1 New Poem

Downtown Lullaby

When I’d hang with sputtering
car engine blocks and rusted paint
fumes, the comfort wasn’t from

A blank space between walls
and light boxes in plastic
frames that flashed bold language.

It wasn’t from tracking tires that
made mess of ice and brine
split shuttering to bring bells of

Unfogging spring to eye-cough
sense we took in trade as costs
of the hibernating season’s panic.

It wasn’t the passion crimes behind
windows, made out in breathy silhouette
to corner stores below;

Kind of sentiment to take the
broken rising feeling that was
numbed across from brass rubbing etch.

It was the pitter-patter of stiff
soles on hard ground, reminding I
wasn’t the only one out.

1 New Poem

Party Blocs

We were there in the last shivers
of incandescence: chip-paint hallways
past pulses of tin can sound
rolling through brickwork backs,
out across a forbearing
season’s snow-slush concrete.

We were there when things went
split-separate, turned all around:
I didn’t talk of smoke signals
and floating sinktops in the
beer can wages we made from
punch-card precision and crackled
toffee wrapping blunted turf.

We were there at the heat-rushed
steps of the crowd: when air
replaced body flesh and pressed
red faces to glass around back
stairs and basements.

We were there, clocks striking
points of lime green glow: discomfort
found in a numb bathwater submergence
from places still and broken.

We were there in the swinging
up-down pieces of cloying car honk;
kinds of thing that tears in two.

We were there for it all,
with our brutalist smiles shining through.