Homage to the Rust Belt and Beyond

Part I

The Ohio River begins at Pittsburgh,
A smoky city in day and night,
Where coke fires burn from giant steel skeletons.

Downtown, dense haze crowds Hill District tenements
Fire escapes, ladders hang down to cracked sidewalks,
Dusty old Chevrolets parked alongside.

Uptown, sycamore trees frame cobblestone streets.
Fireflies pop from thick bushes behind brick houses
with tall narrow windows, white trim,
Clean, neat, orderly.

Allegheny, Monongahela, sung to the clackity clack
of the onehundredormore dizzying boxcars with doors shut,
Or open hopper cars mounded with coal and scrap iron,
Going, going, gone. 

Nurses in glaring white uniforms
Hover over very small children
Giving shots,
If she could only hide.
Her mother pulls her toward the line.
Fear. For her own good. She drops back.
Her turn.  No more tears.
Big people dressed in white.
They never seem little.
Even after she is grown up.

PART II:

Shards of glass rained down in the early morning dark,
When Al Capone's casino blew up
In the downtown section of Youngstown.

But there was always Squint’s Place.
With machine guns in balconies,
Crystal chandeliers hanging,
Poker playing, gin, shining bright
In swirled glasses, ice cubes crashing,
people knocking, always knocking.

Squint, hungry dog at the door,
Peered with his good eye
At newcomers in seal coats,
Silk stockings, Fedoras,
Shiny black Plymouths on the street.

Machine guns pointed from balconies
Over crystal chandeliers.
Noisy poker players leaned over tables.
Gin sparkled in swirled glasses.
Ice cubes crashed against each other.       

Everybody played, danced away the dawn.
Squint's never closed, not even when the cops came by,
Brushing bits of glass from blue work shirts.
Hey, they came in too.
Everybody had a good time
After Al Capone's place burnt down.

PART III:

Cold winds shivered her skin, swept over Lake Erie
To rough sand and driftwood.
Toads cowered against grotesque gray logs horizontal
Thrown to shore sometime long before.
The water leaped at the shore.  Waves shifted her feet
Back to the driftwood to toads paused in the shadows

She caught five toads, dumped them in a large tomato can.
They hopped around sealed in with a metal lid,
Holes punched, still alive, they popped around,
Banged against the sides.
Uncomfortable, she still took them home,
Scattered them into the green of woods
To the still cold winds, just a different place,
Like Squint's, the same, only with different characters
Shuttled around after Al Capone's place burned down,

She was playing God, like Caliban upon Setabos,
Or maybe even Lady MacBeth, who should have
Washed her hands of it, but couldn't really.

Part IV:

The old man with the horse pulled up close,
"Scissors sharpened," he yelled, "knives too.
Whatever you have I do."
"I`m afraid I have scissors done special," her mother said,
He didn't need to hear so many excuses.
His horse pawed the ground.
The winged chariot drew near that horse too, bent with age,
Tied to his master forever.
She, peering through the curtains,
Wished  for knives to sharpen.

A circus of clowns, and elephants, and big top tents
Never seen from the inside, but she could imagine the fat lady,
the tattooed man, the lions on stools, paws out, roaring,
Leaping through hoops, then behind bars.
She could see a long time ago,
Her mother under the Big Top.
Elephants escaped,
Thundered around the tent,
While she and other small ones hid
Behind  huge ropes.
Watching elephants shy away from ropes,
Wanting to be free, angry, and afraid,
Captives of locked spaces, like Squint's place,
But the elephants unable to leave
When they quit dancing.

Toads, elephants, prisoners with numbers on their arms,
She saw them.  She did not want to know she saw them. 
They came back to Pittsburgh.
Not many came,, because there weren't many left
Over there,, because nobody took the lid off,
Let them out soon enough, to live, maybe sharpen knives,
Live forever with their horses, to die in due time
With the chariot coming by to take them home.

Part V:

A world of Oz, and tired tin men selling aluminum,
But then Lassie always came home, a dream,
Jumped through windows, out into freedom again,
Like the Black Stallion who wanted  run,
Never free to run as fast as he wanted to,
Only as fast as he could for someone else,
Peter Pan whisking people away to Never Never land. 
She believed it was just so,
But it wasn't that way anymore.
Squint's place torn down. Prohibition ended,
Too much competition.  The end of an era, everyone said,
But she said, things don't change, do they?

Part VI:

"Strike three, your out," the umpire hollered out
 to the Forbes Field crowd
Everybody booed.
Then the Pirates were up to bat.

PART VI:
Walking over trestles,
Waiting for streetcars, then trains
To squash pennies in Pittsburgh.

Walking and waiting
In California, along tracks,
Weeds coming up through,
The smell of disinfectant strong
Sharpening her nose,
Making her aware
Of how things don't fit like
When Kennedy died. Homecoming floats
Never finished, flowers strewn around,
No one working, everyone crying,
Sitting, wondering, never knowing either
After Korea, during Vietnam, or before Nicaragua,
For what?  someone asked, before fingering
Ban the bomb necklaces again
.
The old days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
One less step for mankind, breaking down
Form into dancing horses, and flowers
That swirled around each other,
Tempting the impressionist Matisse
Too crawl in and stay there, encapsulated
In line, color, form, and still life,
No numbers on arms, but
Wild prancing horses
purple and pink flowers
No graves.

PART VII:

The boat people have landed,
Clinging to each other, anyagestyle.
The waves sock them to the shore,
In their own war in time and out of time,
Repressed newspapers, Cambodia bombed and gone,
No boats to take them anywhere, except the River Styx,
In the light or dark of killing, he died
Flying over the Me Kong Delta, and beyond,
Up in the wild blue yonder of navigator
And button pressers.  He,
With the flowers from Hawaii,
Kissed her and made her laugh,
Played bridge better than anyone, gone.

Police beat up demonstrators in dark alleys.
No one objected, not even concientious objectors,
A large heavy-set man wanted everyone on the streets,
Like it was before, only too late after McGovern
Lost the election, too late to go down the dim lit alley.

Who are the peace officers of this society,
Maybe the pilot playing bridge, not playing flying ace,
Who never came home, from Vietnam,
From burnt out buildings,
Who could have known that it was all wrong.
Nothing was all right, the darkness of Picasso
Winning out over the lovely light of Matisse.

All is dark, velvety, and very real,
And absolutely perfectly colored
Into wartorn cultures.
No new portraits to save
Because everyone is gone
That mattered to someone.
Close the door, lock it tight,
And wait to find out who and where you are,
Because there is no sound.
All is quiet, no one is left
To hear the sound of one hand clapping.