Category: Urban Poetry

—despite everything, I suppose a beautiful day
is a beautiful day.

The ol’heads on the block are playing music,
no doubt memories enshrined in notes.

There are good kids scootin’-jumpin’-runnin’
‘round mothers in nice dresses.

Even the garbage men, rough like crumbled cans,
seem to be shining
under this sun.

The problems aren’t gone,
home still hangs by a thread,
and the night waits in the corner, hungry,

but right now—
This moment of this day—

Things aren’t so bad.

I wonder if this is what it means to seize the day—except
I haven’t dared to seize it,
the day has simply reached into me;

it has pulled out the pain into the light,
and somehow
it doesn’t look so bad, there,

in the sun.

Winter morning rise,
and already an avalanche of life
collapses into my lungs and settles within the folds
of my feet; they are numb, from sleep, from what waits—

Face the day.
It’s time. The bills have arrived with the crows,
black and cawing, demanding ones goes,
shaves up, wraps tie around heart, and zips up faith.

Outside the air is colder than hell,
but the sun is magnanimous with grace.
I feel its gold drapery along my face,
see the amber of starlit blood
through the folded layers of my eyes…

It’s a blue and demanding sky,
but with the sun,
one has more than enough warmth to give.

Take a step. Let’s begin.

The struggle to remain alive

beats the hell out of a person,

leaves ‘em bruised

like the burnt end of a cigarette.

There’s nothing in the fridge,

but a man needs more than rice—

the worst thing

is choosing between eating and life.

The stars in space are twinkling
my name across pearl petaled sky.
Something within eases, a child’s sigh
escapes my lips and into the wide vision
of a godly dream.

Bronx streets are crackling with concrete
grief. Feet draggers and dazed loiterers,
brittle toilers, come apart regularly—

One wonders if underneath
such sky
a gun or knife can take away
such silverly light—

Can a stranger’s deranged might
truly cut down infinity
smiling, perpetually mute?

It soothes my heart, it does,
how still
things can seem to be.

Although, I know
heaven’s bodies
and city’s bodies
spin and cycle
black depths and black speeds
so fast that to the eyes they seem
to be resting in peace.

Can such illusionary serenity
free the mind from debts,
from the pains of making ends meet,
from the strains of maintaining the lightbulb
of the soul alight—

can the reality of inner poverty
cease to be?

I wonder how many others
look up at the night sky
and wish.

Does the bruised branded,
gun-toting and scowling jacket,
youth?

How about the quiet nurse
who over long seasons sheds
her spring bright eyelashes
over sanitation sinks—does she
peer through the ceilings of hospital wings?

Do we all feel childhood’s pang
reaching
from an infinity inside?

Can we hear the muffled prayer,
its delicate wish to come alive?

Do our hearts somehow still retain
a vision for haven,
a yearning for home’s continuity,
even long after we’ve been casted out
onto the wet stoops
and into the glare of unblinking streetlamps?