Poem of a City (Pueblo Colorado) - 1. Chapter 1

I am a city, a town,
I am a city of poetry,
I am Pueblo,
the people of the city gave me that name,
Feel my poetry
in the rippling muscles that built me,
Poetry is in my bridges, streets and houses,
honky-tonk piano memories of whorehouses once along Union Avenue,
Walk my trails and hip-hop to the jangle of tag-jazz
in my picture on the levee along my river,
Lift your face toward the moon above me and howl the Arkansas River
blues
that run soft and undulating in my ribbon of liquid verse,
Dogs yip and yowl my blues in Eastside yards,
in alleys and along the South Block twists and turns,
And once upon a time of molten steel
the fire-breathing smoke-trumpets and bugles
of Bessemer smudged my blues
a shade of gray in sky-notes of sweat and toil
before my workers poured forth
to talk my rhythms in tired undertones
over bottles and mugs of beer in the Evans and Elm Street night
until losing themselves in my dreams,
Leaves gossip with my fall-time verse in whispering zig-zags
groundward
in Mineral Palace Park
where maybe Jack Kerouac could have cruised for hunky, young muscle,
perhaps bypassing, instead, down the Pueblo Highway to Lake
and waitress moments,
tequila hoisted for a craziness as mad as a catholic mystic,
a rabid rabbi of rhyme lost in awe of a caffeine slut
wandering the byways of my poetry out of mortal time and place,
As a kid, Damon Runyan scribbled my rhythms
in stories he sold to the paper,
the same as slurred
by the drunk stumbling out onto B-Street: "Where are you, Jose?
Lookin' for you, Jose! - gonna' beat your ass! - want me to park your
car, sir?"
My verse spans my nation from sea to sea,
It chants of childhood in Wildwood,
Philadelphia, on the South Jersey shore,
verse-caress of Elvis croons in a gold cadillac
before my seagull of poetry settled its wings on the shore of Lake
Pueblo
and sailboat-ballets as smooth as the dreams of an Indian Guide,
as silken as still-sedated, post-surgical bliss
struggling to tell everyone: "Fuck you! - leave me alone!
I haven't slept this well in years!"
Because, believe or not,
the ceiling of zen monasteries won't always be gone,
giving unobstructed views of the moon and lissome, young girls
with flowers gracing their hair
in nearby apartments under the jagged roof-line jazz
in Brooklyn of which I write,
So, wake up! Hop up out tha' coffin!
Prepare for Mojo Dragon Mad Man anointing
of snake oil, of Mario's pizza and Okie, junkyard crankcase oil!
because I wear vests, black cowboy boots decorated
with white designs and tah(tar)-pants,
yowling, howling and pounding the drum-beat tango of
tah(tar)-sniffing, New Orleans voodoo snake-woman blues,
invoking the spirit of Marie Laveau to guitar strides
of electric steel, oozin', cruisin' smooth from a speaker the size of
a cigarette box,
as Mary Magdalene-mysterious as ravens, crows and magpies ruling the
roost in elm trees
and on fenceposts along Overton Road,
as mysterious as cat-eyes preferring sleep
over mice seeking indoor refuge of warmth
on wine-chilling winter nights,
blues as wild as born-again virgins gone mad
on the wind of Halloween night,
knocking on doors and shrieking:
"Trick or treats!
and I want you to know I don't think with my pussy,
even with help from battery cables
or herbal aphrodisiacs on weed farms!"
I sing of the ordinary, paeans to toilet paper,
and when my t. p. scribblings are flushed beyond reach
I sing about the fun to be found in Grandmother's purse
and other delightful things, even fun incomplete,
I remember night club parking lot moments seared in mind,
an old man with hand and tattooed arm
twisted behind his head,
a living memorial in flesh and blood
to victims and survivors of the Holocaust,
I intone the sanctity
of Campus Buzzard Day,
I moan the dustpan mama blues,
spin Maypole verse,
salute union of the sexes and sing of vaginal earth,
I am Spirit-Sister,
invoking magic from Ojo voodoo trees,
I am a Snapdragon,
celebrating my verse
in the sound of one finger snapping,
With oils and paintbrushes,
I stroke the shades and colors of my poetry
in portraits of my people,
in Gauguin canvases of cabbage fields east of me,
My verse dervishes through Mesa Junction afternoons,
resounding drunkenly in the night
from Mesa Hotel second floor windows,
It bustles its hum on the Northside,
broods mightily on the Westside,
Hear the measure of my beat
in the patter of my greyhound racetrack feet,
in quarterback cadences
on flag football gridirons of my autumn Sunday mornings,
in the agony and pride of my Bell and Cannon games,
Hear it along my Riverwalk,
intoned in the voices of sellerboys:
"Wanna' buy a burrito, a tamale?"
along Santa Fe and Northern Avenue,
My verse is everywhere,
in my families, my losses, loves, triumphs and mighty pain,
in my chapels, cathedrals, my pink, white, blue
and earth-tone stuccoed houses,
It looks courageously from the eyes
of my Congressional Medal of Honor heroes
It is spun in magic gossamer webs in the sighing
or hurried rush of wind across the sagebrush prairie
through my trees,
in the conquest of Rocky Mountain thunder over my head,
in the seduction and surrender of rain upon my bosom: I am a city, a
town,
My name is Pueblo,
I am poetry,
the people of the city gave me that name.