New Year's Day - the East Village - 2024

St. Mark's Church
New Year's Day
Late afternoon
Outside
The sky a darkening gray.

Poetry inside
Hundreds in attendance
Scores of poets
Words twisting into more words
Tangling syllables
Words wrought by the breath of life
Skipping o'er the tongues
Of Poets amongst poets
Within the church.

Outside
Afternoon surrendering to evening
Walk down Second Avenue
This East Village once my home
1977-2005
256 East 10th Street
On the 3rd floor
THree rooms, a bath in the ktichen, a water closet off the bedroom
Next door the Russian Baths
Steaming still
Across the street
Sapphoro East
Sushi still
So many other things gone.

Not the Church
Not Velselkas
Not the library
But the Gem Spa is gone.
As am I
From a place more than thirty years my home.

I don't feel a stranger
Not estranged
I see those from before
Fighting to be faced
From memories
So many memories
Lines constructing faces and places
Klaus Haoui Sharon Willem Alice dear Alice
The hundreds the thousands
Dog man
Johnny Thunders
The known and the unknown
Just like today
As the evening swings into night
Not a star in the sky
Only Venus the evening star
O'er the East Village.

Back at th Church
Poems intertwined like snakes
Poets chanting their verses
A magic older than time

I'm outside
Wind, buses, young people laughing
On Second Avenue
Feeling home
In this East Village of mine
Ours and everyone.