Category Archives: Baltimore

bass player at The Horse You Came In On

Angelo playing inside
these filthy walls since ’90
no longer plays to the walls
but is the walls
is the smokeyceiling
theneonlights thehanging
plants
the thuddrumthuddrum
thuddrum comeon !

all us hangingvines
pour the cobblestones
drink seasons moldy classics
become bassline players like Angelo
slowly slowly over time, thuddrum
thuddrum comeon !

the yarn spinner

taken from my great-grandmother’s book of poetry, Where Childern Live (1958).

The Yard Spinner

Intent on every word, the small boy hears
A story woven of an old man’s years
That, with the telling, finds a space to grow
In splendor for a boy who wants it so,
And, as the truly wonderous tale unravels,
Along an old world trail a small boy travels —
A boy who hangs upon each chosen word,
As with the spinning yarn the air is stirred,
Until the hero-worshipper is led,
His hand held fast in grandfather’s — to bed.

late night city gossip

Here on our Patterson hill
see the lights of downtown
pulsing,

the men with knives and guns
the sporadic sirens
all demanding,
the streetlight orange rowhomes
the white marble stoops
all conspiring.

The hound dog neighbor (Hannah)
wailing,
she’s heard all about me,
these city streets,
their brick cobblestone cement,
whipersing,
the gossip never ends.

[ps: found this little poem in an old journal, circa 2006 or so]

hit by a bus on Eastern Ave.

the girl snuffed ink
freshly printed and pressed from every
corner paper and fliers and stickers
on lampposts and street signs.

she stumbled Eastern in a haze
ink sinking into the grooves
of her fingerprints and pupils
and never looking
fell to her knees while her nose
smelled deep the black asphalt.

in floral housedress
an old woman watched
while one wrinkled hand
patted lightly grey hair
matted on that one same side.

Man, City, Sky

a similar feeling
of sky darkening and quickening breath

outside clouds gather and puff their chests
as if to say with a roar
I am here
outside the smell of rain perfumes my lungs
and soon thunder drives
dangerously close

tires grip the Jones Falls
that last turn
underpass by Penn Station and
the sculpture of woman and man as one

the feeling you get
right after the city skyline opens
and there skin prickles, shivers
waits
a storm a man
a city that boasts many
dangerous charms.

Portrait of Baltimore on a Rainy Day Rush Hour

Sitting in pouring rain
Cars like mine wait for their turn in the
Fort McHenry tunnel

We are worn out in our cells—
Outside the city
Wistfully waits for us
To find a speck of beauty in
That otherwise dreary face.

Around me smoke stacks make their way
Through low weeping clouds
And piles of salt and coal and dirt
Seem like shadowy mountains
And the train tracks are run with weeds
The buildings are rusted
Their windows cracked like the dim twinkle
In the eyes of a man
Who works hard for his family.

We are stubborn, strong,
And the steel is in our veins.