Magnum Opus

“West Side Story” by Mark Mullino

 

west of mammon

hell’s kitchen

gritty shadows of city

seething angst

from hot fissures

between generations

ethnic rivalry fusing

testosterone bombs

dreams explode

cultures rumble

blood seeps into

spiderweb cracks

of intolerant minds

driving rhythms build

tension and torment

beneath plaintive

strains stark with

realism music in open

rebellion of grand

operatic tradition

a muscular juggernaut

sweeping away

legs of classic ballet

Broadway born

revolution of stagecraft

a visceral vehicle

scored to a modernized

ancient morality play

hidden hearts

filled with truth

amid ruins of hope

find impossible love

come to climax

exquisitely tragic

a coda to carry

forever remembered

a coming of age

in a world even

Shakespeare agreed

turned on

unhappy endings

 

********************************

 

(Regarding “West Side Story” – the musical theater collaboration, loosely adapted from “Romeo and Juliet,” as improbable as it was remarkable, by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents)

Aural History

 

 

“South Street Seaport – Financial District” – Photo by Suman and Sharmila

 

 

iron-rimmed wheels

drawn by iron-shod hooves

gave a clattering cadence

reverbing dull bells

ringing atonal peals

along ill-masoned lanes

of Belgian block cobbles

and dredged Venice stones

bilge-pitted from urine

of a hundred stout lads

crude ballast unshipped

for a nickel a ton

from heart-of-oak vessels

of mercantile Brits

singing Cockney crew lingo

with cargo commands

over heaps dropped in nets

upon creaking tarred wharves

Schermerhorn Dutch

gave out guttural barks

to the breaking breeze humming

through neatly reefed yards

slung up high-crossed on masts

overtowering docks

where a nautical polyglot

spilled its cacophony

up and down gangplanks East

Indiamen hove in place

with great bangs and hard crashes

that echoed across the wide

swift running current dividing

Manhattan from Brooklyn

from my forty-floored glass

looking down on the seaport

when sail-masted schooners

or frigates would moor

all the sounds of the centuries

rose up to reach me

transporting me back to

that wild newborn world

of rapscallion romance

and mean edged adventure

where men grunted glory

for merely surviving

another new day

all the time feeling wistful

that I had been born

too long after my time

***********************************

 

(Note: my office was on the 40th floor of the octagonal tower at enter of the photo)

 

 

(originally posted November 2013)

Broadway

 

“Night Broadway” by Leonid Afremov

 

 

competing marquees
glare and kick at the rain
dripping titles on tourists
as puddles of playwrights
collect in the cracks
of sly sidewalks
conspiring to end-around
critics with colors
refracted and sheened
at disposable incomes
and bourgeoisie tastes

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Tammany

 

“Tammany Hall Ring” by Thomas Nast

 

 

belching bosses made
meals of the public’s own trust
ward heelers harangued
till good citizens buckled
their rigs to the hurtling train

 

(originally posted January 2014)

Hudson

“Across the Hudson” by Max Kuehne

(Originally posted here June 2013)
 

wide with exploration
deep with bold discovery
falls from Adirondacks
into New York Bay
past Mohican gray mists where
beloved headless horsemen
chased leatherstocking ghosts
into our storybook canon

its cutting flow of forces
sheared bare palisades
where Hamilton took Burr
and Arnold slipped the noose
its undulant watershed
pristine green lit by gold
inspired art and invention
of many a clever hand

it sustained and empowered
muscles taut with ideas
from frontier through empire
depositing citadel
where its mouth speaks in
every last language of man
aesthetic and strategic this
lush liquid womb of liberty

Manhattan Reverie

“Abstract Manhattan” by Brian Carter

metropolis sculpted

from granite ambitions

each skyscraping statue

erect in its embrace by

an armature of commerce

deep mercantile canyons

their enterprise shimmers

in swift racing glide on

the grain of two rivers

converged at the battery

southernmost outpost

of free aspirations

here history found him

and gave his sharp mind

clever means to discover

and climb secret paths

from the sun deprived

pall of collective endeavor

attaining a rarefied place

among peaks of the skyline

enlightened and warmed

by his own private sun

Doo-Wop

From pinterest.com

 

streetcorner sultans

lift harmonies

over the tenement transom

returning the reverb

they pray earns them fame

their signature sound

 

Time Tunnel

Remember Manhattan?
We met in the smoke
of a hip neon
rock-and-roll bar.
I slipped into my drink,
and onto your stool,
swam under your
sapphire blue
glimmerglass gaze.
You danced your hello,
snared the backbeat
so coolly
it tingled my teeth.

I talked and you laughed,
and your laugh
made me laugh.
When you spoke
I felt I had discovered
a heavenly language.
We stepped into
a cold drizzled night
and right into
that cherry-red
sleek fifty-seven Bel Air.
Driving slow
through a wee-hours fog,
the sullen gray city
turned damned near to pretty
when your hand found mine.

We entered
that world famous
white-tiled tunnel,
talking excitedly,
juiced about life
that all of a sudden
made space for somebody new.
Exchanging our visions
of what we would be,
of all we would do
and the places we’d go,
we found we shared values
and held common dreams.
But never, not ever,
could we have imagined
what waited ahead
at the white tunnel’s end.

We emerged
and both gasped
to find shockingly clear
oh so bright sunlit morning.
Then, stunned,
hands gripped tighter,
we instantly realized
that somehow,
impossibly,
fifty-odd years
had flown by us in minutes,
and four-hundred miles
had raced under our wheels.
We’d been ushered
by unknown
unknowable forces
to right here, right now.

Green like only
New England can paint
covers tall-timbered forests,
protectively shielding
chaste virginal whites
of new-snow covered hills.
Here and now,
quaint and peaceful
New Hampshire laid out
in all of its splendor
for us, just for us
in our gentle retirement.

Along country lanes
pass vignettes of our life,
more chock-a-block memoirs
than we can scoop up
with our happy
but bewildered senses.
So much gain, so much loss,
so much pain, so much bliss.
But no sign of regrets.
They were strewn back behind
in that white-tiled tunnel
for someone to sweep up
and burn to forgotten ash.

Algonquin Round Table

Postcard of the Algonquin Round Table
Drawing by Al Hirschfeld

vicious circle of middling talents
acid dripped from their tongues
etching outlines of fame in the
smoke and the sarcasm heady
with beaux-arts grandiloquence

lesser these lights of the jazz age
amusing themselves in salute
of a culture in post-war delirium
deaf to the sound of the barreling
train headed hard into wall street

Fourteen Years

“World Trade Center”
Painting by Hall Groat II
From dailypainters.com

what mercy exists
but for justice
compassion not
tended by judgment
creates moral danger
unjust forgiveness
the purview of men
who pretend to have
God’s own omniscience
each heart needs
a mind to examine
the aptness of
gentle intentions
to validate virtue
or risk grave injustice
a foiling of notions
of fairness and equity

time does not heal
fourteen years
in which justice has
hardly been served
fourteen years
haven’t softened the
pain of the wounds
to my family humanity
pain that precludes
any semblance
of mercy my hatred
as real and as raw
as it was on that
beautiful terrible
September morn

I will never forget
I can never forgive