Is poetry even relevant?

What is broken here where
poetry is not
the king?

How many thoughts
i've thought while Lowell's heavy beat
stood atop my heart to sing

What cul-de-sac full of
Indian babies,
full of Laotian mothers
full of french-canadien salmon pies

is bare silent
waiting for their own verses
to chant and adore?

The mills are museums (now)
and artist's lofts
Red brick senturies to guard the gates
that the hand-maiden might
weave words
to chew and mull
to spit
to crunch beneath steel toed shoes
that trudge to Lawrence at 5:37am

I would
should ask her
if she is relevant today --
or simply mispelled and unpunctuated --
a catharsis for the ignorant, no
longer metaphor for truth.

But no... let her sleep.

Poetry,
she is not dead
quite yet.

Her eyes droop as strokes
of genius leave her
wanting
love and fresh flowers
but her heart beats

There in Belvideare near
Cawley Stadium when the bass drums
boom in cold orange october nights

There in the Highlands
when the trumbones play Gershwin at
Tyler Park.

There on the Boulevard
as the ice cream melts and
the Mammi's hooch beautiful thick
brown toes in soft river sand.

O You dear Romeo,
Kiss her!

Please Kiss her awake

let our bodies be electric
here in April before the pink flowers pop out
from the unkissed knuckles of the rhododendron

let our bodies be electric with her beneath
the golden globes on Palmer Street as she
tip-taps down cobblestones for the nip of
paradise and cannolis

let our bodies be electric
as we imbibe the deisel smoke
of the Lowell to Boston line and
parade down thorndike street
a testament to beauty

when our lips
slick and lap
beneath the rust and cracked black paint of the spaghettiville bridge.

She is not dead yet,
not quite yet.

See how her lips curl
when i recite my lust
for her fertile loins?