Three Poems
by Jack D. Harvey
New York Down and Dirty
Some people walk
the barrios, the bad areas,
these crowded wicked streets,
these dark and menacing streets,
with a certain step;
no matter what
ken the way, have the means,
have defenses, have no fear, unease
or surmise no abiding danger,
fatal consequence,
vicious attack
of some jack-in-the-box,
a beating by
moon-maddened thugs,
malignant meeting
with some vengeful maniac.
Walking these streets,
others surrender cold turkey,
vox clamantis, to abject fear,
a fear that goes beyond the pale
of ignorance, of frailty
in the face of mayhem.
Look and see
this multifarious sprawl
of latticed streets, the surround of
stoop-ridden slatterns and drunks
punching holes through the fourth wall,
through the musings
of the home-bound banker,
suburbed in bitty splendor;
what does he know
of disorderly and crazy?
Of bumming, begging, stealing,
sniping, brawling;
from quirky aggression
stinking of sweat
or higher than a kite
on parboiled gak?
This damned sorrowful city,
cut up in pieces not alike
for rich and poor.
Where are the steeples
that inspired the Dutch
to dour pride?
The rose-red brick
of blocky orderly buildings?
The clean-swept streets
of old New York?
Hustled away by time
and the march of multitudes.
In truth,
this fabled lush land
of our rapacious forefathers
never was as real
as we make it.
New York! New York!
Gateway to the New World,
metropolis of wealth
side by side
with extravagant poverty;
the light is not for all.
No island gone to hell
but a paradise of vanity,
venality, slum of iniquity,
jagged skyline
of skyscrapers, waiting
to swallow even biblical
Leviathan whole.
Trope of mankind,
overflowing, overflowing,
so many, too many;
jump back;
you're rabbits by the abyss.
*Originally published in Chamber Magazine
In the City
Leaves leave
their brittle skeletons
on the sidewalks;
marbles plinked
by the boys
hesitate, passing
over the cracks
between the sidewalk slabs,
the candy wrappers, cardboard,
plastic bags, other
transient debris
left by summer.
Up ahead on the trail,
the haze of early autumn
turns sluggish, hangs down
in our faces.
Farmers off in the country
look at the stubble
in the fields
and think of birds
flying away south,
get ready
to move their machines
to the barns for winter.
Here in this dirty city
Ethiopia is bright as a dime
for the black man,
high and mighty on heroin;
sinking to ruin in this city,
he sees the polished spear-points
in his white enemy's eyes.
One afternoon
some poor black souls,
lost in the ghetto wastes,
in the urban decay,
say, oh shoot,
and burn Goldberg's
emporium to the ground;
in the smouldering ashes
and remaining bric-a-brac,
old raggedy women pick along
and along the sidewalk
people come and go,
black and white and in-between,
careless and unconcerned;
bound on their own business.
*Originally published in Scarlet Leaf
Atlantic City
Hello Miss Bright as a dime,
dressed to kill and
sheathed hard in the blazing light
of this New Jersey casino.
Long ago, on the other
side of the world,
my name was legion
in the Navy's Seventh Fleet;
sailors of the South China Sea
we roistered port to port,
waterfront bar to bar,
shot to shot hitting the bottle,
whore to whore
spending our money
in the moment and then
dead broke and lamenting,
off to hell in a handbasket.
And now I'm here
and you ask me
in that skin-tight dress,
armor for the fight
and bait for the prey,
how did I get here?
How the hell did you?
From the cornfields of Iowa
how are you making out
in this last of the Mohicans casino?
A living doll, if a doll could live,
painted eyes and rouged cheeks,
dangerous and treacherous
as Judas or Jezebel.
A cargo of lure
for lustful men
cast and caught
in the glaring casino light;
no time but the present
and no clocks to tell otherwise;
in an eternal now you stand waiting
for the right pick, the easy mark
with a fat wallet.
No thought for the coming winter,
when you strip down for action
in some sordid hotel room,
when your fulsome breasts,
far from the enchanted cups
of maiden's form
no more hold their weight aloft
and the body's flesh sags off
to leeward, like a ship
laboring in a storm,
lashed by the wind and seas.
Now you float calmly
in Coleridge's dome,
queen to be seized,
but the time will come
when you are over and done;
some Oxford don,
speaking on your behalf,
recalls Villon's Belle Heaulmière,
beautiful armoress,
looking down at the wreck
under her dress and remembering,
wondering was it so satisfying
when loverboy mounted in stiff haste,
having paid the freight for his passage?
The time will come,
it will come,
when that curly crop of yours
carpeting paradise
will thicken and grey
and your youth
will be flung from the rock
like everything else.
Time, my sweet, corrupts,
creeps on apace,
measuring the motions
of the distant stars
and our petty motions
here below, in the process
breaking down all,
just by its baleful touch.
At the end of the final day
there is no grace in our going,
only a falling away
from this precious unkempt ball
circling the sun;
from our momentary being
in all respects
simply a falling away
to nothing at all.
*Originally published in Lothlorien Review
BIO: Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.