Bayonne Entering NYC

Smog trucks mile after mile high wire
Pylons trestled toward New York
black multilane highway showered w/blue arc-lamps,
city glare horizoning
Megalopolis with burning factories—
Bayonne refineries behind Newark Hell-light
truck trains passing trans-continental gas-lines,
blinking safety signs KEEP AWAKE
Giant giant giant transformers,
electricity Stacks’ glowing smoke—
More Chimney fires than all Kansas in a mile,
Sulphur chemical Humble gigantic viaducts
networked by road side
What smell burning rubber, oil
“freshens your mouth”
Railroad rust, deep marsh garbage-fume
Nostril horns—
city Announcer jabbering at City Motel,
flat winking space ships descending overhead
GORNEY GORNEY MORTUARY
Brilliant signs the
10 P.M. clock churchspire lit in Suburb City,
New Jersey’s colored streets asleep—
High derrick spotlites lamped an inch above
roofcombs
Shoprite lit for Nite people before the vast
Hohokus marshes and Passaic’s flat gluey
Blackness ringed with lightbulbs.
Blue Newark airport,
Lights at the field edge,
Robot towers blazon’d Eastern Air TWA
above the lavender bulbed runway
across the barrage of car bridges—
I was born there in Newark
Public Service sign of the twenties
visible miles away through smoke
gray night over electric fields
My aunts and uncles died in hospitals,
are buried in graves surrounded by Railroad Tracks,
tombed near Winking 3 Ring Ballantine Ale’s home
where Western Electric has a Cosmic plant,
Pitt-Consoles breathes forth fumes
acrid above Flying Service tanks
Where superhighway rises over Monsanto
metal structures moonlit
Pulaski Skyway hanging airy black in heaven my childhood
neighbored with gigantic harbor stacks,
steam everywhere
Blue Star buses skimming skyroads
beside th’antennae mazes
brilliant by Canalside—
Empire State’s orange shoulders lifted above the Hell,
New York City buildings glitter
visible over Palisades’ trees
Guys From War put tiger in yr Tank—
Radio crawling with Rockmusic youngsters,
STOP—PAY TOLL
let the hitchhiker off in the acrid Mist—
Blue uniformed attendants rocking on their heels in green booths
Light parade everywhere
Cliff rooms, balconies & giant nineteenth century schools,
reptilian trucks on Jersey roads
Manhattan star-spread behind Ft. Lee cliffside
Evening lights reflected across Hudson water—
brilliant diamond-lantern’d Tunnel
Whizz of bus-trucks shimmer in Ear
over red brick
under Whitmanic Yawp Harbor here
roll into Man city, my city, Mannahatta
Lower East Side ghosted &
grimed with Heroin, shit-black from Edison towers
on East River’s rib—
Green-hatted doormen awaken the eve
in statuary-niched yellow lobbies—
zephyrous canyons brightlit, gray stone Empire State
too small to be God
lords it over sweet Macy’s & Seafood City
by junkie Grant Hotel—
Ho Ho turn right by the Blackman who crosses the street
lighting his cigarette, lone on asphalt
as the Lord in Nebraska—
Down 5th Avenue, brr—the irregular spine
of streetlights—
traffic signals all turned red at once—
insect lamps blink in dim artery
replicated down stone vales to Union Square—
In silence wait to see your home
Cemented asphalt, wire roof-banked,
canyoned, hived & churched with mortar,
mortised with art gas—
passing Ginsberg Machine Co.
th’axhead antique Flatiron
Building looms, old photographs
parked in the mind—
Cannastra your 21st Street lofts dark no more raw
meat law business
Tonite Naomi your 18th Westside Stalinesque
madstreet’s blocked by a bus,
Dusty your 16th (drunk in yr party dress) walls
emptiness Hudson River perspectiv’d
Dali in London? Joe Army yr brokenbone Churches
stand brown in time—
How quiet Washington Monument!
& fairy youth turns head downstreet
crossing 5th Avenue under trafficlite,
doorman playing poodledog
on brilliant-lit sidewalk No. 1.
an old reporter w/ brown leather briefcase
leaves the shiny-pillared apartment—
Gee it’s a Miracle to be back on this street
where strange guy mustache
stares in the windowshield—
Lovely the Steak Sign! bleeps on & off
beneath Woman’s prison—
Sixth Avenue bus back-window bright glass
Lady in kerchief leans backward,
corner Whalen’s Drugs, an old Beret familiar face
nods goodbye girl
Humm, Macdougal I lived here,
Humm, perfect, there’s empty space
Park by the bright-lit bookstore—
Where I’ll find my mail
& Harmonium, new from Calcutta
Waiting I come back to New York & begin to Sing.

March 1966

Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers