If you love where you live
That’s a wonderful fact,
But you can’t expect others
To always react
To your choice of address
With a positive spin,
Especially if
It’s a city you’re in.
Oh, I’d never live there –
All the crowds and the noise!
The hustle and bustle
Which no one enjoys.
The subways and traffic,
The homeless, the rats;
The crime – have you noticed
The murder rate stats?
It’s useless explaining
Your opposite view –
The people to look at,
So much you can do.
The buildings, the plantings,
Museums and shows,
The shops and the restaurants
Everyone knows.
No matter how hard
You may try to convey
How you feel in the city,
There isn’t a way
To convince those who hate it
The reasons you’ve got.
It’s either inside you
Or else it is not.
Graffiti flourished underground
works by young artists
who found their voices
by sharing visions
in tunnels and on trains
commuters took to work.
They painted flowers
purple monsters
and people dancing
on the street
a celebration
of life the artists knew.
As subways squealed
around curves, first-time
riders never knew what they’d find
under the city
the stories told
before commuters found the light of day.
Skyscrapers above poked into clouds
as the city lived and breathed
but images of graffiti lingered
lingered in recesses of minds
the art left in tunnels
where trains rumbled underground.
trains drone
on through subways
racing to the city
where the rat race is on display
traffic
When and how
The great White Way
NEW YORK CITY
Broadway Extraordinaire
On the street start
Refreshing and dazzling
Dancing up Broadway from 34th Street
Finding Times Square
Through the Autumn Rain
Music uplift
Entertainment high
Overhead lamps brightening our way over the evening sky
Enchanting Broadway and I
New Yorkers who make New York, New York
Almost at the Broadway Theater
I can hear applause in the distance
As I enter it becomes an instance
Through the aisle and onto the stage
It’s time for 42nd Street amaze
Quick change into costume
Showtime get along
Singing voice of one with soon to be of many
Music upon music carefully rehearsed
The Broadway streets to stage
We found out way to 42nd Street
Under spotlight eyes
Beyond the buses and subways
Path to show biz
Entertainment
Comes with commitment
42nd Street assurance
Audience influence
Embracing talent
Applause approval
42nd Street
We love to visit cities;
Urban blood runs through my veins
And now that we are older,
We’ve no tolerance for trains,
So instead of checking listings
For the local train or bus,
We just call an Uber and it comes
Real fast, without a fuss.
We aren’t on vacation now,
But wanted to go out.
I read of an exhibit
And liked what it was about.
Since the schedule on Sunday
Says the subways will be slow,
We decided that an Uber
Was the only way to go.
It felt like we were on a trip
And not in our backyard.
My husband loved the ease of it
And yes, in that regard
It made a lot of sense because
Convenience, truth be told,
Counts a lot, but even more so
When you’re (I’ll admit it) old!
Night trains' theatre
Saturday to Sunday, after midnight going home, the restaurant closed
Walk to the station, get on Bond Street, the train works, takes me home,
Change at Baker Street from Jubilee line to Metropolitan line, fast walk
In the stations and subways walked people cheerfully, men and women
Time after night, hmm, happy people traveled in the carriage, past time
Hmm, bombastic amazing ladies, they talked cheerfully and just laughed
Night Train movie, this is one of the theatres in my life. Watching the life,
on the trains. People, passengers, young, old, different nationalities
Hmm, colorful existence is a tale in life. Nothing, everything is life.
Wembley Park Station
Arriving to home
The theatre closed
Normal people come in packs of six
Some are born in cardboard boxes
In suburbs, in summer, in campers
In the middle of the middle night
In middle class somewhere on a train
Between clicks and clacks on railroad tracks
Rich people shower frequently in power
In God we trust the upper crust to play
Normal people want mobility Up
To supper in good company
To be pretty as a picture on the beach
To frolic in the waves of milk and honey
With apologies to Jesus people sing
Sometimes flat or in harmony
Sometimes in black and white
In dance, in fire, using gravity
Normal people come in from the cold
Candy sweet and happy to be seen
Some come from baby factories
From across the street in greeting seasons
Middle class people love the poor
They love themselves much more
That is why babies are born
Subways are for pedestrians
With no class and in transition
Travelling from left to right
In nature train people are always in motion
Moving on is always right
The mundane remain the same
With Happy Hour and a six pack waiting
Somewhere down the line the land cracks open
It is another earthquake opened with a smile
Mosaic dessert brains
are splattered on the walls
of New York subways
- the underground art society!
Expressing their not-so-dry thots
their desert full of weeds
their hope
- run over by the Train.
The sun has risen, and a dove is cooing outside my window. All the tall buildings on my block seem to be resting. Here I am thinking of the cave man—his strength, his battles. Skylines, super tall buildings, and yes, some of us are not liking the look of our city. When there is no hope for your city, its citizens suffer tremendously. Why do other cities thrive better than some? The big question is, what makes a city thrive? ‘The more people you bring in, the more vibrant the city will become,’ Euchner said. But who are these people? (Ha! Ha! Profit holders.) Lack of empathy, people struggling with mixed feelings. While the impacts of rats in the subways make the alley cats stay low in the darkest alley, the sun has risen, and a dove coos outside my window. Meanwhile, the morning sun on the tall buildings seems hopeless. Here I am thinking of the cave man’s mental state: My brain is tired, my soul seems a bit weary, and I need more sleep (so mentally fatigued). Comme ci, comme ça!”
Must be cool to be a farmer.
(Well, except for all the work!)
Having produce at your fingertips
Would be a lovely perk.
Feeding chickens, brushing horses,
Waking up to milk the cows,
All sound great within the fantasy
My urban mind allows.
Wearing flannel shirts and Carhartt’s,
Picking crops and baking bread,
Trading subways, cabs and buses
For a tractor ride instead.
Oh, I know I’m being foolish;
Farming’s not a lot of fun
And it takes the kind of labor
That’s not meant for everyone.
But from days of “Old MacDonald,”
When I think about a farm,
I don’t focus on the grunt work,
Just the hype of all its charm.
Her high anxiety kicked in at the age of three her parents said.
I was horrified, shocked, were they daft in their head?
No one is anxious at the age of three. That is crazy, right?
She told me “the ghost monsters come out in the middle of the night.”
Where are they in the day time? I asked the four-year-old.
They are riding the subways, carrying lunchboxes of gold.
I did not dare ask the child what they had in there to eat.
She has been raised by monsters, Silly Barbara and Pete.
It’s raining, it’s pouring;
The streets are a mess.
For anyone out there,
There’s bound to be stress.
The highways are flooded;
The subways are closed,
As “When will it stop?”
Is the question that’s posed.
With puddles ginormous,
The outlook is dark
And what’s brought to mind
Is that biblical ark.
Some plans may be altered,
But that will depend
On when Nature decides
All this rain has to end.
Kind of Blue…
Slinking into a still hue of blues
Haunting trumpets dart in and out
Like taxi horns in freeloading traffic
And cling like silk onto full figured rifs
When winsome modal notes wear sleek cobalt
Where soulbeats throb from smoky bars
Blue moods of so what
Sway like humid lovers on rainy nights
To the clink of ice in shot glasses
And afterhours shades of whisky, sweat and old scotch -
Smooth as muted cool
Luxurious tracks of indigo distilled intimacy
Stretch without strict resolutions
Improv exhales unashamed sketches
Of empty barstools and empty arms
As modes of blue undress into serendipity
When newborn sounds wrap limbs around
Old scores of stale melodic staves
Steady bass lines underscore mellow beats
Unperturbed ruminating pulse,
Slow percussive murmurs
Like rhythmic subways of all blues slow walking
With mystic measures of ebb and neap attraction -
A perpetual kiss slides slow into a kind of blue.
The mentally ill have given up on us.
Let loose they roam
where once naked cowboys sang.
It is the drugs
it is the broken system
it is the anger of strangers
it rises like a concrete weed in our heads.
The 'no nothings' can do nothing,
the big chiefs
in their native american Uber wagons
ride around with closed minds,
they talk through their noses,
blow-harder than ever.
Cops duck and dive.
The mentally challenged
are stabbing their sharp fingernails
into the exposed necks of silent lambs.
Subways are neglected, are badlands
where only that brave dare to ride inside.
City life sleepwalks on, but with one eye
always open.
NYC, be very, ashamed!
One dead officer buried?
6th Avenue showed it’s honors!
The next day in gratitude,
You go out and destroy store shop owners?
No wonder death walks your streets.
Helpless women in smelly subways!
are beaten or their deaths do meet.
Children are killed or in faces shot?
Yes, your stinking mandates, cause
death a lot.
Hidden behind idiotic masks.
You adore them, admit it.
But on a dead policeman, you’d spit, in
a New York Minute?
1/31/2022
And a salute to NYC’s finest. And all, in cities across the USA who lose their lives...that we live! THANK YOU. Hardly enough?
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