Something About A Rumi Poem - With Jackhammers, Doves, Bach Cantata Number 85, Hungry Ghosts, A Wasted Life - Or Not Poem by Warren Falcon

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom. - James Wright


And yet this aria on this bright sunny day NYC clear while jackhammers and their jackhammerers pound directly beneath my 8 am window.

Patient doves, their blessings dulcet on usual late winter fire escape just other side of window, have fled,

bed's no refuge, 'm mad daunted, unwanted din in the city of men

juxtapose dust hammered up from bookshelves, compliant window ledge's graying clouds of god knows what,

with Bach's praises, with sharp sneezes in B minor, my whining complaints just so much braying 'Hair On A Me String', impotent,

curses abjure to roaring city that never let's me sleep, Polis's absolute rule-unchangeable being

neither blizzard, gale, hail, pandemic nor Jehovah's Witnesses shall prevent absolute Imperatives of Unrelenting Progress

from hammering meek citizens escaped to tarred overpriced roofs, city of Hungry Ghosts calculating taxes wondering

just why there is no more ink in the Voracious Printer.


Reading James Wright poems, collected, cathected, despite the din, comes then radio's magnificent transcendence, Johann

Sebastian Bach, complementarity of apparent-opposites impinged contrasts of radio's morning news:

'sameness bright, dinged,
yellow-suited predictable
helmeted men at war with
pavement 5 floors below
mad to get to gas, rusted
pipes a'leak, perhaps,
mock episode'


my dream's no longer detail-remembered, s'blotted,

only scraps to poke at -

something to do with a Rumi poem,
a turbaned Sufi at the wheel, a beat
VW cab, bright yellow, banged up,

drives me

(denser body jam crammed
back seat behind of the Driver

my window blacked out -
no seeing the Path clearly)

to my long overdue
Reunion/Return with/to

the Friend.


Did I make it?


Nonetheless

ARRIVED

(relinquished?)

STOPS

Curbed -

Ask, 'How much? '

One eye tics,

Beard, dyed orange,

distracts,

'S'just skin in the game. Get out! '

in full Bronx accent.


Ejected duly.

Street corner

rumbles sub rosa.


Just the thing,

jerks an altared grate,


dyslexia nervosa

out of body

anhedonia -2

a'sudden,

sullen bracing,

then blurs into

frames powder-blue.


Beard drives straight up

into endless sky which,

image, is a lie, it does

end, thin to thinner

then no matter,

more's the ether.


Elevating bumper

sticker reads,

almost out of site,

into unannounced

dystances dim

with tail pipes,

with ashes,

miles of them,

endless traffic:

I BRAKE FOR BLOSSOMS


Still, I have lost the drift. -1

**

-1 A riff on a famous last line of a James Wright poem, it being:

'I have wasted my life.'

-2 anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure