Category: Baltimore

• outside tonight is the heat

  outside tonight
  is the heat; it
  wraps my shoulders
  like a shawl knit
  by white-haired women
  who in their circle
  hum with soft
  gossiping
  and the air conditioners
  chirp in with a
  whirr of understanding.

  July 9, 2010

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• 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.

  June 19, 2010

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• watching summer Baltimore

  crabs steamy with Old Bay
  mixed with the scent of heavy
  humidity and a wind carrying
  a storm from the west
  I sit on stairs watching
  summer Baltimore languish.

  June 14, 2010

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• hey hon

  hey hon, hows bout a dance?
  we could hold hands
  and foxtrot.

  hey hon, hows bout a kiss?
  lean in close before ya
  say goodnight.

  before ya close the door to my
  Mustang, turn quick,
  and wave.

  before the weekend winds away
  back to steel and rust,
  and dirt.

  June 3, 2010

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• 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]

  May 18, 2010

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• 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.

  April 22, 2010

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• 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.

  April 15, 2010

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• 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.

  April 13, 2010

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• Opening Day! Let’s Go O’s! (haiku)

  fresh cut grass trimmed neat
  my glove browned tan and beat soft
  one crack of the bat…

  i remember days
  playing catch with my dad and
  imagining that

  girls could play baseball!
  i remember Cal’s card in
  the cereal box

  added a hometown
  smile to my collection, says:
  let’s go O’s, let’s go!

  April 9, 2010

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• Just another Tuesday on Eastern Avenue

  1-800-Jesus
  on a bus billboard
  silently tells my old man,
  outside the Burger King,
  that the halfway house can
  snap a heroin needle in half.

  But my old man
  was too busy
  picking dirt from his nails
  drinking from a bag
  chewing his bottom lip.

  My old man was
  in a dirty argyle sweater,
  just another on a bench
  that sizzled in the heat
  like a dying
  cigarette,
  like singed fingertips
  black with ash.

  April 8, 2010

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