Backstage at the Met

let me show you the backdrop for my opera:
	the headlights of a car
	half buried in mud
	its death agony shortly thereafter
and the characters
nobody has to invent them:
	soaked and misty soprano
		you clearly     we were all such time
	tenor open at the throat
		i am here     no reason
		that’s why that’s it
basses accepting fivers
	maybe dimes or living quarters
winged by potential     all the other cast members
	buried tones     alt low
	mezzo standing in the middle
a black sky energy face of the stars speaks
if you can’t sing just hum the lines

the blood of the alley entire
the deep city avenues of your imagination
the orchestra of individual car horns
your opera free in the street of the streets
rabbits that leap in their ecstasy on sidewalks
a citywide burst of theatre fronts and sixty-story exuberance
throughout this opera you are still singing amazing me
all these footprints     startled genetics remembering your face
your phantom disrobed and filled to the soul
the soul visible     the physical purification of energy
		
        
        
        
        

from Yew Nork (2014)

Borrowed End

tell me when i’m fog     and
almost established as a physical logger-shirted grandfather
walking the whole street’s ethereal liquids
on a leash down telegraph avenue
	into the mirror brushed up against itself
	over and over into what you’d guess to be infinity
	one image for each year     all the years you’ve wandered
	the park still asleep in its delusion and the only light
	a candle settled on a borrowed end table
	that’s been in this house since the 1890’s

be a long night     duffle bag over his shoulder
and you can decant a noir movie or a nineteenth century
and its lethal fogs     hey sailor     long decade this night
with the killer lawn gnome on this northbound bus
the hippie sidewalks     punk traffic lanes
center line in the night’s invisibility of blacktop
my fingers still walk warhol’s new york city
as the bus goes further into temporal inscrutability
and cars blur around memory a familiar fog
	in the mirror there you can see the legends
	getting smaller no matter how well you
	remember them in the candle light
		is that a tie dye or a toga
		a periwig or do they know
		how to cure and dye animal skins yet
			this new borrowed time’s in his duffle too
			as the warm light flows his course
			across the range of the mirror
            
            
            
            

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Wind Seemed to Room (for my mother)

there was remember:
haunt gossip     up-thought
not a she wanted
she behaved enterprise
found his crib shaking babies
time babies
these last few moments she’s mummy’s boy
there had been no celebrated
	she pulled the soon
	she peered down into his doctor
	she knew what the house assured him
	she really put the wind     really seemed to room
	time ceased the moment she was certain
	you’ll just have to be faces

from Yew Nork (2014)

Telegraph Avenue Relic

i’ve walked down this street so many times
that they’ve set sidewalks over my footprints

even the pavement
is more transient than i am

i remember languages these buildings used to speak
in the stone ages before this century
hello black cat on the psychedelic poster
your green eyes are still following me in their madness
as old buildings resurrect across your path
and i continue my conversations with you

ohlone earth     vaquero earth
student earth for over a century
all these earths would touch the soles of my shoes
if i could step through
the layers of footprints people have put down
beyond the fewer than seventy years
of my own

from Yew Nork (2014)