super rough draft (union square park poem)

[evedescending]

With the city sweating and dissolute
and noise lowering in hot sheets, and ash
molting down the buildings on the breeze,

the skateboarders keep up their brave games
and give clear whoops atop their arcs;
the one-armed man with a djembe
is half-part of this dance of slides and gutters,
and the beautiful girls give off heat
as they pass in their dresses.

I lie under the stone legs of the Marquis de Lafayette
and his sword's shadow slices my belly.
At the market the vendors hawk puckering melons.
The trucks curl sound out their tailpipes
and roar as they pass.

Even the cool shadows shudder
in a constant furor of doors.
On the world whines. On it gutters.
Even the stoops are trembling.
A red-headed girl leaves a man
and he slumps on the bench as if hanged.