Tag: baltimore

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)

libraries lectures music and galleries

relics endow perception of ravages and desolation
as beauty and truth
in unbigoted contemplation, without rancor
unmarked.
from secure investments

peabody at sunrise
(george peabody endowed the peabody institute of the city of baltimore in 1857, which opened its doors on mount vernon square and was dedicated to the public in 1866)

community in orogeny

colliding continents
compress and congeal
veins of granite gabbro basalt
layers of sandstone limestone banded iron
shifting forming figuring
uplifting mountains of quartzite slate gneiss
through clouds
sun wind vapor rock resound
and rain flies like music through the valleys and streams

yellow lines at sunrise
(in november of 1864 there were spirited celebrations of maryland’s new constitution, which abolished slavery—including a large one at mount vernon hall on howard street)