CITY [E]SCAPES
by Gerard Sarnat
1..Street Haunting Ramblers: Moderna Times
One-of-a-kinds, Virginia Woolf did it
In London, just as foxy talker Fran Lebowitz,
Vis-à-vis New York, about a century later.
They were, per hundred-years-earlier
Exotic poet Charles Baudelaire’s 'flâneurs’ --
Parisian ‘strollers,’ ‘lollygaggers,’ ‘loafers’
--Who observed modern urban life and strife.
Described by our self-styled Bohemian author as
“Vast republican Army of anonymous trampers.”
Although pre-Corona virus, I too…probably
Like you…often wandered through those
Plus other relatively tame Western meccas
Gerard earned his voyeur spurs jogging
Around Phnom Penh, Nairobi, Varanasi,
Cairo, La Paz, both old and current pirate
Sanctuary of Belize City, Amman, Yangon, Dubai,
Shanghai, Istanbul, blah-blah with nada trouble
Beyond scares from heat stroke, high altitude
Sicknesss -- except in My people’s capital
Of Jerusalem where fellow Jews spit on me
Because you were not religious enough for them.
Today this late side of mid-septuagenarian’s
Content to simply hang out near our forest cabin,
Only sauntering down the hill into downtown Palo Alto
To have a cup of Java/ pastry, schmooze with friends
Without homes used to be patients on days-off — if
They’ve been jabbed at least twice by Pfizer or Moderna.
2. How Her AntiSeptic Communion With Nature Whines Up tanka
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
---Albert Einstein
Barking sterile old pair
hippies collisioned past dome’s
feral junk yard dogs,
sniff garbage scow stench — which drove
Ger back to city life lies.
3. Berserkley’s entitled
Who when I ran health
Clinics there uniquely
Sought care whereby
They could share space
With poor peep drug
Addict mentally ill folks
Today live in homeless
Encampments that City
Councils institutionalize.
Stuffed with Alice Water’s
Chez Pani$$e veg-organics
+ lobster & duck, to quote
Oakland’s fierce Black satirist
Ishmael Reed, Berkeley’s not
A place for mature people.*
*Julian Lucas, I Ain’t Been Mean Enough, 26July21 New Yorker
4..Eight Millennia Syrian Holy City of Aleppo
Although legend has it that monkiest of monks*
Simeon of Stylites lived atop a nearby pillar
For at least 35 years without any jiggle now
Seas of stilled shoes stick up from the snow.
Men who yesterday perhaps were louts
Today are heroes who risk their lives
To gnaw babies from under rubble
Often only with pair of bare hands.
Wise women try hard to explain
How latest earthquakes make
For much greater suffering
Than concurrent civil war
During which life returned
To semi-normal between strikes
Whereas now it seems as if could
Become just one infinite endless جحيم**
*thanks to Casey Cep, Eat Pray Concentrate, New Yorker 30Jan23
**Jahim means Hell in Arabic
5..summer in the city: black is bleak haiku sequence [iv]
Feel free to use subsection/s.
poverty porn —
sofa surfing— stale
bread, butter
entire livelihood
in shopping bag — down
to three potatoes a day
amount of open space
available equal to
yoga mat per person
bereft regards articles
of money, I am still held
in our bosom of family
bonus: dangerous decision tanka
deconflicted Kyiv
coward cowers ‘til colleagues
insist that we write
circulate truth to Russia through
Virtual Private Network
BIO: Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade-aphorist-humorist-sometimes-meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s multiple Pushcart/Best Net Award nominee. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is 2025 retrospective: https://culterateblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/activism-through-poetry-how-gerard-sarnat-uses-verse-as-a-form-of-protest/. His work’s widely-published; including four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia, Alabama university presses. He’s Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy/resources dealing with climate justice, serves on Climate-Action-Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s married since 1969, has ten grand kids. gerardsarnat.com