Degrees Of Gray At Coney Island - For Richard Hugo And My Father, Bomber Pilots In Ww 2 Poem by Warren Falcon

Take air away and even fire falls - Richard Hugo

Descend and of the curveship lend a myth to god - Hart Crane

1
On this manic strand the
franks are speechless
in the hand relenting to
degrees of gray mustard
smeared as the wind also
gray beside the ruined
amusements, thrills

where rides plummet stick
children hard and down where
fresh girls defy gravity while
they can curving in cues
between tracks and sand.

Impatient, they blot their
brightened lips, stain tissues
thin between World Wars,

still they cry out a dead poet's name.


2
To South Wind
throw sand,
make demands
though men in
bombers forever take flight
still bereaving wind sheer.

Hard evidence is there.

What's to believe in?
The only thing real is Fear,

the only god one
can depend upon is Lift,

some few others assist,
Weight, Dare, Soft Landing.

Let us mention again
fresh girls on the rides

but let us return also
to the presenting scene,

stare bird blind

and lend no myth
at all

for there
as here death
is a generic dump
with glutted gulls,
soft waves lapping
on about
Stop Time
and lull

or so says a
yellowed script's
urgent demand,

the hint is there,
or spin or drift,
something suggested
where breath as
darkness is designed
by sand.

3
Benched blondes
free now from
restraining rides
keen on in staggered
rhyme forgetting
they once were
German swans
pale and grim.

Posing as cranes,
nothing's lent.

Still they forget a
dead poet's name.