Gary Beck

People in the South Bronx
are like people in the North Bronx,
or any other place.
If you look behind skin deep,
you’ll find preconceptions
that have judged, condemned, sentenced
the undefended to exile
in the slums of fate.

I swam in a tiny swimming hole
in a chilly Vermont stream
and after the first goose-bump tremors
never felt so fine
and couldn’t recollect
in recent crises
when I had no imminent thoughts
in a body of water
of Polaris surfacing.

Pollution is forbidden in the Winooski River,
but no one seems to remember that men
have driven on uncongested moon highways.
Not many folks seem myths of New England.
Prognathic jaws, rickets, beri-beri, scurvy,
Sunday blue law VD, much sinus trouble
and watery eyes from the gold dome capital,
dazzling with Doric exterior.
Haven’t seen Corinthian interior; won’t.
Not much more than Main Street,
but most of America
is not much more than Main Street.

Intangible wilderness
that sometimes possesses us
in the myth of civilization,
is all that holds
this raptured city from destruction.
Do the poets who sing of the city
know anything of the city?
When we are the only core
that keeps reality together,
for surely if our reasoning selves
suddenly were to doubt
that our subway days
and rummage-sale nights
were all the glory
we ever would obtain,
in that faithless moment,
nature, in her new sneakers,
would place her arch-supported,
space-age ventilated soles,
on 8 million delusions
and pffffft….

Among our fevered expectations
there is no time for interruption,
when the meetings of strangers
breaks forth into praises.
City, your men who tread grit-streets
are fugitives from combustible places,
trapped in summer climes, with unthawed faces
that no longer seek the dawn’s arising,
who dwell in awkward hesitations,
by the measures of distance
from sheltered places
abandoned in the wasted siege
that shore no longer seen.

The buildings rise in angry bruises,
beaten by night’s thin skin.
The city’s desperate cry for help
is throttled by TV antennas.
The air dribbles old men stuff
that stains and smears our visions.
The siren of forgiveness sounds
the last attention to tomorrow.