Series: Public Poems

A reckless poem crushed between ads —
there’s nothing to see here, folks.
Keep moving.

__________

I’m not done writing tool odes, yet, don’t worry! I just got this other idea for what will probably be a shorter series — poems to be placed in public spaces, written with an awareness of their contexts. I’d welcome suggestions of other locations for these poems.

For examples of actual public poems, see the archives of NYC’s Poetry in Motion project, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project, and especially the CityPoem World Index at the New Urbanist website ErasmusPC.

Attention suicides: please have the consideration
to drown elsewhere. It is not that your body
would be especially toxic — that’s a myth.
But what we crave in water is an absence of taste,
not the taste of absence.

Also, kindly make sure your water bill is paid up.
It’s the least you can do for your neighbors,
who will soon probably be needing to recharge
their own reservoirs, those brown or blue pools
in which on occasion you may have glimpsed yourself,
smaller than life.

Veterans beware: remembering is a form of lying
at which politicians and war-mongers are especially adept.

Flag-burners beware: the U.S. Flag Code identifies fire
as the only proper & respectful way to dispose of a flag.

War memorial builders beware: pigeons are a kind of dove.
Whatever you do, they will have the last say, & it won’t be pretty.

Readers beware: all poets are traitors.
This poem was written from the prison of a bad conscience.

To enter fully into another’s words
is to leave your own fixed residence,
part coffin, part cocoon.
The walls fall away.
Letters the color of night
swell with sirens & the call
of the whip-poor-will.
Out in the open book,
anything can happen except sleep.
Dreams may be redeemed
for a small deposit.
This is why, in the public library,
everyone is homeless.

Abandon hype, ye who enter
these sound-proofed rooms:
you can fight City Hall all you want, really,
provided that your words
are bland as water & promise
jobs—drip—development—drip—growth—drip.
Open bribes will not be tolerated.
The voters expect transparency
& paper trails, sometimes even
the anodyne of a Town Hall meeting
where one by one they can stand
& state their names for
the record, that stagnant pool
that reflects everything
but their weariness, their anger,
the way their hands rise
like saprophytic flowers toward the sun,
their touching gratitude at finally
being recognized to speak.

Second-hand poetry has
been linked to
the cancer
of unanswerable
questions. Even
if it’s safely
out of mind,
like a dessicated seed
or a leaf in darkness,
mouths with
no memory
can still turn
the blanks where
letters were
into seditious
little Os. So
thank you for
not reading.