Long Tenements Poems

Everything here is true
Just as stated
because it's already happened
or - it has yet to occur - 
but it's very soon to occur
and I have such strong feeling
that the future will be as I see it
as...

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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...

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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...

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,The earth was dying,one of seven billion speak,
Build it up,increase the images,eternity for all,recall,
Kia galaxy rooks,Endyminion attend,his plan circumvend,
Suddenly born like fire,behold the man,damned,
New Universe of dark,light and dream,the greater scheme,
An afterlife of ankh,the new...

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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...

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Chicago Land- In the Belly of the Beast

Chicago Land, in the belly of the beast, shots are fired, bodies crumble up; welcome to the land of the dead and the soon departed. Automatic bursts of...

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JUSTICE

They stare out at us unsmiling
from tintypes of the first photographs,
from the tea-colored pictures 
of thin, ragged immigrants, huddled 
in cold bare rooms in tenements,
children clinging, dazed and frightened, 
their paltry belongings tied in scarves.
They...

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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...

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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...

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  Rocks and streams from pebbled ruins,
  Makes my feet moan and groan.
  Water rushing,
  Never flushing the dirt from years gone past!
  Hurts my toes as I meander by.
...

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I’ve been to tenements, town houses, towers and mansions
And there are people in each doing what I’ve thus far described as a mission
Sans commission
Walk through a neighborhood that ain’t so good
As you convince yourself you...

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Smelt Spelt 

Smelt Spelt 

Smelt Spelt 

Taciturn brown blackened smelt under wrapped green elephant ears laying in a 
pool of fluid leaked on a bed of brown crusty spelt in points of poverty in the...

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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...

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IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY : XXXVII - XXXVIII

			XXXVII

If ever I had a country
And if ever by some magic I were the Minister of Housing Development
I'd make it my life-long mission by swearing upon...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Is friendship like a funeral 
Where cold frenzies are played out 
Among friends of the darling years? 
Neighbours protect themselves 
In solid caves of ancient discord
Where offsprings are bred & armed 
With deadly weapons of...

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They sat so low and beneath the troubled sky.
With a mind in gray, amongst the southern clouds.
There was no light or loves to be found.
Only a shadowed silence that covered their haze.
And a persistent phase...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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City scapes
Street lamps awake slowly to its rhythm’s 
Silver neon’s reflecting electric cold heat
Phosphorescent shadows echo from
The still night off the black streets of tomorrow

Blighted tenements amidst the 
Bleak gardens of despair
Naked piles of broken...

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Where are you? 
Why do you let them do this to me? 
I never chose to be born 
in a housing scheme. 
I never chose the life you gave me. 
The “friends” I am surrounded...

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