Lowell

Lowell

1. the warp

In the beginning

there was dark
skin by the river
mystic words
and cold water from the Pemigawasett

Kisosen, the sun-bringer,
spread his wings
and gave life
drew them in and gave dreams

This was the first day.

                        And it was good.

By the Merrimack's gnarled elbow

            A nativity of feather and fire
            the melody of smoke
            brotherhood and a balm for weary feet

            Here at the Bunt, The holy rite of salmon
            practiced
            with gravity & time

                        a river spirit swallowed whole
                        by stone and man

This was the second day.

                                    And it was good.

***

Names change. Bones change.

The river’s brother,
his red feathers on penitent wings in tree pose,
watches from heaven.

Light plays on the water
            dawn,
                        noon,
                                    evening,

Now moonlight
Now stars.

Always, the river comes
Always, the river goes.

Lips part, words flow,
we who were brothers
become..

We Who Are Not.

Upon  this,

a city was built

of bricks and broken finger nails
of Maine timber and flayed skin
of words and reason
a glowing red river of humanity
a new song of vomit and cotton
of sweating work-tendered hands
of filth

She is exhaled souls
a million strong
winged and holy

man-made fingers stretching to pluck God from heaven.

This was another day

and it was good.

*

And He called …
this city the handmaid of human good

For the sake of fire
the hawk ate her liver daily
she died and lived
cried the ashes of her nothing over the falls
into the fallen

down the mottled rough of every road to the sea

Her hips birthed war and warrior
trampled, tramp, scamp, and pampered

Her womb bore water and dust, thought
and industry, industries and thoughtless dead.

Still,
though He named her, for every word she has ferried
from the guff to my lips

I refuse to pay

*

Into the wilderness
of street and light
the slow rise and fall of murky night
between the hand hewn stones that line her canals

I watch her buried hopes
drown in the amber river of Jack

shit flowing from man
to a puddle of drool

I walk in the bourbon darkened alleys
of her prey without prayer
the predator circles

The irony of her angels locked
groin to groin

lovers in a public kiss
brick and words - love and nothing
lord, I pray for hate
and passions viral touch

Is that conflict screeching
in circles around the smoke stacks

sharp talons
searching her body for my fat
belly, my loud feet
stomping down these beer soaked cobblestones?

Is that another dream
of rail and road
a hobo heart
beating away on my city's clock?

I don’t know anything about such power

the push of water through the Wanalancit
the pull of politics against gatehouse
the gray wash of the holy see over salty soul

brown puddles in potholes
the fetid palms of the people gilded with black tar burns and needle scars

            This was the last day

                                    and it was good?

*

Words, always words,
is that all we are?

Jack, Jack, Jack -
you poor dead bastard -
buried here like a rusty knife
in her cold heart.

This city, she showed you love
I hear; Old Maggie
and her alabaster thighs
parted and silver in snowy moonlight

She showed you love
then you smothered it in the metallic slaps of your Underwood

Are you better loved now,
a dead beaten god?

Another cold corpse of the Buddha -
belly worn away -

revealing the four noble truths

as we celebrate - you
suffer.

Christ, is that all this is?

                        And it is good?

 

2. the weft

i. Hunt’s Falls

A confluence – two ideas coursing
from different directions

Sunlight and water
playing over the rocks, under me

Then away, away

Away.

**

 

ii. Bridge St.

From here, I see the city's heart
beating on the left

words etched with chisels

her artery flows away
and vein flows toward the clock tower

I see the bitter light of another swallowed day
against the red brick
and hear the diesel moan of a city bus
carrying the young away from these thoughts

Of damnation, salvation and nation

and the smell of rot,
the afterthought of storm
in the river.

**

 

iii. Aiken St.

Before the sound of the crowd
the smell of hotdogs
the taste of beer
the the crack of wood against the hard ball

This place was broken

the carp four dozen feet below
do not remember

the trees sagging toward a sip
do not speak that story

The smell of gas and footsteps haunted dead
moments. bodies searched
for the safety of anywhere but
here.

Nearby, the body electric
spun and whirred
where the city's lyrics
longed for a voice

The past walks by and stops at the gate
we watch power
production
and water
 

**

iv. Moody Street

For traffic’s sake, a road was sliced
now every end is dead,
even here where the ideas live
in a torrent over hard times

I reject the new name
but accept the change

I am the rush and the rocks below
and above, I am the thousand footsteps
of the nameless children

dreaming of the leap
remembering the leapers before them
longing for a fenceless view

I am the walk from the chaos of raw cotton
to the twisted order of yarn

I do not remember the Old Textile School
the wash of knowledge
that dyed this city

But I see the yellow of those bricks
and know it was true.

The sidewalk is stained with puke and wads of half-chewed gum

The happenstance of student
and teacher being one
on the bright shining dilapidated bridge that Kerouac walked

v. School Street

I hear the theme in the barbaric yawp of water on stone:
we are all broken

I taste the fury of meaningless roiling
from flood to trickle:
who are we?

On a beach, I can see from this gatehouse,
children are dancing in current
while their mothers  yell
“be careful!”


**

 

vi. Rourke    

I heard Ray's voice once on a spring day
when i was still young enough to believe in
anything,

it was just a whisper,

            “it's never the same river,
            this city lives on the difference between here

and there.”

18 feet and 6 bridges.
4.7 miles of canal.

120,000 men,
women & children lurching
along these soggy banks

I never met him,
but back on a cold day in ’91 at the Owl Diner,
 his daughter Susan sat beside me
in a tiny booth with worn red leather seats
and ate her eggs over-easy.

We spoke about money for the University,
our philosophies of government and  knowledge,
and old Bill Hogan’s bulbous nose,

“This city was built on textiles,”
she preached with a smooth smile.

I looked at the pilsner-colored water
and I knew that she was wrong.
Those textiles were built by the city

The city
was born from the water
long before these bridges stitched her together.

 

3. the weave

i. Gingham

I see the portly gentleman
with the white cotton apron
serving me

Poetry and the notion of kindness
this is art
performed for the sake of honesty

He is the indigo
that touches all the threads
that touch me

I see them combed and carded
fine and dandy,
or merely medium – unknowing
that they too are his art
and now, of course

they are the fabric of me.

*

ii. Muslin

I see the essence of the silver-maned man
closely-woven & unbleached,
and though he creates with a laugh
in every ounce of his voice:
his is produced from his own corded yarn
Neither flim
nor flam
only man.

He shuttles me from yellow bus to yellow bus
to see the largest production
ever

on Broadway

On shards of granite the quaint smallness of art
is found in his baby boy
then pronounced as an anthem
from a beautiful woman
in a cheap blond wig,
”custom chants… for a price” she sings

She sings.

Beneath the railroad bridge
violin candle light
we pause – not for music, but for moment
we stop – not for art, but for man
There is no flimsy in this whimsy
here
only man.

Atop the wall, lit by bursts of gunpowder and stars
the spirit of the road
stands with an empty suitcase
you are free, he says,
celebrate your own road
together.

Images flutter by
a man in a white tuxedo delights us
with a moment at the seediest petrol station
in the coldest acre of this mean old city

the neighbors wave,
there are no drugs, only
delusions and hope.

At the riverside,
the suitcase of the spirit lays open
and ready for our kindling words
we light them
and the orange glow of who we are
drifts down the river

we who were flotsam,
we who were jetsam –

                        become the river.

*****

iii. Flannel

And yes,
I could whine how life is woven from the fuzziest of worsted yarns

I could cry out for my favorite girl,  “Oh Sweet Liberty!

Curses
Karma
two smokes

and an empty shot glass?

Where the hell did she go?”

Yes, she was rails
and empty suitcase

• the praise of every bum-muttered "um"

But where is she now?

For her sake, do I dare clamor the raucous rant,
the endless howl of the beaten?

Do I join the pipped brains of the squeaked little me's
who say

which black may be spoken
which gray is most moral
which white feigns devout silence best

I pity you and your ice cubes
the tawdry bliss of your beliefs
the empty taint of your wretched pulse

But I pity me more
for the bad stitches where I sewed
my imagined-you together with the wrong threads,
the wrong twill into the wrong quilt.

No, howling pity is the bad medicine –  the fascism of faux-freedom
the Maybelline hate of forced tolerance

It is too late, the green mother lays cold and copper in her oak casket.

Liberty is the metal grip of want
the right to fail petted and beloved
to lose
to despair

to rot from the inside

and she is dead.

Truth is woven with fuzzy yarns that hold bright colors,
and it rips so easily.

Oh My city. My love.

Let me dye you, and sew you together

I am the baked red clay
the dry memory of wet mortar
the skyline and the moved earth where water flows

You,

the lips
the voice
the eyes
the arms
the hands
the fingers

We,
the canvas,

dyed, washed, ironed, & painted
a city on a river