Month: June 2016

pretty boy to loch raven

brook brown and rainbow trout bass and carp
rise shimmering to hatches in deep pools riffles and fast flows
of mayflies caddisflies midges stoneflies
nymphs pupa duns spinners
to grasshoppers beetles ants cicadas crickets inchworms moths
poor fliers swarms
shrimp scuds sowbugs crayfish
leeches
minnows bullheads sculpins
snails craneflies dragonflies damselflies
in eleven cubic feet per second of coldwater
through fields of corn and wheat
cathedrals of eastern hardwood and deposits of salt petre
tasters of our royal cup

lake montebello at sunrise
(in 1881 the city began consuming water from the gunpowder reserved at loch raven supplied to lake montebello on hillen and thirty-third streets)

rapacioutrons

in every atom
of metal in rails ships machines wheels
brick stone in streets walls foundations
wood in chairs beds tables coffins
food
polluted air
treated water
with quarks letpons bosons
interacts a greed hate fear particle
emitting waves in uncertain half-life

old streetcar at sunrise
(baltimore trolleys were desegregated in 1871 as result of a suit filed by john fields—seventy-eight years before rosa parks protested segregated buses)

son of bay leaf and lexington

running soars through gravity devouring oxygen surviving
a celebrating race of power motion space.
horses master time flying in balance
god herds blossoming into thunder.
shamans pretending to know and ride
gamblers fixating on unknowables
jobbers scrounging the sweat of others
necromancers killing with thyroxinelasixnitrogenpharmaceuticals–
set the gods free

pimlico racetrack
(the maryland jockey club reorganized in 1870, leased pimlico on hayward avenue which had briefly been a site for agricultural fairs, and ran the first preakness in 1873)

3641

if the worlds refugees could queue to pier nine
fantasys freedom and mirages bounty
would rise in a vast choir
exhaling the pain of sixteen centuries.
if we were to stop making refugees

pier 9 at sunrise
(in 1868 the steamer baltimore arrived at pier nine on the north shore of locus point from bremen for the first time—by 1914 pier nine was receiving forty thousand immigrants a year—the current world refugee population is estimated to be over sixty-five million)

spontaneous combustion

cinders burning straw wind
clay to park liberty saratoga lexington
a factory on fire spawned men from windows
framehouses and brickhouses exploded in lightning and thunder
shouts and cries chorused into wailing prophesy
dragons pulled wagons through smoke and cinder
firefighters labored on the edge of sacrifice
crows and vultures circled updrafts high above
soaked blankets and men eclipsed the basilica.
the kindling fire in the shavings box next to the engine room
sparked from some strange density
beneath the street

park and lexington at sunrise
(an 1873 fire that burned over four blocks and more than a hundred buildings around clay and park streets was followed by an ever increasing number of smaller fires leading up the 1904 fire)

arch action

five rings of fifteeen million bricks for lateral thrust
compressing space for veins of steel
passing protein and enzyme and impulse
through limbs and organs
of the growing body of human place
wanting more power.
slowly we ride submerged in darkness and strung light
systemic
alone apart atomic

south portal at sunrise
(the first train passed from the south portal of the baltimore and potomac tunnel near gilmore street to the north portal under north avenue in 1873)

steel bubbles

privilege
corruption
panic
depression
outrage
revolt
fascism
organization
change
privilege

camden station at sunrise
(in 1877 baltimore citizens sympathetic to striking railroad workers protested mustering the militia to break the strike and attempted to prevent militia from leaving camden station to break strikers in west virginia and western maryland)

two children

benevolent corporations
sharing and sharing alike
on a wide sunlit treeshaded avenue
where young men learn great things
and sick heal.
father’s anthropocenic cryonic motherless toddlers
careen about the shrubbery
as birth and death sit chatting on the benches
his adolescents skateboard around the fountains
as truth and eternity remark upon the statuaries.
conestogas and teslas
roll slowly up and down his wide avenue
minding the traffic control devices and the speed of light.
in a building symmetrically added
someone may find the beginning of time

howard street at sunrise
(funded through his last will and testament, johns hopkins university began operating on howard street in 1876)