Showing posts with label living in the city. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living in the city. Show all posts

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Above the Roar of the Inconsequence
by Jeanne René


I am
a child of concrete
of window vignettes unwanted, unavoidable.
Contact, communication with the human condition
that contaminates,
cements my visage into wrinkles of camaraderie,
cohesion of war and peace and dinner debates.

“I am, I am,” clanging my spoon
upon the bottom of my pot,
clamoring
above the roar of the inconsequence…

“I am!”

I am the warmth of streetlight,
its halo hovering above our saints and our demons.
I stop to rest, to slump
against thin walls vibrating with multiple heartbeats,
I soften … stoop under wags of cacophonous tongues,
and lonely testimonials liberated into the dark abyss.
I cry,
crying at the poetic laughter of derelict lovers,
and the coo of babies drifting with the dust of ventilation, I settle, recline.
I rise to the wink of flirtatious matriarchs leaning on sooty sills,
sashaying their hips in accompaniment to evening recitations
strummed upon the underbellies of complacent cicadas ….

    and I move
by way of masses on summer trails of blistering boulevard
asphalt lakes, ribbons amalgamate mortality
putty and plaster
sand and solder
fused      I am fused and I move

    never on a whisper,

in the presence of bobbing umbrellas
admiring the shine of petroleum prisms.
puddle jumping to catch the rush of sunset.
In the presence
of timepieces set upon analog hours,
traversed in measures of unbounded highway,
calculations of conferences
and the shade of high rise     I move

parade through our humanity, inhumanities, the pulse, the pulse, the pulse
pounded on the pavement.
And, I scream, “I am the child of byways, sown into the cement
flesh of the multitude
and the backward glance into the alley,
the augmented 5th suspended above the sidewalk,
the tail of the shooting star drawn behind the skyline

dissolving into the infinitesimal speck,
grain of sand, polished sediment pressed under my weight
into the generations.”
I bang my pot, hammer my silver spoon,
“I am mettle of metropolis,
the sweet seduction of city
stuck to the bottom of my shoes.”

I am

   I am the shadow falling between the jagged horizon ... I am.


jeannerene 4.22.12