Across the River

[theirishsea]

ACROSS THE RIVER


Beauty in that engineering:
Pipes, lights, acrid smoke:
An insect’s body,
But there is intelligent design.

I’d love to raft
Through the marshy brine,
Catch mosquitoes,
Dragonflies,
Arrange beige reeds in a digital image.

No, I wouldn’t drink the water,
Become a sex-crazed zombie
Attacking tourist buses,
Biting into power cables,
Sparks pouring
Fourth-of-July-style from my ears,

But there is real ugly beauty
In that behind the scenes New Jersey,
A heart pumping blood,
And a lymph system.

Miss New York’s pulchritude
Is magnificent, jolly,
Mammaries like sweet jelly,
But that is only skin.

New York, New York,
I love your skin,
But there is blood
In New Jersey.
It pumps for you.

[joel]

"DUDE!" [ok...and I reread what I just posted and caught my own patriarchal assumptions at play; please let me add: or "DUDETTE!"]

So I don't know where you mean exactly here...if a "real" place at all...but I saw your screenname and thought after the first few words, "hmmm...maybe this is some river in Ireland or the west coast of Britain...but it sure sounds like North Jersey, up around 95 and the Vince Lombardi service area...."

Anyhow, I am always thinking how beautiful the marshflats are and how ironic it is to see the Hudson floodplain stretch out its New-York-City-austral phragmites phalanges in what I know are nasty waters with awful air quality, but full of redwing fireballs nonetheless.

Beautiful.

[hester_prynne]

A myriad of plusses making me speechless, but you get my drift...
H

[revolutionrabbit]

this poem is wired, it looks well done
and i mean it stacks up, it lights up.

[emel.scott]

Dan,

You never cease to conjure up images from my youth and for that,
may you live in eternal damnation!...lol, just kidding.

The view from the Jersey turnpike here is near perfect. I think it stands well on it's own even without the NYC comparison but if you must, I think the last part needs to be toughened up a leel bit to make it the equal of the rest of the poem.

Scott

[theirishsea]

Scott, I'll see what I can do. I'll think about it & see what I should do----just modify what is there or scrap that stanza entirely & put something different.

Dan

[stilltrucking]

New York, New York,
I love your skin,
But there is blood
In New Jersey.
It pumps for you.

The last stanza speaks for all the states.
Our blood pumped for Wall Street

Thanks for the poem
thank you very much

please pardon the political rant

[creativesoul]

good float-aloha