(no subject)
I haven't posted in a while, because I've been busy. But I really want to post something, because my Thanksgiving post is beginning to shame me with its inappropriateness. So here are two poems about cities. I have read some very challenging and evocative poems in other people's posts lately; lacking anything of that description, I decided to post these anyway.
Chicago Night
Curving down LSD
NPR oozing jazz,
The static fireworks display that is the City of Chicago at night
Spread out against the sunset’s last hurrah.
Now I’m in the cave, headlights reflecting off silver semis.
Red taillights punch holes through muted colors.
On the left, the dusk is cut by the harsh white-green fluorescence of an L-stop.
Ahead, a sign says:
Diversy 5
O’Hare 15
(Looks like O’Hare is winning.)
The beat pulls me down the road;
The music, the moment, make me feel cool
Whether it is true or not.
My car, though a rental, seems to know where to go.
It gravitates toward the Edens.
I breathe, and smile,
Swinging onward to twilight.
Roar
The city is a roar;
You can live inside the roar, or out of it.
From within, the sound is broken into its raw components,
the individual cars, busses, trains, sirens are each experienced
one by one, in shocking, cacophonic waves. In the background,
the textures mat and weave
into an ongoing din.
When you are in the city, you are a part of the roar:
Another voice, thrusting into the mass of noise.
Miles and miles away from the city,
where the trailer parks give way to cornfields,
and the asphalt devolves into gravel,
the sound is different.
On a dark night, you can turn and see the sky lit up
like a radioactive sunset, or a dying aurora borealis,
and hear the roar,
eminating as though from a giant conch shell, seemingly from nothing.
The sound has a physical presence, pushing outward
like a bomb caught in the act,
and it rocks you gently back into the vaccum of sound behind you,
making you feel as though the last of your hearing is off in the distance,
and deafness will envelop you.
Chicago Night
Curving down LSD
NPR oozing jazz,
The static fireworks display that is the City of Chicago at night
Spread out against the sunset’s last hurrah.
Now I’m in the cave, headlights reflecting off silver semis.
Red taillights punch holes through muted colors.
On the left, the dusk is cut by the harsh white-green fluorescence of an L-stop.
Ahead, a sign says:
Diversy 5
O’Hare 15
(Looks like O’Hare is winning.)
The beat pulls me down the road;
The music, the moment, make me feel cool
Whether it is true or not.
My car, though a rental, seems to know where to go.
It gravitates toward the Edens.
I breathe, and smile,
Swinging onward to twilight.
Roar
The city is a roar;
You can live inside the roar, or out of it.
From within, the sound is broken into its raw components,
the individual cars, busses, trains, sirens are each experienced
one by one, in shocking, cacophonic waves. In the background,
the textures mat and weave
into an ongoing din.
When you are in the city, you are a part of the roar:
Another voice, thrusting into the mass of noise.
Miles and miles away from the city,
where the trailer parks give way to cornfields,
and the asphalt devolves into gravel,
the sound is different.
On a dark night, you can turn and see the sky lit up
like a radioactive sunset, or a dying aurora borealis,
and hear the roar,
eminating as though from a giant conch shell, seemingly from nothing.
The sound has a physical presence, pushing outward
like a bomb caught in the act,
and it rocks you gently back into the vaccum of sound behind you,
making you feel as though the last of your hearing is off in the distance,
and deafness will envelop you.