Brooklyn Narcissus
Straight rye whiskey, 100 proof
you need a better friend?
Yes. Myself.
The lights
the lights
the lonely lovely fucking lights
and the bridge on a rainy Tuesday night
Blue/green double-stars the line
that is the drive and on the dark alive
gleaming river
Xmas trees of tugs scream and struggle
Midnite
Drops on the train window wobble . stream
My trouble
is
it is her fate to never learn to make
anything grow
be born or stay
Harbor beginnings and that other gleam . The train
is full of long/way/home and holding lovers whose
flesh I would exchange for mine
The rain, R.F.,
sweeps the river as the bridges sweep
Nemesis is thumping down the line
But I have premises to keep
& local stops before I sleep
& local stops before I sleep
The cree-
ping train
joggles
rocks across
I hear
the waves below lap against the piles, a pier
from which ships go
to Mexico
a sign which reads
PACE O MIO DIO
oil
“The flowers died when you went away”
Manhattan Bridge
a bridge between
we state, one life and the next, we state
is better so
is no
backwater, flows
between us is
our span our bridge our
naked eyes
open here
see
bridging whatever impossibility. . . PACE!
PACE O MIO DIO
oil
“The flowers died. . .”
Of course they did
Not that I was a green thing in the house
I was once.
No matter.
The clatter of cars over the span, the track
the spur
the rusty dead/pan ends of space
of grease
We enter the tunnel.
The dirty window gives me back my face
Copyright Credit: Paul Blackburn, “Brooklyn Narcissus” from The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn. Copyright © 1989 by Paul Blackburn. Reprinted by permission of Joan Blackburn.
Source: The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (Persea Books, 1989)