Broadway for Paul Read online

  IVANKA SKIRTING

  These are poems of mind control I am going to get inside their minds and change their policies

  I am starting with Ivanka before I can move on to Jared

  Ivanka is wearing a wrap skirt as she smiles to the children in the classroom, Jared smirks walking away

  Nothing is easy, no blemishes in this park, green grass beginning to come, March trees in bud, lofty edifices preside

  Castle rocks reflect in pond, organic base of massive pain

  This city where the rich feast on others’ innards

  By tree’s massive cover of lower flowering bushes I remember, decades past, two women walking near while we played ball

  One smiling commented, “It’s so great to be young—enjoy it”

  Here I can finally reach into Ivanka’s mind, say, “You will stop vulgarizing discourse, raping or reaping,

  Remember your soul, reach out to the less fortunate, those kids in the classroom, where do they go at night?

  ‘A Love Supreme’ plays from a room, is that something you could ever see?

  Could you ever sit and listen to this rendition, a version,

  An homage—would you take time to make selfless homage?

  Here is a composition, also a song, of a great African-American artist,

  Can you realize there are African-American artists who are among the greatest our nation ever produced?

  Would you see them, standing on a pinnacle reserved for those who have gone beyond?”

  March 6, 2017

  RIVERSIDE

  Sun shatters on river plane

  Black line of shore across

  Children return home silently

  Guided by parents and caregivers

  Dogs walk happy but meek

  The children too are timid

  Trees are black extensions

  Complicated masses in front of

  White and grey brilliance

  PROPENSITIES

  I am a human animal

  And as such, have propensities

  I travel the city and am drawn

  To certain sights and people

  I have seen such a one

  Ascend a stair a vision

  From underground to air

  And that is overwhelming

  A vision I see ascend

  I am human in a city

  Animal, I walk, make face

  And yet I too am one

  A GLASS

  She sits in a restaurant alone

  And eats her lunch and reads

  From a book and drinks

  A glass of rosé and then another

  She is reading a book that makes

  Her laugh and does not take

  Out her phone her back bare

  Her shoulders she is not alone

  WALKING

  Looking out the window, I see a woman walk to the corner

  Then a man, then another man

  The sidewalk is damp, it must have rained

  Another man, older, slightly hunched, maybe my age

  Can’t tell if he’s got Bose headphones or a strange ear shape

  He turns to enter the building opposite (no headphones, normal ear)

  And at that precise moment, a young woman in athletic garb

  Bounds out of the building, starts jogging toward the river

  He turns to look at her before entering

  On the street, I am walking and seeing people

  It is a Wednesday morning, a long way to go

  But it is early and they are girded, arrayed so as to face

  Their challenge and rhythms of instability

  There is a beauty in their openness as they walk

  They are prepared no doubt but undefended

  There’s been no serious altercation yet, the day is fresh

  A man carries a small dog under his coat

  Another wanders near the corner speaking incredulously to his phone

  JUNE

  She hitches up her skirt.

  She smokes.

  She wears the tightest pants possible.

  I stand near the construction site, near the papaya place on the corner, near the newsstand.

  A woman, standing, lights a cigarette for a woman sitting on a bench.

  Dance music comes out of the jeans store.

  It is 10:13 a.m., a Thursday in New York, the first of June.

  We made it.

  I MISS BERN NIX

  I was contemplating taking a break but not like this

  I was needing not to practice at midnight but don’t want it like this

  I was casually relating a situation, when Steve explained the reason Bern hadn’t answered the phone

  Why his answering machine hadn’t picked up

  I’d called many times to say I needed to change our time

  He’s gone—but—he’s supposed to be here right now!

  Now I don’t need to worry that I don’t have the energy to practice before going to bed

  But I do, I’ll keep that in me, respect for the instrument and myself

  I’ll keep going, go through the other books, but without him

  Here to show me the fingerings

  He always sped me up, as though he knew he didn’t have

  All the time in the world

  A musician, he was always on time, sometimes early

  I was going to ask to take a photo of him and his B.C. Smith acoustic

  Music stand empty but for a pencil:

  Wit, determination, grit

  Music book lies on the windowsill, near the bed

  One looks out at the carnage, city

  Literally devouring itself

  Guitar stand also empty, guitar in case

  Another music book propped on other books—fiction, poetry, resistance, adolescence

  All are one in this day

  It is a day not of dread, but of wonder

  There’s my guitar, the guitar I used with Bern

  There, in the photo, his guitar, the one he’d bring over,

  Slowly unzip from its case,

  We’d tune, “Let me hear your A,” he’d say, then,

  “That’s pretty close”

  He taught me things:

  The guitar, you’ve got to know the fretboard,

  What it takes, time,

  “It’s a mechanical thing”

  How hard it is to be a musician, he’d laugh,

  “There’s no gigs!”

  He’d talk about Ornette, the early days,

  “We thought we’d be stars, on the radio!” again the laugh,

  Always open, never bitter,

  “Alright, man, I’ll see you next week”

  We’d end each session actually playing,

  He was so generous there,

  I got to play with him, in that setting,

  No one to hear but us,

  Jamming the blues, and

  A tune of my choosing,

  “Our Love Is Here to Stay”

  BROADWAY FOR PAUL

  Now on 75th in June air everyone’s naked

  Not in a hurry I’ll walk a while

  There’s an opening but I’m not going to it

  A girlfriend and Anne Carson in a restaurant, sitting alone

  Further down, freer of people and manias, I still want to walk

  See those younger take over their city, those older exist in style still

  Paul is younger, redolen
t of style, charm and space of artist’s place

  In my best attempt: blue shoes, white pants, blue-and-white small-patterned long-sleeve shirt

  Young girl munches contently, walking from violin lesson with nanny

  As another girl so centered, food prepared brought for her after practice

  Rastafarian hair gigantic bunch in cap tonight will let loose magnetic spliff rhythm

  Purses hang from shoulders, backpacks, hair neatly organized in length

  Legs displayed, breasts in see-through T-shirts near building

  High-school memory goddess took steps through this city, rumblings of sexual contentment

  Bouncing, imagining, thinking, when in high school, white-furred dog

  The light goes down slowly citizens pass to private sounds I stay longer

  Savor specific light

  Drink water from air, feel length in this smell

  Admittedly comfort too of shops, leather or lakes

  Mother with daughter exits, slowly in stages go, apart down broad sidewalk

  End of park, memory, smell of leaf, earth, of fertility, expansion

  Down to concrete, other beauty, if enthusiasm lift

  Final park border: Maine Monument Columbus high on Doric plinth

  Strange bat-figure lowers head—in sadness, submission?—Gothic spire pierces distance

  Design Museum’s open late but Broadway I drink in every last sip this Friday of walking looking

  Sun sinks light across streets luxuriate in loss, deep satisfaction out here among denizens

  AVENUE

  for Elaine Equi

  Thin hips jog past too fast for contact

  Summer is here and the avenue is full

  Train to win, or Train within?

  Everyone is young and friendly

  Tonight, the rips in her jeans are real

  And so I observe:

  A couple out of Lamano comes and crosses holding hands

  A woman beautiful with hardhat

  After day’s labor wants something (someone?) cold

  I again am correspondent

  At least out here among my people

  They who get ice cream, go to bars

  Opine, look for companionship

  SHADOW AVENUE

  I am able to see tree shadow

  Tiles faced on building

  Pup on leash first walk

  Brick mosaic and man in own wonder

  Elegant distill history’s new face

  Human body projects

  Flatiron memory I flee

  Must stick my face in New

  I didn’t know that building’s visible

  Down Fifth a new view

  TIMES SQUARE, 2017

  It’s too bad Rudy’s not here to see the ad for The Nineties dominating Times Square below the big purple-and-white W

  He’d be so vindicated, not that he’d claim it, or even want it, Rudy didn’t need that

  He’d just be happy to know that

  Times Square is always new and always great

  LINCOLN PLAZA

  1

  I am walking now in Lincoln Plaza and though there are others, many others, whose lives I’ll never know, still I belong here, I’m a New Yorker too

  I can see the sculptures and how the scale of humans relates to them, I can see the large plane trees in Dante Square, how they fit in and control the space, I can see the fit young man and woman having ice cream, how that’s okay for them

  And suddenly I have X-ray vision, as Rudy said, I can see everyone, the little boy scootering with his mom, two women in jeans and shiny shoes and sandals

  An elderly couple, both with canes, she carrying hers, he using his, grateful and amazed for this pleasant July afternoon, one more summer

  Two people of indeterminate age, nicely dressed, he in baseball cap, short-sleeved shirt, khakis, loafers, she in short-sleeved white shirt, pink skirt, straw hat with white band, and she’s reading a book, sometimes aloud, he maintains a commentary

  People are very fit on the plaza, they fit on it, and if the fountain goes into ecstasies of jets, that is something they understand and adapt, moving away and looking, save for a young woman who persists, getting wet, laughing, asking her friends to photograph her

  Then they come very close, are visible, as everyone on the plaza is, a couple, opposites in coloration, hot in the intensity of this eternal moment, embedded in the middle of summer

  You can’t get away from it, so why not submit, all-in for this wet, cool, fresh moment in which you could meet, if you wanted, anyone on the plaza, could go up to them and start a conversation

  A little later, shadows have shifted, still quite light, nightfall still a ways off, but evening has crept imperceptibly over the situation

  Should I take the subway down, go down under the earth to take subterranean passage? There was a person I wanted to speak to, but what would I have said? Good not to know, to improvise, see where that person is going, disappearing into night

  2

  The giant dog dominates the plaza, sweating and breathing heavily

  The sky is cloudier but there is a breeze so it feels pleasant at the end of the workday

  People sit and eat and read, but they are strangely unaware of the history in their midst: I understand that, don’t recommend they enter a nearby library, but I wonder how they perceive today’s fountain and student ballerinas without some sense of their twined histories

  In any event, that’s unimportant to me and to the dog

  3

  I love that someone is working, out on the plaza in today’s 92 degrees, they are making art or advertising, she is wearing a white gown with white sneakers, he photographs her in front of the fountain

  A crew attends, a woman in black shirt on such a day, tight white skirt, black boots, and sunglasses, and two others

  The model poses, then walks off the plaza, followed by the rest, she lifts her gown, exposing legs and shoes, utter elegance, exeunt omnes as in Fellini mini-parade, one hears applause

  4

  I saw someone walking on the plaza who had a beautiful way of walking, body concealed yet present in garment of floral design

  Then that person walked behind a fountain and disappeared

  I had to reinvent myself, and saw two other people I remembered from the plaza, even though I was now across the street, on Dante Square, facing the plaza, attracted by the light in the huge plane trees sheltering our poet

  Those two reassured me, indicating I was human as they, shared production or dream, last night’s, attracted by the scent here

  Redirected toward everyone here this evening, unhurried, fresh in August, the people who live here, or near here, somewhere in the city, not ones who merely flutter, who land and walk, grounded on this rock not far from limitless deep

  5

  There is a face lit up in mid-fountain as it shoots in columns, shoots high as the apartment building, sprays veer to one side, drenching two urchins, who squeal with delight!

  6

  I don’t want to leave this plaza just yet, know I will have to, sky getting cloudy, rain looming, eternity in face, weariness, but too, knowledge of life’s possibility here that’s not just for the few, not ones walking dogs, working, or just surviving, but literally anyone can pass through

  And that’s something I’d say to Paul, why not meet here one evening? we’ve still got time

  MAINE HOURS & DAYS

  to Etel Adnan & Simone Fattal

  I want to make some rules for this month. I won’t complain and I won’t be reactive. I’ll be responsive, my goal to aid.

  8/9/17
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  Mutatis mutandis. With those things having been changed that needed to be changed. An essential silence, which even such sounds as there are can do nothing to change.

  8/10/17

  The strangely soothing sound of the washing machine, a rhythmic chant-like pulse that is the only sound in the silent night. The day was filled with so much driving, the evening working, planning, riding the waves of emotions and discrepancies. Later, the reading of another city, other continent, now pulsing and music.

  8/11/17

  I’ve been able to see the beauty even though I’ve been asked to answer questions, frequently interrupting a train of thought. An American flag, hanging, blows slowly from side to side in a space orchestrated by pine branches reaching toward each other.

  8/12/17

  Today, while I was meditating under a huge pine tree, a damselfly alighted on my hand. I remember other summers other damselflies alighting in like manner on my hand or leg while I sat under this same massive pine, the pine meanwhile getting older, losing branches, a sign or method to us of how to do it, how to survive it. And I looked at her sleek body, delicate wings opening and closing, body segments graduated shades of lavender to purple, and thought, I’m not supposed to observe this.

  8/13/17

  The roots look like strange animals appearing from the ground. One inscrutable grey fox pointing his nose at me, unswerving, another an odd tufted bird standing, looking away. Low morning light illuminates leaves, faint half moon still visible in pure light blue.

  They can’t figure me out though either.

  It was a weird day. Charlottesville. And then seeing everything through that spectrum. Not being in New York, being in some other part of the country, where people could be this or that, you can’t tell by how they’re dressed. They dissemble.

  In the nice natural-food Coop, people looked suspiciously at each other, at me. In a crosswalk, a man leaned out his truck window, said, “It’s a beautiful day out today,” with a tone of recrimination. Later, someone said, “You can’t park there. I can’t have you blocking the pump.” I’m feeling paranoid, but maybe it’s just a normal day in America.