MAN
You hadn’t heard no such
feeling as today, days and days ago
from muted sewer grew a new racket
and from the sky
dead beat blue jazz rained
truth in him to concrete,
the first witness. The first in back door steps
milk crate bass and snare.
Highhat stalks back alley click tracks
reaching stiff necks, eyes of cracked windowpane,
seeking he, as he became from rhyme and trash.
Fresh stink in the wind rush, the belch of churning
fish head harbor. Sweeping past tenement gardens, heavy with
rotten fruit and street light. Heaping piles of mustard packets
blow up dolls and rancid meat.
Round there at corner of Genesis and 28th, I saw
circulation, days and days ago.
He from filth rose. corn syrup popping
introducing synapse to nicotine nervous system.
cement bore first witness. Viaducts spoke his name
and curdled steam stung breath into his dust.
Days and days ago, skyscrape, sewer avenue,
dumpster street cement garden, and I bore witness
the cardboard effigy of man.
