Long Boulevards Poems
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Was it all that long ago
when we drove thru the streets,
Singing those crazy drinking songs
that you taught me?
Oh, how I wish for those days again
when the boulevards came easily.
Our voices in the open air as we sped
in that sports car of yours.
Your death gave me a voice that
I did not know I had until you left me in that void.
Now, words fill the pages of a writer
instead of the notes of a musician.
Sometimes the tempo rises
Other times it is staccato and slow.
How can I tell others my memories of those days
as I watched your courageous battle.
Your voice still sings those songs in me
from I know not where.
Was it all that long ago...
written: 8/11/2015
Windows That Must Fall
I am free and I look at the world with eyes wide open toward mystery,
my fingers tremble like willows beaten by old, short-lived winds, like arrows forgotten in a bow's string long since slack,
and in my palms I hold a heart that burns like a torch in collapsed cathedrals,
just as sorcerers of long-gone nights would clutch, in their old ecstasies,
the moon, the grasses, the pyre, and the heavy silence of fallen stars.
Today's poets, with hands thin as delayed lightning bolts,
carry in their chests a window that must be broken so the light can enter,
and the lucidity with which we look at the universe afterward
is the only prayer that still keeps the flesh awake within our bones,
and their tongue of embers — what a disturbing, sacred spectacle.
Now that we are free, our walking through the streets carries the weight of a prophecy:
women carry today, in their eyes, treasures buried for centuries,
gentlemen smile with mouths full of old coins and silences,
shop windows burn like altars with saints of glass and false gold,
and our pockets, once full of sweets and letters,
now hide round stones, still warm from yesterday's sun.
Along with us, others too go out walking on the great boulevards of night,
they carry white, heavy fingers like unmelted candles,
and in my pocket, beside the face of a love long extinguished,
I carry a handkerchief soaked in the tears of all the empty train stations.
Today's poets, with hands trembling like willows,
poets with warm stones in every pocket of the soul,
must know that the only hard part is breaking the first dream met along the way,
because all the other dreams shatter on their own,
just as it's enough to put out a single star to watch
how the whole sky closes behind it, silent and beyond cure.
I ask forgiveness for the comparison to the star, poets of other times,
it's a memory from the years when I worshipped at every blossoming tree
and fainted with longing at every sunrise that seemed eternal to me.
Today's poets, with hands short and quick as gentle bullets,
can hurl their warm stones at the comparison to the star —
it will perhaps be the first window you truly break,
and all the other windows of the world will open on their own,
letting an entire sky pour into the houses, immortal and sad.
In a labyrinth of time, every second is a grain of sand scattered,
everything hurts: old age is a veil of shadow over my thoughts,
and death, an old acquaintance, draws closer with every tick of the clock,
an old man like me can vanish in an instant, like a star that fades away,
leaving behind only memories and echoes of lost dreams.
While the young chase fleeting illusions and desires like butterflies,
the old walk paths where death is a beacon on the horizon,
yet the years grant you the gift of seeing magic in small things,
like a grapefruit glowing like a tiny sun in your hands,
or a bridge connecting dreamlands, a dog guarding the gate to the soul,
even a simple piece of sidewalk becomes a path to the unknown.
And all the other things around you suddenly seem... new,
the world is a flower of a thousand colors, though sometimes with shadowy petals,
and when you drive on boulevards, watching those in their cars,
you think: each of them will eventually navigate to the stars.
It's strange, isn't it, that each of them will eventually navigate to the stars?
Then, fortunately, I will free my thoughts from the burden of death,
forget that I am... old, and feel once more that I am 45,
while somewhere, someone waters a small plant in a pot like a universe,
while a plane crashes with a fierce explosion into the mountain of destiny,
while deep in the sea, strange creatures dance in silence,
the poet remains shackled to his helpless self, like a dreamer trapped in a dream.
Beneath the sea, the train slips into shadow,
a vessel of murmur wrapped in motion,
threading two empires of thought and stone.
London behind, Paris ahead, history pulsing
in the dark between.
Above us, the English Channel stirs,
unaware of the weight we carry,
not luggage, but centuries of verse, of vision,
of the painted and the sung.
That train runs fast and faster,
The greens disappearing on both sides in a blink.
Thames and Seine, bonded with art and culture,
love and affection from London to Paris.
London,
where the Thames glides slowly with solemn pride,
It's banks cradling the ghost of Blake,
His angels watching over soot and smoke.
Tennyson once stood tall there,
Laureate of crown and grief,
His odes echoing in the marble hush of Westminster.
Turner’s storms still burn across the canvas sky,
while the city folds its myths into stone and spire,
its bridges heavy with memory.
The tunnel comes not as absence,
but as a breath held long beneath history’s weight.
The English Channel, a wonder of the world,
filled with miles to touch each coast,
a bridge of silence, a passage of dreams,
where steel and longing meet.
Paris rises, soft with light,
The Seine a ribbon of gold in afternoon hush.
The Louvre gleams with the hush of reverence,
Mona Lisa’s quiet, endless gaze,
Leonardo’s sigh forever caught in oil and air.
Here, verse spills from café tables,
Baudelaire’s decadent lilies, Rimbaud’s revolts,
and Hugo’s granite grandeur,
each echoing through boulevards like
steps in the wet after-rain.
In Versailles, once walked a stranger
whose name would alight in Bengal:
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, exiled, eloquent,
who carved epics in a borrowed tongue,
then gave it back transformed.
In marble gardens, he mourned his motherland,
His Duttabharati heart bridging Kopotakkho to Seine with sonnet and sorrow,
East to West in measured meters.
Two cities not divided by sea,
but bound beneath it, stone clasping stone,
poem clasping poem, Madhusudan to Milton,
Turner to Monet,
London and Paris, a pair of eternal mirrors,
in love with beauty, in dialogue forever.
We pass beneath that unspoken vow,
carried by steel, by memory,
by the quiet rhythm of art continuing.
If only I could make my way to Paris
To search the boulevards and rainy rues
I'd look to find my lonely heart an heiress
An Irish lass vacationing her muse
We'd find a quiet cafe' on the Seine
Where we could sit and share a laugh or two
By candlelight we'd toast with French champagne
Pretend that we were on our honeymoon
But how could I convince her I'm the one
To make all of her fantasies come true
She knows there's more to life than having fun
In Paris hearts get easily confused
I'd get down on one knee under the stars
Give her the paper ring off my cigar
an original poem by Daniel Turner
Lima has a pulse
arterial and venous it flows…
all the colors of the rainbow glow
in the mist of Pacific sea's
hectic days and disco nights
beat into the sand at the ocean's lea.
Lima's life flows
from Palacio de Gobierno ...
in measured meter from the fountain glow
amidst a Catholic sea
spirits rise of the children of the sun
cleansed of their faith by papal decree.
Lima wealth flows
its chic denizens prance baroque boulevards
barricaded behind razor wire's show
life for the wealthy addressee
distanced from the hovels of El Salvador
and the festive strum of the mariachi.
Lima has a pulse
arterial and venous it flows...
as buses disgorge invaders, colorful, slow
Shamanism lies in a Catholic sea
proud, head held high, clinging to He
beat into the sand at the ocean's lea.
Why did God create angels
to wander behind the gates
of Heaven to protect it from Hell,
or to obey the command of His will?
Without my knowledge, or comphrension,
He assigned one of them to protect me...
why would a mortal like me defy His intention?
Everywhere I go, that angel safeguards me.
Perils on the road multiply as countless miles,
blind corners can kill, if someone is not keen;
pedestrians cross boulevards at red lights,
signs warn to cross them when they turn green.
I often feel that a spiritual being is walking beside me,
he doesn't breathe, cast a shadow, or can be seen...
but that angelic presence is strong: that's why I feel safe and laugh
as a babe in the arms of a mother whose endless love surpasses death.
Everybody thinks that the mission of angels is to read sacred books
and sing of God's glory, not watching us who dwell on this planet of fright;
how wrong they must be for their limited insight when their life is not bright!
Think again: they are in search of good souls to reward them with miracles!
I'll whisk you off to Paris
I'll even fly the plane
There'll only be one passenger
And that one has your name
You'll sit right beside me
I'll show you how it's done
High above the ocean
Towards the rising sun
And then as we approach her
Awakening from the night
Drowsy streets and boulevards
That glorious City of Light!
Bon jour amour, good morning
Parlez vous Francais?
Don't worry, I don't either
We'll take a class one day
A quick nap then we'll get up
Walk to Arc de Triomphe
Arm in arm, boutiquing
For anything you want
May I please have the pleasure
Of taking you by hand?
A touch that I would treasure
My lady, you're so grand
And when day one is over
A toast of Veuve Clicquot
To you my precious sweetheart
Forever I'll you know
Paris has two nicknames
The one I wrote before
It's true, the lights are glorious
But the next one I like more
This name suits it better
It fits us like a glove
Beautiful together
In the City of Love
She marks another birthday
by planting a flowering annual in a pot,
a forget-me-not for her forgetful mind.
Nowadays she primes herself
using visuals to clarify memories.
If at dawn, a pale moon lingers long enough
to marry a rising sun, she will dance alone,
a slow crazy dance, up in her high tower,
from there she can look across the rooftops
imagining routes and paths taken
the dwellings and bygone times, the loves,
that bloomed and wilted in that city
where she lived out her story.
Wide boulevards and dank back alleys
are stitched into a lacework of recollections;
some structures no longer there
return as landscapes printed on tissue paper.
She sees herself as a girl, a younger woman,
never as she is now.
If a bloom wilts before the years end,
she will sit by her upper window
looking for the morning sun to ignite
the pale moon of her eyes.
Then only does she dance -
her slow potted flower dance.
Side streets, avenues and boulevards
seem fortifications of past civil wars
with piles of ice glistening, and the grime
and dirt from passing cars splash them with slime..
The meteorologist from Eyewitness News grins as he tracks down the January storm
predicting no pleasant, sunny weather or break in clouds tomorrow night;
more snow from West Carolina will arrive to New York Harbor after midnight,
then it will change to ice, rain and sleet....I'll drink plenty of coffee to keep me warm!
So worried, I called my pretty niece who's traveling up North,
I told her to drive safely and stop at a gas station to check her tires,
but Claudio will soothe her blues as he hums many happy rhymes,
and lots of stories he will tell me having seen the kids of the South.
Wednesday I will go back to work, having plenty of time to sleep...
to do as I will, but staring at a blackened snow at every curb,
I can't bear the thought that spring is months away and my Ford
is parked between cars that haven't been moved since last week.
I'm waiting without thrill more snow from West Carolina,
praying for everyone's safety as they cross another borderline...
If I were a kid, I'd build the funniest snowman on my block,
and happily go around it twenty times as a quacking duck!