another day

members of port authority met
for the purpose of organizing at the governors office at ten light street.
but for frogman dwight from us virgin islands charm city was to die that day
from planted spybombs
to assassinate governor mayor commissioners capitalism
establish communo-fascist oligarchia nycjobbershippers
at the expense of our fair city.
thanks for superiorintelligence advancedwiretrapping.
uss saratoga steaming to guantanamo
detours quietly up the chesapeake
(secrecy more important than success)
seal team spotted by birdkill counting team—abort.
comes night of frogman do or we die slowly rusting without commerce
dwight come with us special orders
two days of darknesssilence
into the water from launch toward lazaretto
steady breaststrokes not a ripple sound reflection
treading an hour partying sailors meltaway
uponto shore minutebyminute movingnotmoving amphibianunseen
2:07 wet wooden pile
2:08 still pier shadows
2:09 sleeping drunk on pratt
2:10 refuse on lombard corner
2:11 barrels near redwood construction
2:12 boxes near freight elevator
2:13 soundless toes leaping fourtreads fourtreads fourtreads
2:14 spybombs noiselessly collected
2:15 elevator shaft repelling quiet nylon
2:16 darkdoorway
2:17 emptybustop
2:18 blackwall
2:19 nosplash nightbirds unmoving
good judgement professional standards
modernoverall
shippersport
promoted
frogman did

tower at sunrise
(the baltimore port authority met for the first time in 1956 at 10 light street and began centralized, regional management of port facilities in lieu of separate management by the b&o, western maryland, and pennsylvania railroads under city supervision—dwight may have resigned from the usn because racist shore patrol rolled and left to drown a drunk friend of his returning to ship from shore leave)

viewing rooms

nasty business
from a promontory
stands in wet white linen
floats down to ships
on streets and alleys
touring
in scenery and repose

belvedere at sunrise
(the sheraton belvedere, on chase and charles streets, desegregated at christmas in 1954 for a month, before re-segregating at the demand of racist city business leaders)

anthropomorphine

liberty in
losing using
ones own money in ones own way
or someones else notwatchings
finance unmediocre
money as light coursing
numbing strange selfsuffocatingabortion
accelerating phoenixcinders

stock exchange at sunrise
(the baltimore stock exchange, at 210 east redwood street, closed and merged with the philadelphia stock exchange, NASDAQ OMX PHLX, in 1949)

inharmonious undesign

unconstrained combustion
fuels illusorycompressed timespace
leaving seemingempty places
sortofnotreally littered
with concentrated purchases
stateless events
anthrofrenzy

shopping center at sunrise
(the edmonson village shopping center, the city’s first suburban mall, opened in 1947 on edmondson avenue)

three ways

painful pillows hold my head in vice
sloshing radiators overheat bowels
words saidunsaid needle hurting space
in fetal blueskinned sluggish confusion
out to frostyclear dawnlight
moist easterlies
three softslowstepping laps
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
everabsssorbing cobalt blue
fizzzbuzzz
trainsss leaving sssouth

cobalt blue at sunrise
(the emerson bromo seltzer tower on lombard and eutaw streets was the tallest skyscraper in the city from 1911 to 1923)

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)

professor shitwater

me thy sanitizer
put shit in thy harbor
me thy onedollarman
put ironsulfur in thy lungs
me thy envirosultant
put cyanibenzene in thy cells
very few harbors in the world are clean
yup its raining dollars
my purse is around here somewhere

brownfields at sunrise
(abel wolman propped up industrial polluters with pseudoscience and shared greed, earning more than the city from his 1940 scheme to sell lightly-treated city sewage to bethlehem steel for industrial use and subsequent dumping into the patapsco—harbor area groundwater had already been depleted and polluted)