Chambers Street

#Chambers Street

  Here on Chambers Street,
      The lights are dimmed
          the crowd has thinned
          and everyone is waiting.
      for an electric comment
          (a verbal comma)
          a romance unspoken
          an unbroken vase.
      A pause before the show,
          before the rose thorns bloom and cacophony resumes
          accompanying the karmic pulse of daylight
      One heartbeat
          one thrum
      beating, repeating--
  Here on Chambers Street
  
  It's all in boxes on Chambers Street!
      A poet with dog-tag eyes and a sign
      in his window reading
          Optimism for Rent!
          and
          Will Rhyme For Food!
      But no one reads signs anymore;
          who has the time?
      So instead he recites lines
      of Japanese senryu
          out loud to himself in
          muted saxophone drones
          tones drifting slowly away from his body
      like islands from a sailboat
      and they reach the ears of the neighbor girl alone
          in her one-bedroom loft and
      She doesn't know what they mean
      but she likes the way he dreams out loud--
  Here on Chambers Street
  
  Everything's ok here on Chambers Street.
      The traffic lights
          sigh in cycle
      Police cars
          drift in circles
      The priests laugh for the cameras and
      Another man died last night
          on this street-corner.
          (frostbite
      but no one noticed, so that's alright.)
      and the smell wasn't too hard to ignore.
  The next evening,
      the carpenters and the plumbers
      told stories about it to one another
          in beatbox beauty.
      Beating their chests and besting death
      like bullets from a tongue
  But everyone goes home to their Victrola at ten
      and back next week to duel again
      There are many nice movies and plays to see--
    Here on Chambers Street
  
  There's baggage to sell on Chambers Street.
      A simple thought:
      a war unfought - for now.
  Cautiously she wanders in.
  "Hi mom, I'm home."
      A face like tallow
      too tall, and too narrow
      frail like bones without marrow
  And she carries with her
      a story to tell
      one final lie - held in her mouth
      like a revolver:
  "I'm fine.
      Don't worry. I'm here.
  I'm fine."
  Here on Chambers Street.
  
-LFF

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