It is the same city

New York Amsterdam Copenhagen

                 Paris Madrid

The train leaves

Downtown in a blurry cloud

                    Of forgotten corners

Rushes through a tunnel

                Emerges onto a waste land

       Of abuse

Marked with derelict

                            Semaphores

Light-headed phantoms

         Floating above scattered

                                             Waste

     Where low lying mist

          Clings to burned cars

                       Thrown by some enormous

                                     Hand born in a dream

                             Thirty years old

Here, a ditch runnelled

            With dried sewage

There, a tin shack

        Penned by policier novelists

             And burgundy waifs

    In 19^t-century contusions

Then the after wrack

            Of immigrant apartments

     Ten to a lot

         Coming and going through

     The 24-hour work day –

They’re glad to be alive

      But this isn’t living

          And they know it –

A train rushes by

     From the opposite direction

                      Streaming spooks pasted

        To green windows

                 Dredged from Venusian sea foam

       Two-dimensional compass faces

The bric-a-brac of quotidian newspeak

     Dripping from their lips

Papier Mache clouds

          Cropped to

                    Pale combustions    on target knives

     And wiry drains

It is the same city

            This landscape of

          Detritus confessions

                            In a still life cromolith

Fairgrounds

in architectonic catalogues

              Stained with parasol sperm

                           And rat blood

 Flower forceps gleaned

         From castaway

                              Jugular

                                           Clowns

Waiting

       Waiting patiently

           For their loutish comeuppance

In Sargasso

     And barnacles

Allan Graubard

September 2019