Long Tenements Poems
Long Tenements Poems. Below are the most popular long Tenements by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Tenements poems by poem length and keyword.
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.
The sertraline queen of New Orleans
Getting high on her brandy and coke.
Perched on a bar stool, surveying the scene,
While she lights up another smoke.
Tom Waits is playing on the radio
“In the neighbourhood”, plodding and slow.
Nicotine clouds drift across the stained bar
TV blinks in the corner, like a flickering star.
Sitting proud and upright in her red and white dress
Black shiny stilettoes, dressed to impress.
Flicks open her compact, with lips pursed and tight
She sharpens her edges, this new socialite.
Here she can be whomever she wants
Pick her own style, choose her own fonts.
Not just a mother, a daughter, a wife
Now a bohemian, pulsing with life
Redrawing her outline, sensing her form.
He tried to erase her, now she’s reborn.
Once bound with threats, with ropes made from fear.
But now she was free. He wasn’t here.
No more would she be stifled,
Excluded and erased,
Nor stand upon South Portland Bridge
Convinced she couldn’t be saved.
The barman gives her a sideways look
As he towel dries another glass.
He says “Do you want another one love ?
Or will that be your last ? ”
She sighs to see her black cab pull up
On the rain drenched, Glasgow Street.
“I’ll just have one for the road” she says
“But you better make it neat.”
Raincoat around her shoulders,
Collar pulled up to her chin,
She opens the glistening cab door
And nestles deep within.
“Where are ye headed ? Tis nae night for a walk”
Asked the cabbie, in time honoured patter,
“Just take me to anywhere else” she said,
“Keep on driving, the place doesn’t matter"
The Sertraline Queen of New Orleans
Watches tenements slip out of sight
Cheek pressed to the window of the steamed up cab
That delivers her back to the night ……………
Wooden voices hollowed out decline
Reject reality inclinations
Floor boards and walls ache with pain, paint and clutter
An empty room stands rejected
Becomes resigned, exposed to portals of lost time
What once was a pink apartment poor
Bums inhabit now from gutters
Live like kings for a week
Yellowed walls draw attention in a frown
To a cancer for a chance of being rented
One burnt out light hangs in the chamber
Not on center stage but from the ceiling
Feeling every bit of gray from age
Filaments of light bulbs don't discriminate
Tenements collapse and so do they
A map is not required in the dark
Floors seek no approval
Sounds creak
That is enough to find your way about
London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.
A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.
Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.
A window in Baker Street,
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left-handed genie.
Meat mongers return to their,
gore-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.
The city is a fable,
there is fuel oil seeping,
through tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipes
lie low and wait.
Denizens' crabwalk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis.
Stately towers are pressure washed,
until they shed a dark sunlight
that fractures ferrous raindrops.
Tenements sink under the weight,
of red carpets
until the blood flows
out of them.
London by night,
is a veneer,
a crust
of low expectations.
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."
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 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.
Grouin up in Glesga wis nae mean feat
Pleyin in the back courts an dreepin the wass
Plouterin in puddles manky water sploshing aboot,
Searching in yon mucky middens fur treasure
Thrown oot by the families in the closes.
Fur a fitba a pile o rags weideh doon wi aw sorts o things
Or a tanner ba made tae test yer skills dribbling roon
Bricks, holes an buckets burnt through.
Some wi nae shin baries wis the thing
An naething caught except wee beasties in the hair.
Holy jumpers an maukit breeks like a uniform
Worn tae mark ye oot as livin in tenements raw.
Aye aww wis puir always skint fur buying scran
Except faither oan a Friday nicht at the boozers
Getting fu wi his pals forgettin the weans,
Crying at hame an when he came in mither
Wid aways get the blame .
Aye the weans o glesga wur a hardy breed,
All ways stervin an needin a feed,
That wisnae allus therr a feast wis a jeely piece.
When they grew an produced men o valour,
Or men o wealth an fauncy cars,
Ne,er forgot that they were a Glesga wean.
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.
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.