ny...

{ julie feeney, in new york, jan 2011 ; film by myles o'reilly }


and my own new york free verse... 

'discordant symphony'

brooklyn-bound bells resonate, a chime chime, through the hollow place.

and walls upon walls, upon hollow ground, reaching for the open


doors departing to time not marked by hurried footsteps or moonrise sonatas 
floating in and out.  

in and out.  

up and through the grate and trapped between the layers. 

sounds ricocheted, distorted and thinned in ghostly echo for an unnoticed eternity. 

until it stops. 

one string instrument amongst the symphony of discordant sound stops. 

and you notice

a little missing piece amongst the cacophony of brilliance. 

of art and music. poetry and architecture, 

perpetually overlooked in the push of sidewalks' pulling of eyes. 

muted in movements' waves through a place overfilled with brilliance

allied by stone upon stone

of perfect, finite disconnect 

of the constant bustle, ringing, stimulus 

that swishes the quiet retreat of a protected mind in sweeping frenzy. 

around and around. 

over and under. listening for the bells' signaling of an opening. 

to slip a hand through the crowded doors, 

with hungry song and hurried pleas and click click on the stairs, 

snapping the quiet in scattered tumble to the platform. 

an exhalation poured out on a wave of unnerving tremor (of love? or grief? melancholic ecstacy).

the new york moment

intensified by the sheer magnitude of confined islands, 

where likes become love. and the dislike, hate. 

always passionate strength. 

reflection in the hazy dripping heat of august blacktop, burning in

concrete upon concrete. 

or in the forgetting of skin's feeling by the hand of february's bitter winds, 

fueled by the maze-like eternal search for the sea

we travel together. 

intimate meals with strangers over tables shared. 

and sunday beds of quilts on grass. 

waking next to the unnamed under my tree. your tree. 

with a buried city beneath. 

the tombstone tree, marking the graveyard of a people's history. 

a symbiotic masterpiece of kinetic movement. 

breaths in and out. heart beating up and down. 

muscles signaled by one brain, constructed from the millions. 

my piece slips away.
and i notice.

********************

happy thursday