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
(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)
(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)
a literature a fountain
scribes working treasures beyond kings
vicious bits of a great electric train
torrenting valleys cycloning shanties
a balance sheet for enigma.
finished work satisfies briefly
(the enoch pratt free library began operating on cathedral and mulberry streets in 1886)
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
(funded through his last will and testament, johns hopkins university began operating on howard street in 1876)
relics endow perception of ravages and desolation
as beauty and truth
in unbigoted contemplation, without rancor
unmarked.
from secure investments
(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)
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
(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)
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
(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)
unsettled i swarm a multitude
invading this place
cycling through so many sundays
greeting strangers in wooded undulating water vistas
an ideal passenger leaving little trace
wanting clear city springs unbuilt boulevards streetcars
primordial flocks and schools of birds and fish.
until i just breath
(druid hill park was inaugurated in 1860 by the lame duck know-nothing mayor)
sharing speed
destination or direction
space
time
air and light and temperature
moving and waiting glances words faces
together on steel
in wood and glass
streets melt into cinema
animating our city
(street car service first started along broadway between the point and baltimore street in 1859)