Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

 

(This spectacular church is located in my boyhood home city of Newark, New Jersey. It sits majestically on a rise across the street from where I attended high school. My sister was married here more nearly sixty years ago. It is world renowned as both an architectural and ecclesiastical jewel. It’s always had a special place in my heart.)

 

Clerestory windows
Admit into transepts
Heaven’s own light
With agnostic rays
Refracted by doubts

Flying buttresses thrust
From chancel and nave
Transmuting gravity
Through high gothic vaults
Into repentance

Three stained-glass rose panes
Compelling in scale
Adorn forceful façades
Carved from granite quartz stone
Dressed to tolerate sin

Baldacchino and pulpit
Fine-sculpted white marble
Pronounce sacred words
Steeped in mystery’s echo
Profane ears can hear

The Christ and His altar
Pink-born of Carrara
Host the Eucharist
Rapture that ruptures
What evil may linger

Eleven side chapels
Accommodate worship
Of indigenous ethnic
Eminent figures in the
Catholic pantheon

Limestone-clad narthex
Envelopes in welcome
Those hesitant hearts
Or incomplete souls
To share in the rites

Two magnificent towers
Evoke fourteenth-century
Pealing their calls
Across urban miles
Distracted by toil

Huge Roman bronze doors
Usher in thousands
To worship and pray
In this hallmark of art
In this landmark to faith

 

Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

 

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Brick City

“Urban Decay” by Ricki Mountain

(Regarding the 50th anniversary of the Newark riots)

 

animosities piled

on resentments

generations of tinder

stacked hip deep

in high racial heat

of july sixty-seven

a criminal free-for-all

shook to their feet

the decrepit wood

false-fronted structures

of politics long since

abandoned of

competent leadership

dry public policies

ill-made and laid

among too many sparks

points of origin

plotting a very thin line

between order and chaos

respect and disdain

ignition by voices

of social pathology

fiery language

fomented a blaze that

touched off explosions

its once sturdy bonework

of commerce and industry

now so much flyash

on dissipate winds

this ancient brick city

descended to rubble

and ruin of civil unrest

lifeblood mortar

in hemorrhage circling

a five decade drain

down and into the void

emigration in train

tearing middle class flesh

from the carcass

whose murmuring prayers

for revival are heard

on those rare quiet nights

a revival that needs

well intended

new hearts and new minds

who have bricklaying skills

and a commonweal vision

a vision that sees

the thing loved by the heart

by the whole human heart

Tasting Yesterday

“Jersey Shore” by Laura Barbosa

idiomatic of my teens
jersey boys never went
to the beach but rather
we went down the shore
big bullets of chrome
nosed up to the dunes
salty sun on hot sand
given squares of reprieve
by old army-brown blankets
passed down from their
first warhorse owners
to steamer trunk moths
laying down our soft
patchwork of leaseholds
on innocent summers
original rock-and-roll tuned
by small tinny transistors
competed and clashed
with the crash of the surf
and the shrieking of gulls
lazy days stealing kisses
from bold daring girls with
bare midriffs and bathing caps
days as yet still unperturbed
by the working man’s clock
that would soon enough
stand between labor and leisure

with sundown came nightlife
of boardwalks and bars at
the Wildwoods and Belmar
Point Pleasant and Long Branch
the nightclubs of Asbury Park
Seaside Heights and Cape May
I can taste every memory
oh what a thing is the
tongue of the mind
that can summon back
long ago flavors of life
to re-savor and heartily
supplement quiet bland
diets advancing dull
settlement into old age

Garden State

New Jersey Condominiums
Photo from njdecksandrailings.com

farmlands overturned
freshly sown with new cash crops
condominiums

Seaside

Seaside, New Jersey – Aftermath of Conflagration
Aerial Photo by Andrew Mills – Star Ledger
From photosnj.com

Hurricane Sandy, October 2012:

summer cried as she died
but her torrents of tears
couldn’t kill off her killer
couldn’t staunch Armageddon
winds howling with rampage
heaved up a black ocean
to drown and dissolve
all her seasons of sand
tearing mirth from their memories
leaving its splinters
to float upon winter

Conflagration, September 2013:

summer cried as she died
but her torrents of tears
couldn’t kill off her killer
couldn’t staunch Armageddon
flames roaring with rampage
consumed revived enterprise
burned to hot choking ash
hopes for seasons of sand
torching mirth from their futures
leaving columns of smoke
to blacken the winter

summer cried as she died
tumbled into mad seas
summer cried as she died
lost to scorched acrid breeze
summer cried as she died
felled again to her knees
summer cried as she died
pray it won’t come in threes

Hoboken

First Baseball Game
Played at Elysian Fields, Hoboken NJ
Print by Currier & Ives At nj.com

“Hudson Street Brownstones Hoboken, NJ”
Photo by Andrew Prokos
At andrewprokos.com

 

a square gentrified mile
of brownstone ambitions
tucked under a cove of the Hudson
where fingerlike docks
play in shimmering
Manhattan shadows
that dance with remembrance
Sinatra and baseball
were born on these
maritime streets
built of cobbles and clamshells
between chimneyed castles
of capital magnates who
built major industries
here where great railroad hubs
carry commuters who
outnumber natives
a hundred-to-one
where no block is lacking
a bar or a bistro
where incomes are double
and tax rates are half
anywhere in the nation
remarkable blueprint
for modern prosperity
steeped in the founders’ affections

Vulnerable

“Flash Flood”
Painting by Van Winslow
From fineartamerica.com

flash floods of fear
gorge through channels
that courage first cut
sprung from confident brawn
in rough rivers of city concrete
but the brawn is now wasted
and courage has no route to run
save discretion’s retreat
threats and dangers abandoned
for forest and flowers
and safe flowing streams
among creatures and neighbors
less fraught with ill-motive
but not so completely
to let down my guard
my skilled marksman defenses
or ironwood staff
when I’m out and about

͠͠͠͠͠

truth be told
I don’t get so much out and about
but I hate to admit it
conceding my weaknesses
pisses me off to no end
yet I know of great warriors
toppled by blind self-delusion
so if I go down
whosoever whatever is standing
will know
they’ve just had
the hardest fought fight
of their fortunate life
but for now
I’m at peace
with all fears left behind
in those perilous waters
where courage stands ground

Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

(This spectacular church is located in my boyhood home city of Newark, New Jersey. It sits majestically on a rise across the street from where I attended high school. My sister was married here more than fifty years ago. It is world renowned as both an architectural and ecclesiastical jewel. It’s always had a special place in my heart.)

 

Clerestory windows
Admit into transepts
Heaven’s own light
With agnostic rays
Refracted by doubts

 

Flying buttresses thrust
From chancel and nave
Transmuting gravity
Through high gothic vaults
Into repentance

 

Three stained-glass rose panes
Compelling in scale
Adorn forceful façades
Carved from granite quartz stone
Dressed to tolerate sin

 

Baldacchino and pulpit
Fine-sculpted white marble
Pronounce sacred words
Steeped in mystery’s echo
Profane ears can hear

 

The Christ and His altar
Pink-born of Carrara
Host the Eucharist
Rapture that ruptures
What evil may linger

 

Eleven side chapels
Accommodate worship
Of indigenous ethnic
Eminent figures in the
Catholic pantheon

 

Limestone-clad narthex
Envelopes in welcome
Those hesitant hearts
Or incomplete souls
To share in the rites

 

Two magnificent towers
Evoke fourteenth-century
Pealing their calls
Across urban miles
Distracted by toil

 

Huge Roman bronze doors
Usher in thousands
To worship and pray
In this hallmark of art
In this landmark to faith

 

Drumthwacket

(Originally written when New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was in office, prior to Chris Christie)

Elegant, stately, Scots-named Georgian mansion

Dressed in Greek elements classic of Pericles

White as the sun-lit clouds bearding Olympus

Ionic flute pillars evoke strength of Heracles

 

Perched upon Princeton’s posh affluent landscape

Broad greenswards are skirted with planned garden courses

That overlay battlegrounds shell-blown and bloodied

When redcoats met full shock of Liberty’s forces

 

New Jersey beds down modern governors here

In the soft swaddled comfort hard colonists won

But irony plays in the passage of time

Since framers laid out how republics should run

 

Its door-key goes out to quadrennial auction

Top prize for the luckiest wolf in sheep’s clothes

While again we are lost to aristocrat rulers

Still bent to the servitude taxes impose

 

Constitutional lampposts stand darkly neglected

Quaint artifacts absent their once guiding lights

Extinguished by ignoble judges and leaders

Who arrogate powers infringing our rights

 

Black shutters found flanking each portal and pane

Suggest a fate most apropos of our fate

Needing only be latch-closed to best signify

“We the people” are shut out from matters of state

 

But Drumthwacket looms just one manor of many

Where little by little control is annealed

By smaller and smaller cabals whose elite

Agendas grow more and more deeply concealed

 

The ingenious bold system our founders contrived

Contains what amounts to free will’s fatal flaw

Allowing our choice for election of scoundrels

Who would foist rule-of-men and displace rule-of-law

 

If ever we are to self-govern again

We must level the ground on which candidates stand

Deny their advantage of privilege or wealth

And dispel the allegiance that lobbies command

 

Till men of high virtue from common low station

Can once again answer the popular call

America teeters on history’s brink where

Debris of failed empires will smother her fall

 

When blessings of Freedom are taken for granted

The greatest experiment ever conceived

Now past flush of youth and its great Golden Age

May perish from duties we all have aggrieved

 

Our failure to tend intellectual structures

Philosopher architects carefully built

To house constitutional means of republic

Leaves sardonic Drumthwacket scoffing our guilt

Cherryblossomland

 

 

Cherry Blossom Season – Branch Brook Park – Newark, NJ

 

(Homage to a place of my youth – Branch Brook Park, Newark, New Jersey)

 

In a city, my city, once vibrant and teeming

With industry, forging and hammering brawny

Core products that muscled a powerhouse nation,

Here, still, survives beauty despite murdered legions

Of ghosts haunting rusted dead precincts, whose vigor

Bled out, leaving factories, foundries and mill yards

Like so many carcasses rotting in shadows

Of idled machinery, smokestacks and bridge-cranes

 

On four-hundred Olmstead-laid soft graceful acres,

Adorned with reflective lake, fishponds and streams,

Footpaths and roadbeds, spanned by handsome stone arches,

Coil naturalist routes around lush coppiced hillocks

With thousands of flowering cultivar cherry,

No two trees alike, with low wide-spreading boughs

Entwined at their bud-stems, like hand-in-hand siblings

Defying encroachment of bleak urban blight

 

The grandees who sired the American century,

Flush with fat fortunes, and families inspired to

Soothe civic conscience, and cement social status,

Made gifts of this park and these breathtaking trees

To the people, their workers, for tranquil retreats,

Ironic, these gifts well outlasted their patrons,

Those scions of beer barons, magnates and titans,

Whose names have gone lost on the breezes of time

 

My city suffered death by a thousand cruel cuts,

The most deadly delivered by two brazen killers:

First, was a plague of marauding powerticians,

Who plundered prosperity, craven racketeers

Bent on larceny, utterly, flagrantly, men

Who turned public office to private enrichment,

Made favors into privileges purchased with cash,

Afflicting generations with public mistrust

 

Then, the tiger of Asia awoke from its slumber,

Hungry, enticed by the savor of capital,

Clawed into being its own manufactories,

Stealthy, it gnawed on our home product marketshares,

Jaw-cracked the bones of our middle class labor force,

Ripped out and swallowed our blue-collar heart,

Usurping the worldwide-held, hard-won prestige,

Proud hallmark of the made-in-America brand

 

And yet, during two or three weeks, every April,

Unfazed by the sad depredation abroad,

Those cherry trees bloom in profusions of white tinged

With shaded pink radiants, deep at the centers,

Each pure newborn blossom, discovered by sunlight,

Becomes a spectacular unit of splendor,

Aesthetic reward, but it comes with a burden

Of truth, that the contents of life are ephemeral

 

This park was once my park, a place where I played, loved

And strayed, adolescence unwinding hormonal

Tight threads, under witness of trees that already

Had seen untold lives in their throes of upheaval,

of triumph, through warming green summers and frozen

Gray winters, withholding of judgment while laying

Assurance new blossoms will each year appear, and

That comforts me even at my remote distance

 

 

From my book City of Pawns