Of tenements and garbage piles
And people none would seek to greet.
In such a spot her tire blew out.
She stopped beside a littered curb.
Abandoned cars and distant shouts,
Of breaking glass and cursing words.
The twilight turned a sooty grey,
As five approached, all wearing hoods.
She kicked the tire and yelled "No way".
They bared their heads, they understood.
She had the gift to win a heart.
The group joined in to change her flat.
She tried to pay the five their part.
They "high fived" hands and that was that.
She lived alone, her little home.
Her driveway was a welcome sight.
A long weekend she earned and owned
To sleep or surf the net all night.
Her drapes inched down and met the window sill.
The hand with dirty fingernails grew still.
She made a hurried circle to the Vet.
They told her "Bud" had been a nervous chore.
She told of his uncanny sense of threat.
Her Rottweiler was first one through the door.
Up,but Down…Part-1
This bus old as this rutted road
Panting to haul its sweaty load
Moves along the steep gradient
Of these hills stoutly determined
Raising to heights which although small
Are far like aeons beyond recall
To the place men and maps from yore
Call by a name now part of lore
It stops and ejects a lone man
Bearded, forlorn, bag and baggage
A petty forest official
Perhaps on punishment transfer
To these hills, unfeeling and cold
Where his ticket has taken him
Which could take him no further, no less
Away far away from sweet home
To where it’s for predators home.
It turns left, heaves off a U-turn
Climbs on to a conglomeration
Of tenements of refugees
From a strife-torn island, whose hopes
Are holding breath in another land
Uprooted amidst the rooted
All at sea amidst hardy rocks.
And returns to the highway where
The forest man still stands rooted
Aghast where he was offloaded
Like one of those gaunt and old trees
Failing to find his way to those
Who came before, missing the link
With the before and with the now.
Inspired by : ‘From a train carriage’. by Robert Louis Stevenson. In the rhythm of a train: in 15 lines, 112 words. diddly dar diddly dar.
START ENGINES, SIGNALS ON GREEN.
THERE’S SO MUCH YET, THAT NEEDS TO BE SEEN.
LEAVING GLASGOW AT A SLOW PACE.
SANDSTONE TENEMENTS FULL IN YOUR FACE.
ONTO THE BRIDGE OF IRON WE RIDE.
PASSING OVER THE ANCIENT CLYDE.
BREATHING SCOT’S AIR, CRISP AND PURE.
SOON TO ARRIVE AT HAUNTED DALMUIR.
WAS IT A PHANTOM THERE, WE SAW.
THE SIGNAL BOX AT GARELOCHHEAD,
EIGHTEEN LEVERS, IT IS SAID.
THERE TO PULL FORWARD AND TO HEAVE BACK.
TO GUIDE THE TRAIN ONTO THE RIGHT TRACK.
SINGLE LINE, NOTHING SPOKEN,
CANNOT GO THROUGH WITHOUT A TOKEN.
117 words.
Childhood in New York
Childhood in New York
Pocket change dangling from open pockets
candy stores soda fountains five and dimes
root beer floats licorice sticks baseball cards
and chewing gum
stick ball bats against dark black streets
and smells of pink rubber balls
Sun filters slowly through silent water
of fire hydrants where children play
and dance their days away
Thick colored chalk on grey cement
tell the stories of their young lives
hopscotch double Dutch and rhymes
sing songs of childhood dreams
as mothers out windows call to and fro
penny arcades newspaper boys on bikes
throwing bundles of dailies to stoops
bright red balloons on whitened twine
held up to oxen’s of the sun
They do not notice the noise and grime
tenements with close lines drape banners
that rise and fall to breath of sails in the wind
open windows to the morning air
sewer covers where steam rises to the evening sky
car horns call in the distance
the lonely cop walks his beat
City streets playground of sounds
that whistle full of joy in a summers day
roof tops black tar beaches of pidgin coops
cigarettes and beer and
radios play in background squares
A step in time I took one day
On specters mist who led the way
Down cobblestones and garden paths
Armless statues guarding baths
Armored beasts reflect the sun
Gallant knights are all for one
Hedge puzzles line the gardens fair
Hide and Seek for those that dare
Ladies clad in whale bone stays
Surreys pulled by chestnut bays
Sticky buns and honeyed mead
Cards and races slate the greed
Then on he led to shanty town
Down rows of tenements falling down
Sewage stench accosts the street
Where doxies in the alleys meet
Walking peddlers hawk their wares
And homeless children, no one cares
Disease spreads rampant through the town
Renaissance Art, the churches frown
Then through the mist he leads again
Back to my time; my heart to pen.
The world peeks at one another
Reaches out or maybe not
To a stranger or a brother
What is get and what is got
In our virtual melting pots
Everything is something like it
In all the places we’ve been
Across the fire we all sit
On the other side of a screen
Where we can’t be seen
Calling soft, cry or shout
There’s darkness out there
While the world is all about
In the cyber night beware
If it’s your soul you share
Once upon a time ago
We called from tenements
To bricks and windows
To ourselves in lost lament
As early proto blogs went
With a voice in the night
Drawing flies and crowds
The world just out of sight
Gave the night its lowly vows
“Really” laughing out loud
Indefatigable am I,
From the wretched dilapidated tenements to the soiled banks of the Versailles,
Hear my cry,
Left to their own devices the gilded wage masters will not comply,
Doth not their protestations for my benevolence in pursuit of profits their intentions belie,
Consuming the necessities for which my consignment to labor could buy,
Must you have all the pie and I to barely survive,
Anguished prayers to the heavens steadfastly grasped until the guttural sigh,
I shalt no more ask why,
But I shall fight, fight, fight,
Until I die.
Hauteur brigand bound for gratuitous strand
Knows not he is country's chattel, enemy's contraband
As gallant marauders o'er ages spanned
His quest for glory fate will countermand
Gleeful lad starting out on quick, definitive errand
Becoming grizzled veteran in war that will opportunistically expand
Raw recruit ready to fight for: family, honor, land
Feted for trivial pursuits, political ends; on mission clandestined
Tailored uniform, coiffed hat, shiny ordinand
Destined to be sullied by the designs of ruthless marksman
In ritual parade of arms on regal, stately stand
Unaware of his wistful foe's unremitting hand
With loyal comrades bivouacked in tidy
band
Soon to be in raucous tumult marked with a beastly brand
Dutiful, diligent soldier always firing on demand
In the heat of battle, only self preservation will command
Pre-war sprawling tenements; deprivations can withstand
Later, in squalid camp morphing into looting, pillaging firebrand
Vital piece in war game carefully mapped, planned
Innocuous pawn anonymously falling in unmarked, lowland.