e/se (an elegy for the downtrodden)

GRIFFIN PLAAG

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the night’s gotten purple in menageried dusk and

the rotor chassis of the semis squeal over the blacktop.

you are being born. a glass of wine is being poured by a waiter,

high-risen, stilted acetate, prim but not

too prim, y’know? shrimp caught saturday frying in an

expensive italian place, chiffon decor. the jumping butter pat,

the shrimpy souse gone briny – this is what we here call ritz, distilled, viz. the butter –

 

 

the fifty ninth street edifice contractured and skeletal over the

water. wind blowing e/se tastes like women. little waxy scraps st. vitus across

gluey sidewalk chalk drawings. someone props the manhole cover –

          imagine having to clean that thing! –

and if you kick it over the orifice you might trap the immigrant

trypophobic in the gutter.

         (see, you do know, don’t you?)

 

nine-thirty again. nine-thirty-five again. five to eight minute intervals. we move in five to eight minute intervals and watch the clock’s machinery. no, it isn’t analog, what do you mean? i mean it’s analogous. nine-forty again and the silver obelisk bullets east, shaking off metallicized dew and jimmying the risen crossbars. bright fluorescent ascetic interior. most of the patrons look bored & fuckt. ties flung shoulderside to peer at the screen without that ornamental noose interfering. nine-fifty-five and then

TEN O’CLOCK -

         PUSH THE THRONGING THIRD RAIL-LIKE AND PRAY YOUR HEEL

                  FINDS THE GRATE AND HOW LONG DO THOSE SLIDING DOORS

                           STAY OPEN ANYWAY (?)

 

                  surely they cannot be autonomous or they would never

                  accept our amplitude or our

                  loafers or

                  the bums –

                                    Oh, the bums!

 

 

 

 

rabid and rodential and scabrous and scraggly and patchwork

         bored and fuckt but foreign

         don’t make eye contact

         don’t look too scared either

         or he mightATTACK

         andTAKE YOUR TIMEPIECE

                  (???)

 

the streaking red eddies of phosphene light that

sconce the vortexed lirr don’t stop at montauk; they probably make it portside,

         like normandy or somewhere,

                  jetting thru the spraying surf

                  positively transatlantic

                  possibly pacific, if that blinking mauve

                  could learn conflict resolution,

and after bulleting transnational –

         delhi ghetto or libyan pebble or upending with tristate bombast some miles of the

                  urals you can wind up in

         brooklyn again, hudson portcullis raised,

         teeth of the urban maw tugboat-accessible, now,

every five to eight minutes you can do the whole bloody thing

         again.

 

 

 

and the scrabbling reflective-collared sewerman

is the same as the schizoid bum is the same as

you, monotonous and dry-eyed, forest hills mansards

binocular, flipping a proverbial bird at print-stained

lirr plexiglass, vague aditted reflection unamused and

fuckt, all new york a daunting metonym

 

         (and at ten p.m. you’ll crowdsurf penn to beat them all home)

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