Reframed
Evening falls on
Tudor Greens
With featherweight
Frisson --
Against a starless
Midtown sky
As summer saunters
On.
A rash of scenes
Of summers gone
Are flicking past,
Reframed --
Midnight swims to
Sunrise drunks
To sex in grassy
Dunes.
I see the ferry
Tying up,
My blond and toddling
Son,
The year the breakers
Rose too high
And stunned a grudging
June.
JAD, 2021
REM Alone
The moving van
Magnificos,
The closest
Cabernets,
The tavern on
The greenery,
The cloistered
Cabarets.
The sympathetic
Sermonettes,
The graves in
Mandalay,
The caterwauling
Clarinets,
The queen of
Night and day.
The missionary
Multitudes,
The masquerading
Monks,
The war on men
And fortitude,
The missing ammo
Dumps.
The Jesus born
Of Jezebel,
The jolting
Jamborees,
The Jumping Joe
Jehoshaphat's,
A trace of summer
Breeze.
The serenading
Sybarites,
The sacramental
Source,
The manacled
Manhattanites,
The salivating
Shorts.
The normalized
Bewilderment,
The barricaded
Banks,
The misanthropic
Sentiment,
The Manichean
Cranks.
The analytic
Anecdotes,
The alabaster
Frowns,
The legionnaires'
Reconnaissance,
The catatonic
Clowns.
The hyperactive
Hierophants,
The hitherto
Harangued,
The happenstance
Holography,
The hostages,
The hanged.
JAD, 2021
Currents
From summer breeze
To autumn wind,
This clutch of
Shorter days.
Abundant warmth
Still circulates.
There's light enough
To play.
As time through every
Quartered phase,
Refines its measured
Rule,
As space configures
Fortunes won,
We nurse our
Fragile roles.
Lanky, brownish
Asian girls,
Their legs like
New elites,
Their movements
Raw and tenderer,
Have sprouted
Down these streets.
I'm steeped again
In paradox,
The pallor of
The moon,
The glow that crowns
One Vanderbilt
And taunts the
Vaunted Deuce.
JAD, 2021
East/West
As mid-September
Drizzle dribbles
Drip by dreary drip,
As summer forfeits time,
As warm and cool
Collide at night
And breezes sire winds,
I think of drought out west.
Of all the pranks of
Happenstance
Beyond the range of mind,
The push and pull of
Frothy will,
The rhyme of mime and chime;
Of all the whims of nature primed,
This augurs fierce divides.
The water wars of
Politics,
The epithets of want,
The watered fall of
Cataracts,
The hellish fields of dust,
The calls to cranks and militants,
A crisis on the cusp.
JAD, 2021
The Flatiron
First come the young ones,
Dressed to attract --
Limber and flowing,
Unfazed.
Their presence so thrilling,
So freshly unleashed,
So pressing it creases
Time's face.
Couples with strollers,
Yet deeply alert,
Assemble in posses
In parks.
You see them at Starbuck's
And sidewalk cafes
Or roaming through
Madison Square.
The elders move slower,
Yet nimbly enough,
Their eyes peering back
Like old maps.
I see it more clearly --
I've given up cabs --
There's no need to mourn
What I missed.
JAD, 2021
Cooler
Monday night, its
Mojo weak,
Surveys depleted streets.
Through cooler air
And midnight blues,
I glide as though propelled.
Women's haunches,
Sheathed in jeans,
Appear in pairs ahead.
Fonts of first and
Final truth,
Summer's choicest fruit.
JAD, 2021
Emergence
I chose to take the
World straight-up --
No bluffs or sketchy feints.
Prone to stall and hesitate,
I often walked away.
Life grew tenser, called for nerve,
And, finally, I engaged,
Apprenticed now to
Narcissists,
Pretenders I despised.
JAD, 2021
Looking Back
The narrative has
Narrowed now
As cooler nights collect.
Languor loves the tropics more
As summer fields regrets.
Those who saw the whole charade
Aren't likely to forget.
Enron, WorldCom, dots for coms
Prefigured levered swaps
As shredded norms of
Competence
Exposed these storied streets.
The lure of lore
Metastasized,
The captivated mass,
The losers shrewdly
Lionized
To simulate the past
Have given way to
Sacraments
That no one thinks will last,
Boilerplate
Assurances
That signal swift collapse.
JAD, 2021
The Real
The symbol heroically
Outruns the real
Till cornered by nature,
It yields
Since only as something
Ineffable
Do things archetypal
Exist.
Though the moment foreshadows
Some pivotal truth,
It's one that we never
Shall know.
How liquid the real,
How tangibly near
Till fumbled or squandered
In haste.
Can anyone trace
What we've wasted?
A slow-healing wound,
A fast-dying cat,
The breath as it labors
Till lost --
How often the real
Feels unreal.
JAD, 2021
Trapped
Weary more than weathered,
Yet wise to time's last call,
The soul implores transcendence
Then maps its tortured course.
Meaning reasons, word by word,
Confined to planes in three's,
Yet, lacking broader context,
Plumbs no hidden truths.
JAD, 2021
Tudor Place 