This Springtime

This Springtime that will smolder into June,

Curled around this downtown afternoon,

And the flowers are bending from over-burdened wombs,

And the girls are caught with the wind in their skirts,

Made moist by the water that turns dust into dirt,

But plucked too soon by the boy on the corner,

And sucked before bloom by the bee or the sparrow,

While fingers were still little and while hips were still narrow,

Too late to know what to do with my whispers,

Fertalized in winter and undone by the thumb,

So they're only drying petals on the lawn,

Left to the mercy of the sun.

This Springtime that will smolder into June,

Curled around this downtown afternoon,

As rations get smaller then bodies get thinner,

And ribcages render the outlines of hunger,

And the radio voices are pregnant together,

The organized noises in the harmonized order,

And the hand-shake agreements are sealing six figures,

Decisions and ties are contrived to be severed,

And the bricks that will be walls wait for mortar unarranged,

And the alliances recalled lift every draw bridge by its chain,

And everything unlevened boils until there's nothing left to gain.

This Springtime that will smolder into June,

Curled around this downtown afternoon,

He screamed until I heard him, he had a mark of heaven,

And both of us were certain of what brought all of us together,

For a week he was my teacher, for a week I filled his bottle,

I carved him a sacred whistle for the fingers of apostles,

And he said there was no choice and he left me his bible,

And he said I was the voice but I shuttered in my title,

But after reading most of Mathew I smiled and then I laughed,

I held my glance a second longer when I held a blade of grass,

And since words were only breaths, all I did was nod,

We were cast onto one corner both looking at and praying to one G-d.

This Springtime that will smolder into June,

Curled around this downtown afernoon,

Through boundaries established through understated movement,

Comes east side development and city-wide improvement,

A self-induced catharsis, a uniform desire,

For the scaffold of an artist on an unsupported pillar,

Suspended above grounds and hovering in phase,

Like when the table-cloth is pulled from the undisturbed vase,

But the sheep's blood on the brownstone is coloring and numbering the days.