Sparking Ignition
by Odin Roark

Garbage trucks.

Sirens.

Random ignored screams.

Nocturnal New York,
‘60s vintage.

Such echoes the calliope of early morning darkness
behind weathered pull-down shades,
their sepia-guised reality made blue-gray,
aglow with Emerson’s 12 inch flicker-fantasia,
my Late Late Movie conjugal ghosts,
merging ever so smoothly into desperation’s
early dawn slumber.

Time…

Like a typical Avenue C icebox
gathering frost ever so stealthily,
maintaining just enough credence
to preserve Sunday’s awaited feast;
peas and carrots beside Grandma’s care package
Spam ala chutney spice,
graham cracker Alaskan-something to finish.

Along Avenue C…

Many shrouds of nightly anonymity orchestrate
unearthly sounds of horror flicks-to-be,
where faraway beach romance groans,
far too cheesy to even warrant
respectable exploitation reviews,
lull the listeners into somnambulist vacuity.

Beneath the lids of closed eyes,
such sounds screech across the pristine sparkle
of my imagined stars riding the flatulent winds
of White Castle burgers and bad coffee,
remnants of another day spent
in the tasteless unemployment struggle,
desperation vying to leave behind
a vortex of noxious fifty-cent images,
42nd Street cinema escapes from sunburns of reality.

Later…

Yet another disappearance of light
with a subway token’s round-the-world trip to home,
the welcome retreat from whirlpools of city blight,
the perpetual red-on-white-lettered exits to urban hell.

Once upon a time,
a biological mother I never knew
had to have imbued my ears
with Jules Verne’s adventures,
Jack London’s wilds,
Aesop’s comforting fables,
hundreds of childhood nights,
nurturing my clamor for
life’s almanac of wonders.

Now…

Eyes flutter open,
the ever faithful scratching sounds
of sink-roaches thinking they can steal what’s left,
thinking like the conspiring greed out there,
as if it’s theirs to take.

The uh uh in me rises…

Dignity

Even an Avenue C survivalist
knows the sound of netless hoops,
self-worth’s inner roar of silent tears
cascading over the heart on hearing Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety,
or the sight of Henry Moore’s sublimated rages in bronze.

Back then…

Tomorrow neared,
beyond the square-tube field of static sign-off,
anthem’s furled stars and stripes
making ready the daytime cooling of vacuum tube transmission
awaiting more copper coiled control a coming.

Today…

Is anew with winter’s fresh breath of immaculate fallout,
white upon the litter of yesterday’s attempts,
vanquishing the test-pattern hiss of another sleepless night,
a silence made greater only
by my learned vow to give voice to the triumphant reward…
quietness.

Tomorrow…

Another chance to learn from
today’s version of inner fire’s silence,
innate understanding
by the light of one’s own burning.

Oh, yes…

I penned another sentence…

We had ignition.