The Rover

i’m a rover

i roam the sides

of the city rivers

concrete gullies

gushing water

i must not touch

I sleep beneath

the underpass

in a suit of silk

and dreams

and i walk

among the cars

queued up to alight

upon the highway with

its monstrous heights

and slow belching lows

each coin each bill

and each kind word

I collect is

currency i carry

To the 7-11

to trade for peanuts

and cigarettes

i’m a rover

i cut across

the boulevards

and lanes of traffic

into the bramble

And disappear

like winding mist

nobody finds me

unless i want them to

i’m a rover

plucking the string

of a yo-yo

i sing to the line

of sparrows

that descend upon

the desolate park

at sunset

sometimes a moon

sometimes a moon

hovering between blackbirds

on a telephone wire

and a group

of low-hanging clouds,

thin and layered

like craggy cliff stones,

looms so close

that it leaves

the panorama

glimpsed out the back

bedroom window

looking south

onto the alley

with its line of

mechanics’ garages,

the new orchard

planted in the vacant lot

and becomes its own scene

a solo actor

suspended in the celestial

view from north & howard

was a rainy morning

and from

the street corner

the bridge ran

out of sight

a gray gothic

steeple rose

above the trees

that sprouted up

from the train tracks

running beneath the bridge

a red brick building

once a factory

now a warren

of art school studios

stood beneath hovering

slate colored puff clouds

blanketing the sky

coalescing and dissolving

listless and shaky

in the maryland dawn

i sought the grace

of the white light

that opened in ovals

within the glowering sky

the grace of the spectacular

vectors of light

that appeared

in the belfry

of the church steeple

The Spectacle, the Margins & the Sublime - Music to a Sparse Crowd

One of the most poignant things in the world is sublime music presented to a sparse crowd. A Eugene Chadbourne cassette drove this home for me. On it, he sings Elton John's "Daniel" in his twangy, imperfect voice to a barroom crowd whose chatter and glass clinking is practically as loud as his performance. Chadbourne's earnest singing meeting the indifferent sounds of the bar crowd is heartbreaking and beautiful, telling us so much about the journey of the artist and her relationship to society.

In this clip of the elusive Pell Mell live, the crowd is not indifferent -- they are very present and appreciative– but there is still the poignancy of a few people in a record store seeing/hearing music of this caliber. So often, what is not spectacle In this society remains marginal. But its meaning Is not diminished by this; perhaps it is even strengthened by it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9VK4x-KFL4
Music starts at the two minute mark.

read today / read tonight

read today about

the boto

pink river dolphin

holdover from the miocene

toothed whale cousin

approaches your canoe

in moonlight 

says “hello” with

a sly rising head

breaking through

the river mirror

and then descends

back into the blackness

read tonight about

the mati ke language

of the northwestern australian coast

only one man left

to really speak it now –

he hears it in his dreams

and has elided conversations

in mati ke with his

grandchildren, waves rolling in

beneath a vast sky bearing

a white sun

there are 10 classes of nouns

into which the items

of the world can be grouped:

Weapons & lightning together

places & time together

and now i must go to bed.

in my dreams, will the boto

leave the amazon at belém

and swim southwest to

australia to find the

last speaker of mati ke

and greet him with

a playful leap?

will i dream in mati ke

and find place & time

overlapping swirling together

to lift me away from

these rooms in baltimore

and heal my weary mind?

***

The two books I reference are Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Ablely & Journey of the Pink Dolphins by Sy Montgomery.

what i know about baltimore

what i know about

baltimore

is that it’s hard to know

baltimore

it’s like mercury spilled -

wheelies that last

for blocks

uphill

in twilight,

trap music synthetic

hi hat hits

out car windows,

a hawk hauls

away a large snake

in its talons

in a city park,

open the door to see

a butterfly hover

in the breeze

after just thinking

of a butterfly,

how can i know

anything

about a city

that shifts like a

shadow bending

at mid day and

then disappearing?

The Photo Grapher

The Photo Grapher

for Helen Levitt

The lens

Draws back

The eye

Awaits

The move

The step

The form

She rolls

The hoop

In light

Apart

A plane

Glides high

The game

Winds down

The lens

Draws in

The crouch

The gaze

The time

The click

The wind