| Mateo Lopes - Poetry |
My Eyes on Times Square Times Square is a sea of vehicles and human flesh, on pavement that leads to a fork in the road in an array of lights that supersede the reds, yellows, and greens. It is a multifaceted gesture of capitalism inherited from the Dutch centuries ago. The throng is always in motion, with few stopped in a freeze frame of never ceasing colorful ideas that mold the landscape for the future of a nation. With completely different intentions, thousands of heads bob freely and never in unison yet just as pistons, in controlled movement upon the landscape. In a colorful universe of human thought and emotion, they walk the cadence of their own minds caught up in whirlwinds of individual chaotic moments that make perfect sense as they step off the sidewalks indifferent to the shadows of the towering structures above, indifferent to the jack hammers and to taxis that streak across the plain, indifferent to the whistle of punks on the street or the cop on the beat and indifferent to the politicians’ white glove. They are together in this time on this bustling street at midday with the light, weather, architecture, machines, and exhaust as background for their collective drama drawn from the individual jazz of each man, woman, and child. Look and see the Leroy Neiman painting, the colors mesh but are individually vibrant. The people are alive and in constant motion, this picture is not static. It is not the architecture, it is not the traffic, it is not the lights or the mechanical exhaust that creates the city; it is the people. They come from afar, so many races from so many places of differing nationalities, languages, religions and yet they struggle together and make it work for better or for worse in a marriage arranged by Stuyvesant hundreds of years ago. For gilders and buckskins, as the foundation was not built upon church doctrine. There is no false legend of pilgrims here. They carve deeply into this volcanic rock themselves. They create from thin air just as their ancestors did and they walk as they see fit, molding the apple or the onion for the New Yorkers of tomorrow just as the Lenape, did for the Dutch, just as the Dutch did for the English, just as the slaves did for the nation. |
I Too Have a Lost Woman Patricia Beer you were right most poets have one. I do but unlike yours, mine continues to live. Like yours, mine has had a lasting effect upon my life. She is brash, pretentious, and she finds it convenient never to apologize. Her desire to control everything around her destroyed those who loved her most. Even worse, she passed on those traits. I have struggled a lifetime attempting to shed her gifts and I am nearly complete. Unlike you Patricia, my tendrils do not clutch for her affection. My sense of morbidness does not allow me to touch her. If she were to feel me, my senses would reject her. For the longest time I have lived with this affliction and I fear that I will suffer from this condition and share it over many lifetimes of disappointment and despair. Soon she will pass and I will honor her. I acknowledge her condition. Her breath is raspy and shallow and sometimes it smokes. Her pain is severe but I do not feel it. Her tendrils are long and tenacious but they cannot reach me. Her frustration is immeasurable and it will continue until she dies. I love my lost woman but when she dies, she will no longer snap. |
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