Everybody's Talkin' at Me

Perhaps it's time to introduce a few regular, rhymed poems into our summer series, Poetry vs. Motion (MTA Edition). Here's one I'd love to see on an F or G.

Walter Feldman (11.5x19.5in)

"The Bird" by Robert Creeley

What did you say to me
   that I had not heard.
She said she saw
   a small bird.

Where was it.
   In a tree.
Ah, he said, I thought
    you spoke to me.

This poem makes me think of so many conversations these days to which I seem to be a party. Someone is talking. Someone is always talking--often it's me. But is anybody listening? Am I? Not necessarily a New York phenomenon. And yet...

The image is a sample panel from Walter Feldman's marble mosaic, completed in Rome in 1956 while he was on a Fulbright Fellowship. Emeritus professor of art at Brown University, Feldman has collaborated with many poets in creating beautiful books.

Cloud Hypotenuse

July, 2014

On the upgrade to the Kosciuszko Bridge. Lots of lines to contemplate while stopped in traffic.

Getting Rich on the BQE

Back on the BQE this week after almost a month away. The familiar slog through the Woodside Gully before you can even see the Kosciuszko Bridge--must less cross it. Yesterday morning, after a couple of rainy or overcast days, he sun broke out and I saw this NYS lottery billboard in a new light.

It Beats the Darkness

Your train sits in the tunnel. "Train traffic ahead," the conductor explains, "we apologize for the delay." Or worse, a sick passenger. Or worse yet, a police investigation. You slump into your seat or hang over those lucky enough to have seats.  Someone catches your eye. A bit unkempt but also somehow familiar. Did he perhaps go to your high school, dropping out without anybody really noticing? Or maybe he was the cashier at the car wash? He holds your gaze, and says to you, very quietly and calmly:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

"The Laughing Heart," by Charles Bukowski. Read by Tom Waits.

A Little Noir Music

Rainy nights bring dark thoughts and, sometimes, great poems. One topic you are not likely to find on the MTA's Poetry in Motion series is crime. Well, no one wants to think about crime on the subway, or do they? Have we erased if from our NYC vocabulary? Does anyone even use the word "mugging" anymore? Gregory Corso's "Birthplace Revisited" is about that and a whole lot more.

I stand in the dark light in the dark street

and look up at my window. I was born there.

The lights are on; other people are moving about.

I am with raincoat, cigarette in mouth,

hat over eye, hand on gat.

I cross the street and enter the building.

The garbage cans haven't stopped smelling.

I walk up the first flight; Dirty Ears

aims a knife at me . . .

I pump him full of lost watches.

Corso was born in Greenwich Village in 1930. He spent time in orphanages, foster homes, Bellevue Hospital, and, at 16, was incarcerated at Clinton State Prison for theft. Allen Ginsberg wrote in the introduction to Corso's Gasoline (1957), "He's probably the greatest poet in America, and he's starving in Europe."

Buffalo Beauty

I rarely find anything to connect to in the Times Business section. But Sunday's version sometimes brings a little treasure, like  photograph for a story on imminent expiration of the Federal Highway Trust Fund. It concerns a Republican-led gimmick to link lower pension set-asides for employees to a bump in taxes to replenish the fund. No surprise. The real pleasure is Brendan Bannon's photograph of road repair along I-290 in Buffalo.

(Photo: Brendan Bannon for The New York Times)

When I saw it first in B&W in the print edition, I thought for a moment it was a photograph from the 60s or 70s given the beautiful Plymouth Fury (or so I believe) gleaming in the sun. But of course, the pylons and barrels and yellow rental truck belie that theory. Still beautiful in color from the digital edition. The car is in much better shape than the roads, which of course is the real story here.

Parallel Park Avenue

The Department of Sanitation has a depot in East Harlem, on Park Ave. in the low 30s. Trucks are parked under the Metro North tracks and on the street. Parallel parking for behemoths?

Snowplows look like creatures washed up on the beach as temps hit the mid-80s. I'm guessing the DOS guys don't move them on alternate side days.

The doors of many cabs are left open. The temptation to climb in was strong, but I resisted.