Jonathan Hayes

http://www.geocities.com/fivereview/hayespoems2.htm

Jonathan Hayes is the author of Echoes from the Sarcophagus (3300 Press, 1997), St. Paul Hotel (Ex Nihilo Press, 2000), and self invented (split chapbook with Mark Sonnenfeld, Marymark Press, 2003).

Recently published by Big Bridge, Realpoetik, and Shampoo; he edits the literary / art magazine Over the Transom.

Like Eyes of the Tapster

When creation is hot
in the basement of a cool mind,
and dogs run through the street
without leashes or order,
your dark pint remains
unfinished on a wooden bar.

Father

The announcement
of freshly-smacked after shave

The contamination
of armpit sweat in a yellow Izod

And the mistake of being human

Eisenhower paragraphs of tight logic

The smell
of coffee in a deli cup

The Bottom Line

I collect the cat’s orange toenails
Which have fallen to the wooden floor
As it scratched the wicker chair

I open the window so it can go out
On the fire escape and brush its furry mug up against
The neighbor’s window for admission & vittles

[inside the studio]

The movie is rewound
Ready to be returned

A dog barks on East 87th Street and First Avenue

This last tenement neighborhood of Yorkville
By Hell Gate & red paper hearts in the green park

The bells of Saint Joseph’s seem so far away
Make an altar out of the last day

NEW YEAR’S / New York City
& a sixty-cents coffee headache

Heading for Kennedy Airport in a yellow cab
By Ward’s Island & the Cantos of a departure

Legs & cocktails
Seated by a stranger to crash

jetBlue and Madhatn

[DAY ONE]

post-blackout blues

#6 train – loco / local

: : : :

lingering / looking

she stopped him from stepping
on a bright green grasshopper at 14th street
and cross universe

fifteen minutes or years from Union Square

just when everything is going smooth

orange gum on sidewalk
sticking to well-worn sneaker soul

Astor Place:

beavers swimming in subway system

turn the “Cube”
where skaters roost

dragon eyes / turtle jelly

flip-flop punishment
dominatrix thongs

going to every shoestore in SOHO

feeding Canal Street junkies dried squid

a ballet of garbage:

white plastic bags and toilet paper
twisting and floating up into the New Amsterdam sky

over City Hall

dancing on all Five Points

a walk across Brooklyn Bridge
and thru the humidity of mythology

ending it in NOHO

with Mister Softee vanilla ice cream
and Basquiat’s ghost graffiti

always, a couple blocks
away from the answer

it’s easy to replace the word
“America,” with the word

“WORLD”

[DAY TWO]

grab a cab, hoist a flag

Catch the Flava:

Cherry, Lemon, Bubblegum, etc.

stepping outta Port Authority
sweltering August rainstorm – lightning strikes three!

taking photographs with Mark Sonnenfeld

cats the size of rats
in Central Park after dark

[DAY THREE]

thousands of black eels
in the Hudson River

a black velvet tapestry of movement

Lang Bergh

General Washington retreats
to return and take back Fort Tyron

morose medieval art Cloistering

on the rock at Bennett Park:

265 feet above sea level – summit of Madhatn

165th street and Broadway:

the whole room was consumed with doom
when the ballroom went boom!

and Malcolm X left for permanent def

a perfect spot – Jumel Mansion

General Washington could see it “all”

the British on foot coming from the Harlem Plain
or in their boats up the Harlem River

Mrs. Murray entertained
General Howe and his officers

for hours and days
until General Washington and his troops could execute another escape

black boys play Play Station on fat t.v.
while sitting on wooden park bench
with extension cord plugged into the traffic light outlet on sidewalk

merciful police turn on fire hydrant

Sugar Hill (naw don’t git ill)
pre-ultra violence hip-hop

The Polo Grounds hold no sound
an empty homebase mirage

Rucker Park
shirts vs. skins

white tee-shirts repel the sun
baggy and saggy

six leagues under slumber

Old Man Macomb – all alone
ain’t going charge no one no moan

Macombs Dam Bridge

$2 mango on a stick

Alexander Hamilton –
the greatest New Yorker who ever lived

a mother sweating, with no blouse on
holding her naked baby in arms

feeding it warm milk from a yellow plastic bottle
in the window of a brown tenement
many stories above the story

playing baseball on asphalt:

136th Street and Broadway
IS 195 Roberto Clemente – School of the Arts

130th Street and Saint Nicholas Avenue
hey Duke, “Take the ‘A’ Train”

descending Morningside Heights at night

in the valley of Manhattanville

Saint John the Divine

watching over my Aunt Meg
in the Amsterdam House Nursing Home

as she composes
her last oil painting

of the Swiss Alps
she will not return

Beer and Eggs

she met me at the 200th street dyckman station

the first thing i saw was the fort tyron restaurant marquee

next i was in the deli buying three 24 ouncers of bud at six in the morning

we hadn’t seen each other since the pop show at sfmoma

when we watched fort apache the bronx
she said pinero was a terrible actor

she was more interested in the wooden bed that poe’s wife-cousin died in

which still rests in their white cottage
near fordham

the bells the bells

we heard the bells in the bronx botanical gardens
she said it was a good place for a first date

then we were in the peggy rockefeller rose garden

a dollar is a dollar is a dollar

it’s the tradition on my birthday to go see a movie

last year was the city of god at the red vic
with a haight street muni bus freak-ride after

by the time this poem gets published
the papers say that bus route will be disconnected

so if you’re on market street and wanna get up to haight street

use your feet

she loves mark mulder
and i’m sure that’s what was on her mind
while we hit the rubber yellow balls in the batting cages at coney island

and rode the cyclone roller coaster
that dangerous death-teasing ride

where a five hundred pound man releases the level and sends you into the sky

she wants to be a man and stare at girls

tells me to go with the asian teenage hotties
sitting across from us on the subway
eating the same sandwich
all five of them

if i am so interested

she tells me she doesn’t have to touch them if she is a dominatrix

and has a model shoot in brooklyn tomorrow
she was the top 2% that responded to their website

but she has to lose the ten pounds she gained while i visited

we ate like drunks

and mistakenly mentioned we wanted to make huevos rancheros
to a nuyorican lady in a bodega

our interracial couple ass should be living on the upper west side

but instead we walk by the old men playing dominoes on coffee tables
sitting in folding chairs

drinking beer as arms raise above white tee-shirts

the fire hydrants have been turned on
children are splashing each other with plastic cups of cool water
yelling, “i’m gonna get you wet!”

and salsa and salsa and more salsa music

she squirts the ketchup and hot sauce on our pastelito queso

and screams as the number nine streaks across the gray humid sky
on the above-the-street elevated subway track

we’re going to the zoo
and she wants to see elephants

and i came so close today
to that street corner with the man

if you know what i mean