by Gerard Malanga

You’ll not find me in historic Hudson among the periwinkles
and clematis.
You’ll not find the footstep traces
soon followed by those cranky voids and craggy faces.
The hemlocks blossoming.
Who’s noticing ?
Who gives a care ?
Who walks along silently, who walks
along railroad sidings now abandoned
will surely reach track’s end somewhere
in time when doors unlock, swing open.
Sunlight pouring in.

by Gerard Malanga

What then of the pictures he left behind in his sleep
the mounds of tabloids bundled and yellowed
the looseleaf binders falling out at the seams
from wear & tear, from decrepit old age
the soft pathways hardened and winding their way
like a lost serpent through the one – bedroom flat
till the bathroom became verboten and fuzzy.
What then of the pictures consigned back to the hot, airless days
the flora and fauna, the blue jays
marauding, the gnarls and the crags, the land of the lost ?

by Gerard Malanga

He would’ve been the last one you’d expect to find out at Blackpool
on a sea breeze winter’s day or at East Parade long past.
You wouldn’t see him in his Sunday best,
his thirsting for the dark side of New York at memory’s loss
and now the stroll in Oxford Street Northwest
with cane in hand, with eyes hungering and lost.
His hearing lost.  Unknown at some unknown address.

by Gerard Malanga

She came from a place of no particular consequence
with a vision as wide as the bright blue skies
and lived by her wits, making ends meet,
as they say, in the oddest of places.  The dusty calle.
A rail hub gone blind in the middle of nowhere
to nowhere.  Brush scrub as far as the eyes could see
or the wind as a silent companion.
The loneliness of it all.
The grassy stretch of it all.
The numbers slowly ticking away.
The lack of tradition.  The dog days
of August . . . or was it grainy November ?