What we say about ourselves when no one is watching (a work in progress)
What we write beneath our bridges….notes towards a piece on cities and identity:

Berlin, a rough coated man driven to speak
Says I want to be in black and white color bleak and tell the truth,
But gay and straight as I am.
In bold relief, like an abstract expressionist painting or even bolder him.
Both in and outside the lines of this word written on old trains and beneath bridges. Alexa can you stop this train. What that bridge is saying is too true.
Alexa can you stop this train before we all die? Sigh.
He is a bridge himself, with words written underneath.
In London it is the underground workers who carry the soul
Of the place, and know her poetry by heart;
They can quote in pentameter the rhythms of the trains so you know
And are properly oriented to her flow.
Jerusalem it is the markets, the men and women, the scent on their skin,
And round white stone rooftops in evening-moon on her is a given-
Which put her cumin cardomin scent on your skin forever.
In Prague, the silent draped, veiled night-misted cathedrals everywhere you look.
And go beneath any bridge in any of them to hear
Where the murmuring true words were/are conjoined-the silent night graffiti of being, written while we were asleep.
(Where a city writes itself on its own walls, which usually the kids do best);
Read slowly as if you had forever, and is if you knew your own name well,
And you’ll hear their names still being mentioned in graphic whispers
By angels and birds, overheard
By kids traveling through, but
Mostly, by the trees left standing still, holding the notes and marks of knowing…
They’ve seen the most of wars and passages-watchers and snap shot artists.
They’ve been taken in a million selfies.
But parks, bridges, bird poop and memory holders,
And fallen walls recall, just as well, and perhaps as articulately
All Our names. As we pass
Beneath city bridges. Or live there
For a while, gazing at rough coated men, or lovers
Trying to write our names well in some place, in a kinder grace
With which we font our songs where it doesn’t matter—bathroom walls
Or beneath bridges, no one will find us now, no one articulate our lines, and
Few will even notice at this hour of night in time.
What we say about ourselves, when no one is watching.
Listen where you wish, but our names are written beneath bridges.
And the trees’ refrain, more quietly, their words we speak about ourselves
Beneath our bridges.