Poem- The Quiet World by Jade Blackmore April 14, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, Jade Blackmore, Uncategorized, Veteran Poets.Tags: Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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The Quiet World
Looking at the world from a window.
Apartment dwellers
laugh at the audacity of nature.
two raccoons overtake the parking garage
to make whoopee in plain sight.
The red finch at the feeder
thousands of butterflies skirting across stucco rooftops.
Then a phantasm shuttered the mountains, the planets, the movie scenes
with its’ money,
the lush green steppes only accessible
to the haughty and clueless.
The legacy friend who is quite sure she’s always right, the bluster, the vile and righteous path.
More sculpted glass in the sky,
a formula for escape or detention.
A squirrel scampers up the construction site fence,
another reminder
that the quiet world is out of reach.
Poem by Jade Blackmore -Party Night at a West Village Magic Shop, circa 1992 February 7, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in 1990s, city poems, Jade Blackmore, New York, poems, poetry, Veteran Poets.Tags: 1990s, Jade Blackmore, New York, poems, poetry
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The triangle of city veins
Connive with shadows and sulky corners.
A taxi pulls up to the curb
and a motley trio filters out,
all East Village berets and black overcoats,
clichés made flesh.
Red and blue lights flash from the front window
Of a magic shop,
Bathing the revelers on the building’s front stairs
In a post-apocalyptic light.
Artists and dilettantes scatter on the sidewalk.
They smoke joints and drink vodka from repurposed 7-Up bottles.
A disheveled man wearing sunglasses strums an acoustic guitar. His gruff gargle of a voice punctuates the blended conversations about auditions, art galleries,
and coke-addicted boyfriends.
The night’s honoree gave his regards, but stayed safe and warm in his cushy suburban home.
He sent his sidekick instead, a hyper but amusing misfit with slicked back black hair.
Still, the oblivious horde gathered, armed with red Solo cups and tales of punk rock debauchery
The beret-wearing trio held court with him all night.
After two drinks, they talked dirty to the fortunetelling mannequin in the corner.
After three drinks, they confiscated a set of exploding dice. The fall-out resulted in a toppled book rack.
After four drinks and an impromptu “Cut a lady in half” trick, the owner kicked them out.
Undaunted, the foursome stumbled to Gray’s Papaya for hot dogs and Pineapple whips.
The magic shop never hosted any parties after that.
It’s a vegan restaurant now.
Poem by Jade Blackmore – Redux- Talk Show in the ‘90s January 6, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, poems, poetry.Tags: city poems, poems, poetry
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Sometimes, she would press random buzzers in the vestibules of apartment buildings.
She went to parties with actors, Goth kids, and her co-workers from the S and M dungeon.
You’d always find her hanging out in a decaying apartment building with other squatters.
They’d watch Gilligan’s Island reruns, drink beer, and smoke pot. She had an affair with a guy who bought smokes at the 7-11 while she shoplifted a bottle of wine.
Eventually, he got her pregnant, and she had the baby. She sent her friends a photo of the newborn, a proud mama, then dropped out of sight for awhile and retreated back to the old neighborhood.
She shared an apartment with a friend from the third grade.
The baby cried a lot.
After the first few months,
The once-doting Mama disappeared for days at a time,
Skipping out on rent and returning drunk.
The roommate threw her out.
Now the baby Daddy’s Grandma raises him,
and the parents appear
when obligated to do so.
Poem by Jade Blackmore – Midtown Manhattan, Herald Square, 1989 October 28, 2020
Posted by vscorpiozine in 1980s, city poems, New York, poems, poetry, Veteran Poets.Tags: 1980s, Jade Blackmore, New York poems, poems, poetry
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1989 Midtown Manhattan
“Sign the Petition!!” The woman’s shrill voice echoes from outside the Chase Manhattan Bank on 34th Street. She walks back and forth holding a sign with a photo of a banned magazine cover with a meat grinder on it. Moms with baby strollers maneuver close to the curb to avoid her. Balding men in three-piece suits duck into revolving doors, and skateboard kids sail past, suppressing laughter till they’re clearly out of her view.
You walk into the deli, baggy-eyed and askew from being jostled on then train. The Bodega cat in the stockroom eats noodles from Chinese takeout container. You buy a raisin bagel and coffee
Even listening to Howard Stern on your Walkman doesn’t drown out the woman in a square-shoulder power suit standing behind you as she complains about how slowly the line is moving.
A punk rock girl with platinum strands (shades of Nancy Spungen) struggles with her umbrella as she passes a Hasidic Jew in a phone booth.
The streets whip up a mist of soot and sweat.
Oblivious,
the hot dog cart vendor sets up early
The old hippie dude selling used LPs,
knock-off Chanel bags and paperback books with covers torn off from a folding table by Tad’s Steaks does brisk business.
The girls in bulky sweaters watch the marathon from a fire escape. Toothy smiles and subway murder headlines blare from the front page of the Post
As you turn the corner to go to your job pasting up ads for January’s edition of Teddy Bear Revue,
Spending the morning stuffed into a corner office filled with half-empty glue bottles, photos, photocopies of photos and a pot of Folger’s coffee.
Man in a Santa suit walks out of the subway station into PJ Carneys for a highball. The Brooklyn girls get their nails done after-work, tangerine glow, key lime green, or passionate pink.
The manicurists wear light blue face masks and hand customers index cards with prices scrawled on them,
And talk to each other in Mandarin Chinese.
5:35 p.m. You exchange good nights with your co-workers through gritted teeth and speed walk pass Sbarro’s, Strawberry’s, and the Empire Stare Building. The lady with the poster still wails, more adamant than ever. Shoppers steer their children into Macy’s and office workers scurry like starved rats into the subway station.
Sometimes, it’s hard to believe
You were part of this hodge-podge
Cause the present is so static
and unassailably boring.
Leaf blowers wane in the background,
Replaced by a screen door opening and closing – then silence.
A screen, a book, a reset, then- nothing.
You dream of going back for just a minute
To be absorbed into the trivialities
of a forgotten world, before the rise of the automatons,
before truth scattered into a thousand different pieces.
Poem – Single Room Occupancy on 86th Street (1992) by Jade Blackmore May 28, 2018
Posted by vscorpiozine in 1990s, city poems, Jade Blackmore, New York, Veteran Poets.Tags: Jade Blackmore, New York, poems, poetry
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The exclusive address would make people jealous
If they saw it on an envelope
And never actually visited me.
I could walk to Central Park or the Metropolitan Museum
But three people could barely fit in my room.
Every week, I went downstairs to Beethoven Pianos on the first floor and paid the store manager my rent in cash.
Another tenant, a cute blonde boy with a limp
Always hung out in the showroom.
We’d get Pepsi together from the soda machine
And dawdle by the pianos till a customer walked in.
The Grande Dame of the SRO, an artist who lived in the room next-door to me, always wore pastel maxi-dresses and walked around the hall followed by her cat.
She’d been there six years.
She was between apartments waiting for an inheritance, she said.
I’d eat fishcakes and spaghetti on Friday
At the diner next door, and
Listen to the tubby telemarketing pros
Discuss their prospects
Tourists from Germany,
Students on summer internships,
and party kids
Slammed doors
And padded in and out of the shared bathrooms
In slippers or rubber sandals,
Faces blurred,
Suitcases bumping down stairs
Every month or two.
I walked down Lexington with a Black and white TV in a box
Hailed a cab in the rain,
And reconfigured the TV in a bigger box,
With clothes stuffed in a dresser and in the drawers under a twin bed,
Half the floor crowded with a computer, printer and answering machine.
I’d wash my hair in the sink in the morning.
The window open to the courtyard,
birds chirping, cabs honking, children playing,
Then scurry downstairs
and buy a bagel and coffee from a cart on the street.
I’d start breakfast on the subway to midtown
and finish it at my desk.
Fell asleep with the Boombox turned low
after exploring Manhattan after dark
With friends.
Woke up and did it over again.
No snotty roommates,
Leases,
Or screwed-up boyfriends.
No upstairs neighbors throwing used kitty litter out the window.
Sometimes freedom is better than space.
‘
Poems by B.Z. Niditch – In Manhattan 1990 and New York City 1999 May 8, 2016
Posted by vscorpiozine in 1990s, BZ Niditch, city poems, New York, poems, poetry, Veteran Poets.Tags: B.Z. Niditch, city poems, Manhattan, New York, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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IN MANHATTAN 1990
Anti-romantic
Andy Warhol
a passion to the lost,
I’m on a sleeper car
the ex-camera rolls
for we underground Beats
are giving our readings
on street corners,
with a lost Anna Karina photo
when married to Godard
we find at the Chelsea,
I buy a lunch poem
from Frank O’Hara
at the Cedar Bar,
here is
cheap vodka in draws
as time lapses
in my synapses
of taboo tripping,
after Andy demanded
to be electrically shaved
for the boy next door
carrying an imbibed state
for an extra in “Flesh”
needing a prescription
for a drug free America
losing a nude display
of Gordon Parks’ sequences
after getting the “Shaft”
on the way meeting Lana
a transvestite
who asked me for a light
and turned herself into
a bulbous yet
nosey chaperon
asking me to do
her laundry
of lace aprons,slips,dresses
of silk, Egyptian cotton,
and chancy things
drifting in the wash
in bathed bleach
of celestial swimsuits
from Esther Williams’
Technicolor sets
swirling shirts and blouses
lifted things from Macy’s
from a drawn basket
in shiny scents of lystoil.
NEW YORK CITY 1999
With the romantic
gone
here in the French
underground
once again
playing jazz
to a melody of Mahler
and Rameau
before a French mirror
doubled up
for Mallarme,
the wind
has Paris icicles
for us
in the restaurant
we murder croissants
by the portmanteau movies
of Spanish refugees
seeing bridal angels
of Chagall and Picasso
of our passing.
BIO:
B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.
His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.
He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Poem – Down the Rabbit Hole by Jade Blackmore February 17, 2016
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, Jade Blackmore, Uncategorized.Tags: city poems, Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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She walks through the hippest cemetery in America at midnight.
(More beer bottles, fewer bouquets)
“Your boyfriend must be hard to live with,” her heroin addict companion observes,before arguing with the burly security guard at the front gate.
There’s no time to wonder how she got here,
And even less time to get out.
Poem – In New York City by B.Z. Niditch January 11, 2015
Posted by vscorpiozine in B.Z. Niditch, city poems, New York, Veteran Poets.Tags: B.Z. Niditch, city poems, New York City, New York poems, veteran poets
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Poem – Inconsolable January 4, 2015
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, Hollywood, Jade Blackmore, love poems, poetry, romantic poems, Veteran Poets.Tags: city poems, Hollywood, Jade Blackmore, love poems, romantic poems
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Inconsolable
Marriage
Was too far gone a concept
Like
The view beyond the observatory railing or
Blue stars
Hidden in the void,
Gutless but free.
More than
A tawdry romp
Would have been icing on the cake.
Just a slap and tickle
(and a messy one at that)
would have meant
More than all the Hallmark cards
And academic diatribes in the world.
From the ping of empty beer bottles
On St. Marks Place
To a cold carless Sunset Strip
On a Monday night
Tears where a warm body should have been.
It is a Bible-thumping lie
To think
We only regret
The hefty and somber
Mistakes of life.
The silly
Rhinestones that could have been
Leave scars just as deep.
Copyright 2003 Jade Blackmore
Poem – Hipster Couple in Hollywood December 16, 2014
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, Hollywood, Veteran Poets.Tags: city poems. hipster, poems about Hollywood
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Hipster Couple in Hollywood
The hipster couple walks down the street
In their usual pose.
She wears a knitted stocking cap with dangling fuzzballs
As she walks their Yorkie,
Talking in rapid-fire shots,
Without taking a breath.
He walks behind dutifully,
Head bowed.
Copyright 2014 Jade Blackmore
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