This Crummy Dirty City
Walking tonight beside the famous park
a golden orb shines over my fat city –
Jupiter, zooming through the infinite dark
yet hardly moving, a flat chapati
pasted on the milky sky like a paper
cutout by Matisse. This crummy, dirty
city, this riot of hijinks and capers,
this domicile where people sleep on sidewalks
or high above Fifth Avenue in skyscrapers;
where rats outnumber citizens, and red-tailed hawks
feast on rats, unlucky cats, and sleeping
babes one second unattended. Gadzooks!
This city full of weeping, city of keening.
Hold our beating hearts for safekeeping.
M. Brooke Wiese
If you have any thoughts about this
poem, M. Brooke
Wiese would like to hear them
