THE OBLIGATORY POST HURRICANE TREES - THESE ARE IN LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS

Long Island City, Queens, NY

No children were hurt in the taking of these photographs...
Although a large plastic squirrel lost his house...

THE BLACKOUTNESS OF LOWER MANHATTAN

a 360 view from Long Island City

ODE ON AN AMERICAN UNBORN

Up the 3^rd floor of 3^rd Street at 4.30 a.m

At the window listening to the neighbourhood

That is not too fried by the gentry

Listen to the outside simmer as it settles for the night

The frustrated howls

The siren’s prowl and blare

The drunken sloppy fights

This co-op pregnant with people

Lying inside

I touch the magic belly again as your mother sleeps

And think I find your head

You flinch

I imagine you rub your eyes like a cute baby human would

You don’t cry

There are no tears where you are

Just you wait…

Anticipation will become expectation

Heavy on your greenstick shoulders

The world will bombard you with choices

Pony Riding Princess Ballerina Astronaut

Nymphomaniac Lesbian Nun

Alcoholic Serial Widow Reformed Evangelical TV Chef Pop Idol

Or all of the above

But don’t worry baby

We won’t care what you do

As long as you can be free

And make it soon

As your Ma's heart continues to burn 

HASSIDIC FRUIT 1 (LEMON)

SHIVERING MOUNTAIN

MAM TOR

THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED VEHICLE

I got a job as a postman

Delivering monarch embossed packages

After shakingly waking rude people at two pm

It was not the done thing

to take a van home

but we drivers did

as the managers had done

Before us

So it happened

When you needed to sneak off to the beach

Or do a spot of shopping

The thing with a Royal Mail trucklet is that they are

Parkable anywhere

Even on the double yellows

We were safe

Police would sometimes commandeer us for this hi vis purpose

And like-minded criminals in their surveillance

So why not ?

I took to using the technique with my own car

And had a sign made that red

And yellow in its liveried elegance

Explained that this

Is not an abandoned vehicle

But rather the Real Mail on official business

And would leave it wherever I ended up 

After that night's rumbunctions

Of course some just cannot read

Present company excepted

As you are here

After all

I still got towed

FALL FERMENT

Your cold voice calls at four in the morning
Through the gap I had left for night's stale breath
Before sun or gulls' elemental yawns
You drunkenly whisper of death

And take me with you this rotten harvest
Bury us deep slow the blood in our chests
We sleep 'til spring leans its leaves to the wind
Green in our dreams free of care

THE SECRET IS IN THE MIDDLE

Our secrets centre 

In all mysteries that are living

You may meet monsters

But they are only unfulfilled 
Breeze blown

Gnashing whisperers
So difficult to pin

Still so easily forgotten
In their leaving

WHAT THE DUKES?

GALLUS MAG

She nibbled on my lobe
And whispered
In her brogue
Get out
We have had
Enough
Of you
Oh to be told
By a female
Gawshkogue
It was the rest
That stretched her neck

OLIPHANT CHUCKERBUTTY

A fella named Oliphant Chuckerbutty
Worked in London circa 1920
He was no sandwich hurling pachyderm
As a sensible etymologist may presume
But an organist .....

(Unlike the writer
He pulled out all the stops
Between cinema and church)

WHATEVER ATE AN APPLE

In October as the pips fall

Where they May

And the clocks tick backwards

In misty eyed recollection of June

New Yorkshire bathes in a shining sun

And pulls at its blue and white collar

As the sweatrickles race with gravity

Ever on

Wholesome Jeremiah Woebegone puffs out his cheeks

In a close approximation of an anthropomorphic representation

Of the North Wind

And blows the crown of suds from the meniscus on his glass of Brown Ale

Before quaffing an unladylike amount of liquid for such a pretty young thing

It is what it is and has ever been thus and it is very that

He agrees wholeheartedly noncommittal as usual

With the landlord

It’s like, whatever!

Who is used to serving up the usual to the increasingly unusual

But this is a first in any tavern in any town

An overheard use of

Whatever! 

As a dismissive exclamation

And he neglects to write it down

I wouldn’t say the yeoman missed the boat

But he waves a perpetually unclaimed ticket

Soaking all sorts of soppish ideas as he does

Only to wring them out in morning’s drain 

TURTLING THE HUDSON

IN CINNAMINSON

In Cinnaminson, New Jersey

Lies John Thompson Dorrance

The man who invented condensed soup

A constituency to which, one final day, we will all belong

Consistently