Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Poetry: 5:03 AM (for Steve Dalachinsky)



5:03 AM
Photo and lay-out by Sherry Rubel; excerpt of my poetry

(for Steve Dalachinsky)

3:15AM. Shhh. Speak nothing now.
Speak not.
There’s a fading din beneath the well of silence.
It turns envious the darkling.

The sun now rises later than it once did,
Doesn’t it?

4:37. September’s torrid dampness cedes to nothing
Here in Brooklyn, but
The chill of the Long Island Sound
Steve and I performing together, Brecht Forum approx 2014
Freezes the poetry in time, like
Burroughs in Morocco,
So far from home.

4:55, this day which bordered no sleep,
Mind festering, precious pain.
The sun must rise later than it once did.
Tell me it does.

The call of gulls falls deaf on hospital walls,
Where strange machinery turns, tabulates,
And sways through
Cross-rhythms of tap, scrape,
And sob.

My photo of Steve, Bowery Electric, June 2019
A dancehall of wire brushes ignites
Booming skins and shimmering bronze,
Gassing the flame of sauntering yesterday,
As after-hours haze covets
A thicket sound in vivid black
Downtown.

The call of Gayle in the wild, he, Streets the Clown
Seething through tubes and drips, submerged in
The unfettered, busking improvisation.
And the final night erupts joyously, leading you
South of Houston.

The colors, the shapes which fall from your pen
Cast a reflection of then into tomorrow.
Many tomorrows,
Poet Laureate of Outside.

5:03AM. The sun halts in its place, as
The mist purples
Over Spring Street.

The clouds are but a
Painted backdrop.

-John Pietaro, 9/16/19, 11:52pm,
Brooklyn NY


"5:03 AM" was first published in  John Pietaro's chapbook SMOKE RINGS (2019)



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