Tag: pratt street

endura folks

darker rings
how many one chances to resist decay
starwaste or anthropolymer
absorbing stress response
precipating enzyme
until the forest entire burns
perhaps seeds after

united states district court at sunrise
(in 2017 thirteen baltimore residents were arrested for protesting against fascism in washington dc, an enclave of the united states without full representation, and prosecuted in dc to support fascist government policy and fascist government operations)

where is the bridge

pictures and stories are windows in walls i don’t see past
a black mirror
warm blood on skin yellow white black
someone washing away toward a vast ocean
i navigate by echo

red black yellow white at sunrise
(the reginald f lewis museum of maryland african american history and culture opened on president and pratt streets in 2005)

shadecounter

a sailor returning
holds firm
ninety ways of smelling water
ripping into every meal
aortas veins feeding filtering
nerves ringing in wind
each day a space sealed and stowed
jet propelled through twisting time
on the rim of dim dark implosion
before memory stops

pier 3 at surnise
(the national aquarium opened as the baltimore aquarium in 1981 on pier 3)

inpatientcity

breathing shallow sweating dizzy
numb blurred not thinking through
diagprescribed
fractionally distilled elixirpolymers
combpestled
mechanical opiates of directforce
supremely lucrative to attending charlycians
breathingeatingpissingshitting monetizedlifeforce
incapitalpathology

powerplant at sunrise
(in 1948 the national city lines holding company funded by gm, standard oil, firestone, and phillips added complete control of the baltimore transit company, which was powering electric streetcars from its plant on pratt street, to its collection of almost fifty soon-to-be disinvested and dismantled city streetcar utilities across the country)

styleplus

war to knife to hilt
fraying
flaying pinking shearing
brawling
rolling
pistol shotting
hacking
out into streets
spreading cutting stickering fusing sorting stitching
eddies of fists and flailing
slowly unoppose
fuse
swirl together in a rising flood of flashing steel
to wash against
great floating capitals of mislaid granite

clothing factory at sunrise
(struggles between united garment workers and amalgamated clothing workers unions erupted into a melee in the sonneborn clothing factory on pratt and paca streets in 1916)

not my maryland

despots filled the streets
cobbled with ignorance born from greed
bastard sons and daughters of mother hell
will snuggle in parlors with empty words and moldy swords
thirty thousand new suns could not wrest the nightmare of your torture
your hurled bricks pieces of iron and coal epithets a lunatic babble
as you writhe in self-forged chains beneath your hell bitch mother
puss oozing from your blistering flecked faces mountains streams
murderous premeditated with no soul to yield or defend
distant thunder soundless in the void
that could have been hearts beating with the earth

pratt over jones falls at sunrise
(in 1861 baltimore citizens started the killing in the civil war by attacking massachusetts soldiers who were on their way to washington and travelling west on pratt street making a railway transfer—a maryland native living in louisiana who was sympathetic to the murderers wrote a silly poem that is now the maryland state song http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyrics.html)

49ers

they would fly clouds ride comets
cross witches transit celestial
swim with sword fish challenge oceans around so called america
in long running ships with massive sail
they would climb through agricola alpes apenninus archimedes
carpatus caucasus cordillera
haemus harbinger
jura
pyrenaeus
recti riphaeus rook
secchi spitzbergen
taurus teneriffe.
boldly they would ride into al-qahira ares auqakuh
bahram
dao
harmakhis her-desher hrad huo-hsing
kasei
labou
ma’adim maja maders mangala marikh marte mawrth
nanedi nirgal
reull
shalbatana simud
tiu.
they would seek for eldorado

sugar plant at sunrise
(many clippers designed and built in baltimore sailed around cape horn carrying fortune seekers in the mid-19th century)

unwanting

woolfolk slatter donovan purvis campbell harker denning
wilson hines fairbanks kephart anderson accinelly,
chained cargo to walk or be hauled down pratt in the middle of the night
to ships agent architect hyperion general pinckney intelligence kirkwood tippecanoe and victorine
and new orleans
uncounted sons or daughters or sisters or brothers or fathers or mothers or lovers.
penned
shackled
sweltered
frozen
drenched
whipped
auctioned.
cash for seamstresses
small fancy girls
fellows
hands
highest prices
always buying.
here is the short list to find our lost soul
adjustment amends atonement
compensation
damages
expiation
indemnification indemnity
punishment
quittance
recompense recoupment redress refund reimbursement remuneration repayment reprisal requital restitution retaliation
satisfaction settlement

west pratt street at sunrise
(several large slave-traders operated from locations around pratt street in the mid-19th century)

inbreeding the clipper

an osprey appeared in the mist
a falling meteorite into the harbor
almost unseen.
another soared twisting turning
outmaneuvering five crows giving chase.
a third skimmed to me
and became a beetle as it landed on my hand
large pincers for piercing fruit
eyes blood red and large for walking in dark shadows
serrated fangs for injecting venom
long antennae curled into smoke
reaching in my nose and oozing out my ears.
i put it in my mouth chewed and swallowed
so my children leave faint traces of its indigo exoskeleton
with each footstep

from swann park at sunrise
(designs adapted from the baltimore clipper were used to build slave-trade ships in the mid-19th century)